The presence of children is part of the culture and everyone knows everyone else’s kids. The connections among the children are almost spiritual. It’s something you can’t really put a price on.

Haden Polseno-Hensley, co-owner, Red Rooster Coffee

A Personal Solution that Grew

Established in 2010 in Floyd County, VA (pop. 15,500), Red Rooster was created with the simple notion of roasting excellent coffee for a small cafe. Once word of the quality coffee spread, co-owners Haden Polseno-Hensley and Rose McCutchan, grew their team to 50 people, relying on their hard working team members to show up and be productive, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to meet the demand of their growing business. As parents, Polseno-Henlsey and McCutchan clearly saw the barriers associated with finding accessible, affordable child care, and knew some type of child care solution was critical to stay true to their values, to provide a livelihood and a fulfilling working life for employees.

Taking Good Care of People and Coffee

“We knew we wanted to prioritize ‘Taking Good Care of Our Coffee, Our People, Our Farmers, Our Planet’ – those are our values” said Polseno-Hensley. And, it was personal. Polseno-Hensley and McCutchan had a 2-year-old and couldn’t manage without care, meaning McCutchan, the CFO of Red Rooster, would not be able to return to work. Along with a friend who had a child the same age, they hired a babysitter who cared for both children in an extra room in the office. Then, one of Red Rooster’s team members announced a new pregnancy and Polseno-Hensley states, “it was like a spiral from there. Same thing happened with another person, so there were 4 children that needed care… and then 5…” In June of 2018, with a growing number of children and pregnant staff asking for child care, Yellow Hen, an on-site child care center officially opened its doors.

Putting a Plan into Action with Partnership

Recognizing their expertise was in coffee, not child care, Polseno-Hensley identified a local educator who would become the director of the center, oversee the licensing, hiring, day-to-day management of the center and provide the necessary expertise in early childhood education. Leveraging 1000 square feet of indoor space within their operations building, and having planned ahead for appropriate plumbing and electrical, Yellow Hen was up and running. Within a year, the center was at capacity. Currently, the Yellow Hen employs six part-time educators who provide care between 8:30am and 6:00 pm for 16 – 18 children on varying schedules.

Outcomes

Retention win: Floyd, VA is among the most rural counties in Virginia with a population just under 500 people. Attracting talent to this remote corner is “very difficult,” states Polseno-Hensley. So when you find talent like Indya DiPietro, manager of Red Rooster’s Coffee shop, it’s a big deal. “She’s an incredibly skilled manager with an innate talent for being able to address things people are doing wrong in a way that’s not confrontational and can maintain a positive relationship with that person.” DiPietro’s 8 year old daughter was one of Yellow Hen’s first children, and has attended the center for five years, allowing DiPietro to be committed to Red Rooster and grow her talents as the coffee shop manager. 

Polseno-Henlsey gives credit to the child care center for being part of the reason for keeping his exceptional long-term employees: “We are a 14 year old company and have people who have worked for us for 10 years. I attribute some of that to the child care center. This allows work to happen in a frictionless way.” 

Recruitment win: Polseno-Hensley also speaks to the value of child care in attracting top talent: “I have employees who only work here because of the access to care. They are good employees and we are happy to have them but the reason they came is because we offer child care.”

Challenge

Polseno-Hensley admits that the most difficult part is managing the schedule. In order to remain compliant with licensing requirements, they always need to make sure to have the right teacher to child ratios. Sometimes employees can’t get the care when they need due to teacher illnesses or vacations. But, “it is still more predictable than other child care options that exist,” says Polseno-Hensley, “and we provide flexibility for our staff based on when they can receive the child care that they need.”

Equity

Many business leaders worry that their staff members without children will feel neglected, but Polseno-Hensley states: “it never caused tension with my non-parenting employees. I’ve never heard anyone say ‘I could be paid more if we didn’t have the child care center.’ 

Advice

Polseno-Hensley has 3 key pieces of advice for employers:

1. You can do it

“If you’re an under-a -$20M-a -year company, there are a lot of things you deal with that are harder than figuring out a child care solution. If it’s occurring to you, then you should probably pursue it. It comes down to where you invest your money: think about the other things you spend $100k on.”

2. Find the Expert

“We found Ella, our child care center director, and she did it. We made a lot of cooperative decisions, but she led it all. These people exist and you could provide a great job for someone in a gray area of their career by paying them pretty well and building opportunity for that person as well as your employees.”

3. Be thoughtful about where you are in your company’s growth

“I would do it again but we started too early. We weren’t at the size to pay our people an hourly wage that we were satisfied with. Employees only paid $1/hour to send their children to the Yellow Hen and that was a nod to the fact that we weren’t paying them enough. But the business needs to be financially solvent enough to say we are taking care of all employees to the best of our ability and then this is another thing we can add to that.