Consultancy – Gender Mainstreaming in the Coffee Retail Sector

Assignment Overview

Delicious Inc is the holding company for Cilantro, a chain of coffee stores spread across Egypt. Under its project with CFYE, Delicious Inc. Cilantro will create over 600 jobs for youth by opening 30 new coffee stores across Egypt. Additional employment will be generated through its suppliers and recycling partners, as well as 200 new jobs for delivery riders boarded to a newly created app that facilitates order placement and delivery. Furthermore, Cilantro aims to improve working conditions for 400 current employees, focusing on better adherence to policies, job promotion opportunities, and enhanced benefits, such as transportation, meals, and insurance.

While Cilantro is making strides toward gender inclusion in its workforce, significant gender disparities persist in store-level employment, where historically, men dominated roles. With increasing participation from women, challenges have emerged, such as ensuring equal opportunity and addressing workplace tensions. Cilantro recognizes the business value of greater gender equality, noting that women employees demonstrate cleaner and more structured work habits, higher average order values, and longer tenures. 

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To achieve its gender mainstreaming goals, Cilantro seeks the support of CFYE’s Technical Assistance (TA) team to sensitize the male-dominated workforce, integrate gender equality into policies, and develop a tailored value proposition to attract more women to the company. 

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Objectives and Activities 
This exercise will specifically focus on store-level employment, operations, and recruitment practices to identify areas requiring gender mainstreaming. 
Objective 1: Conduct a Gap Analysis of Cilantro’s Employment Practices to better understand the main challenges for female employees at Cilantro stores around recruitment, onboarding, retention, promotion and other key employment stages and processes, and how Cilantro’s employment practices can be improved to overcome these challenges and improve the situation of female employees in Cilantro stores.  
Activities: 

Conduct key informant interviews (KII) with current female employees at Cilantro to understand their experiences and challenges. 


Document the outcomes of the KIIs and synthesize into a report with an exhaustive overview of key findings, patterns, including initial recommendations.  

Objective 2: Develop a Comprehensive Strategy and Action Plan for Gender Mainstreaming across Cilantro stores The strategy and action plan will set clear targets and goals for gender inclusivity within the workforce, co-created with input from relevant stakeholders. 
Activities: 

Organize brainstorming sessions with key Cilantro representatives and stakeholders to interpret the key findings of the assessment.  


Based on this, create a detailed and actionable roadmap including key elements such as gender-sensitive recruitment practices, role-specific onboarding plans, workforce integration measures, and retention strategies. 


Design a tailored value proposition specifically for recruitment activities, highlighting incentives, benefits, and growth opportunities for women. 

Objective 3: Workforce Capacitation and Awareness 
Activities: 

Develop role-specific training modules to address the unique challenges faced by different roles and ensure gender-sensitive approaches. 


Conduct workshops and training-of-trainers (ToT) sessions to build the capacity of Cilantro’s leadership, store managers, and central office teams to implement gender-sensitive practices. 

Objective 4: Advise on Implementation and Monitoring of Improvement Measures with the goal of equipping the Cilantro team with the right tools and approaches to monitor the progress and evaluation the success of the implementation of the action plan.
Activities: 

Create a framework for conducting regular evaluations of Cilantro’s progress in implementing gender mainstreaming initiatives, focusing on elements and indicators such as Employer Net Promotor Score, ideally with predefined targets set in consultation with Cilantro 


Provide guidance on how the framework can best be applied and how the implementation and management of the action plan can best be embedded within the broader Cilantro organization to ensure sustainability of gender mainstreaming efforts. 

Deliverables 

Gender Analysis Report: A detailed document summarizing key findings on gender disparities within Cilantro’s workforce. 
Strategy and Action Plan: A co-created detailed action plan including roadmap with clear goals, implementation steps, and monitoring mechanisms.  
Role-Specific Training Materials: Training content developed for trainers that tackle different roles, including store staff, managers, and central office employees. 
Monitoring Framework: Design a monitoring framework that can be used by Cilantro to effectively monitor, measure and evaluate the implementation of the action plan.  
Final Report: Summarizing lessons learned and offering recommendations for sustainable gender mainstreaming practices. 
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Assignment Overview 
Delicious Inc is the holding company for Cilantro, a chain of coffee stores spread across Egypt. Under its project with CFYE, Delicious Inc. Cilantro will create over 600 jobs for youth by opening 30 new coffee stores across Egypt. Additional employment will be generated through its suppliers and recycling partners, as well as 200 new jobs for delivery riders boarded to a newly created app that facilitates order placement and delivery. Furthermore, Cilantro aims to improve working conditions for 400 current employees, focusing on better adherence to policies, job promotion opportunities, and enhanced benefits, such as transportation, meals, and insurance.