Coffee/Lunch Roulette: Why Virtual Teams Need It and How to Set It Up

Psychological safety is the very foundation of effective and thriving teams, according to a Google study. It means team members work better together in an inclusive culture, which is only possible when everyone involved is willing to show vulnerability, accept challenges, take risks, and find new ways to innovate as well as work together.

Unfortunately, with workforces going remote or hybrid, building and nurturing an inclusive work culture is easier said than done.

79% of employees feel more isolated since going remote, while another research found 70% of workers were feeling more burnt out and stressed than they did pre-pandemic. They end up developing a disengaged mindset, leading to lower productivity levels, more functional silos, and larger inter-departmental knowledge gaps. In turn, coordination breaks down. Culture suffers.

Luckily, there are a few practical ways to tear down these invisible walls between teams and departments, and the one we'll discuss today is coffee roulette or lunch roulette.

☕ What Is a Coffee Roulette or Lunch Roulette?

Coffee roulette or lunch roulette mimics the informal engagement that would regularly happen in a traditional office environment, preventing hybrid or remote staff from feeling isolated from team members and members of other departments.
The idea behind holding a virtual coffee roulette is simple: to nurture and foster a collaborative workplace culture.

Think of it as taking a pause to socialize with colleagues over a cup of coffee or lunch, creating a base layer of trust and a feeling of security between the participating individuals.

How does a coffee roulette or lunch roulette work?

A coffee roulette or lunch roulette can happen either manually or automatically. When you take the manual way, you are responsible for matching employees from the same team or different teams. 

On the other hand, if you use specialized software services, you simply have to enter your employees into the system, after which an algorithm will automatically match two or more employees for a "random "meetup over the phone or the screen.

Moreover, you can also set the frequency of how often your employees should take part in coffee or lunch roulette.

We'll discuss both the manual and automated ways of organizing coffee roulette or lunch roulette in more detail later.

🏆 The Benefits of a Coffee or Lunch Roulette for Virtual Teams

Imagine this: you're attending a meeting with a co-worker whom you've never met—ever—to discuss an upcoming big project. 

How comfortable would you be sharing views with a total stranger? Even if you're the most outspoken and extroverted person, there'll still be general reluctance between you and the co-worker. 

But if your company had a virtual icebreaker policy like a coffee or lunch roulette, you would already be familiar with the co-worker, diffusing any tension or apprehensions, and it allows you both to start effectively collaborating right off the bat.

Keeping this in mind, here are a few advantages of organizing a lunch or coffee roulette for your virtual team:

Inclusive and Communicative Company Culture

With employees working from home and living in different time zones, keeping up the level of internal communication within an organization can be challenging. A coffee or lunch roulette enables employees to expand their personal network and develop new contact points within the company. 

At the same time, talking to fellow employees strengthens the atmosphere of trust and brings enjoyment and variety to participants throughout the entire working day. Furthermore, it reassures them that other employees find their jobs challenging and work towards identical/similar goals. This indirectly creates an inclusive atmosphere.

Informal Exchange of Dialogue and Viewpoints 

Organizing a coffee or lunch roulette encourages an informal exchange of dialogue and views, allowing the participants to feel more comfortable and safe in each other's presence. It takes away the invisible formal barricades, which, in turn, builds dynamic relationships to facilitate greater progress through knowledge exchange in the context of day-to-day functioning as well as future projects.

Fostering Human Relationships

As mentioned, organizing a coffee or lunch roulette helps foster human relationships at your company. In addition, it breaks down communication barriers and promotes the exchange of ideas across departments and hierarchical boundaries, eliminating silo mentality—or disjointed thinking.

Also, randomly teaming people instills a sense of excitement within employees to make new acquaintances and spark genuine, engaging conversations. This can lead to better team cooperation and, more importantly, positive relationship growth with colleagues.

Internal Networking

Generally, when we mention networking, it's in regards to connecting with people outside your company. And while that's definitely important to get access to opportunities and knowledge you may not find on your own, networking within your company is equally important.

Fast Company defines internal networking as "reaching out and connecting with colleagues within your organization, even if your job doesn't require you to do so."

When you continually engage with people from your own company, you build relationships and rapport and cultivate an environment of mutual trust and respect. All of these lead to higher productivity and a better overall work experience.

Organizing a coffee or lunch roulette is one of the simplest internal networking tricks. To create stronger inter-office relationships, employees can share information about current or upcoming projects, discuss family and friends, or other random topics.

Hold Empathetic Conversations that Matter

89% of HR leaders agree empathy is critical in a hybrid environment, and virtual coffee and lunch roulettes can nurture empathy between employees. 

These roulette sessions can spur meaningful conversations with participants openly discussing failure and success. Think of it as creating a more sustainable definition of success, where instead of glorifying burnout, employees understand the value of empathy, collaboration, team building, and resilience. 

How to foster meaningful conversations?

On Zavvy, there's a template for that.

In general, we recommend creating a safe environment and proposing concrete topics to make people share their "highest highs" and "lowest lows" from the past. You'll be surprised by how fast the conversation will reach a much deeper level than shallow everyday small Talk!

In a nutshell, coffee and lunch roulettes foster an inclusive future by bringing employees together and transforming the remote and hybrid work experience.

What's more, you don't have to take our word for these benefits—we've got facts to prove this.

Data science company Profusion built a coffee roulette system that automatically paired employees for an informal virtual meetup. A survey then revealed that:

• 72% of employees experienced an improvement in morale
• 63% of employees felt less isolated or unhappy
• 96% of employees felt more engaged with the company while working remotely
• 61% had a better idea about what their colleagues' jobs entailed

The idea of lunch roulette struck David Thompson, a scientist turned social media strategist, while working at the U.S. army of pharmaceuticals manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim (BIPI).

One time, he couldn't find someone to have lunch with. So, he, along with his colleague Christopher Tan, built a prototype and sent invites to a select group of colleagues.

Within 12 hours of going live within the company, the app saw great traction. Within seven weeks, the app matched more than 350 people to go out for lunch. Tan discovered that holding a lunch roulette produced unexpected pairings (e.g., the app paired BIPI CEO with a young member of the brand marketing team) that often led to unforeseen conversations and improved collaboration.

📝 How to Organize a Lunch or Coffee Roulette?

Below, we've created a step-by-step rundown to guide you through the process.

Step 1: Prepare a spreadsheet with the information about your team members. This should include the full name of all our employees, their departments, email IDs, phone numbers, etc. 

Tip: Include as few details as necessary to avoid any unnecessary workload.

Step 2: Establish ground rules. How do you want to pair your employees? Do you want to pair them with employees from other departments solely? Or are you okay with employees from the same team meeting up over lunch or coffee? 

Remember, there's no right or wrong answer. Think about your existing employee relationships and make your decision.

Step 3: Based on your rules start randomly pairing employees with other employees. Be sure to jot down the pairings correctly to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Step 4: Send emails to the participating employees containing more information about the virtual coffee or lunch roulette. When sending out emails, try to CC the other participants, so everyone involved is on the same page regarding when and where the roulette rendezvous will occur.

Be sure to list all the necessary details, like the reason for organizing the roulette, a short snippet of why the pairing is good, the deadline for doing the roulette, etc.

Step 5: Make a list of 'coffee roulette at work' questions. Think of questions that can help the participating employees break the ice and ensure a smooth flow of conversation. While you can add funny and casual questions, you also want to include insightful and revealing questions that build better work relationships.

Here are our top favorites:

• What would you do if you weren't at your current job? 
• If you have to describe the child's version of yourself in one word, what would it be?
• When are you the happiest?
• Fill in the blank: If you really knew me, you'd know that I ___.
• Which characteristic do you admire most in others and why?
• What would you change if you ruled the world on your first day?
• How would you describe your perfect day?

Completed your list? Great. Let's move on to the next step.

Step 6: Send friendly reminder emails to participants at predetermined intervals. For example, you can send reminder emails a day before the scheduled meetup, five days before the decided date, or a week before the roulette deadline.

Step 7: After the roulette session, email participants again asking for feedback. This is a very critical step that can give you a lot of insight into the process of what's working and what isn't, how it's affecting your employee, how you can improve, and make it more convenient for the participants.

Repeat the process after a month—or a time frame that you think suits your employees best. For coffee or lunch roulettes to work, you have to be consistent. It's a time-consuming process but well worth the effort.

❗️ But… there's also a MUCH more convenient way of organizing a coffee virtual coffee roulette or lunch roulette: automation.

⚙️ How to Automate a Coffee or Lunch Roulette Via Slack or Microsoft Teams With Zavvy

We understand employees are your greatest asset and offer practical solutions to drive team productivity and retention. 

Keeping this in mind, we've created our Connection Programs solution to help you develop meaningful connections with your people. You can use our solution to auto-connect your colleagues for casual meetups or walking meetings to spur conversations that create greater team spirit and improve mental health.

Here's a quick rundown of how you can use Zavvy's 'Conversations That Matter' template to organize a coffee or lunch roulette:

Step 1: After logging into your Zavvy account, go to templates and click on Connect Slack for the Slack integration option.

Step 2: Click on Templates. Here, you'll see our templates for various categories, each of which has been designed with care. For example, there are templates for

• Casual meetups (coffee roulette)
• Walk & Talk (nudge people to talk a walk during the dialogue)
• Conversations that matter (encourage meaningful conversations)

For organizing a more meaningful routine, scroll down and click on Conversations That Matter under the Hybrid/Remote Work section.

In this section, you can find a short introduction and explanation about the purpose of this customizable template in more detail.

This program will help you ensure healthy communication and develop an empathetic work culture where employees feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging.

Step 3: This is what the Conversations That Matter template looks like:

You can customize the template as per your liking. For instance, you can change the title to ‘Coffee Roulette’ or ‘Lunch Roulette,’ add a thumbnail, a description, and so on. As you scroll down, you’ll see a bunch of other settings.

You can decide the settings however you like and based on your employees’ schedules. 

Zavvy Top Tip: The only way to see success from organizing coffee roulettes or lunch roulettes is to ensure consistency. Take advantage of our Repeat option and schedule roulette sessions every week or two weeks to maximize results.

Step 4: Scroll up and click on the Builder tab on the top menu bar. You’ll see the list of topics that participating employees can talk about to spur meaningful conversations.

To guide employees further, you can add any content elements you want to—be it a question or a statement.

Step 5: Next, customize the message you'd want to send to employees that are matched for the roulette by Zavvy. You can do this by clicking on the Group Activity option.

Zavvy will automatically create a Slack channel for the paired employees and send over your finalized message for this stage.

Step 6: Click on the Assign tab from the top menu bar. Here, as the name suggests, you'll assign different employees to kickstart the roulette.

Zavvy will automatically create a Slack channel for the paired employees and send over your finalized message for this stage.

Step 6: Click on the Assign tab from the top menu bar. Here, as the name suggests, you'll assign different employees to kickstart the roulette.

There are two ways to go about this:

1. First, you can assign employees manually by clicking on the Manually assign cohort option, followed by searching for members you want to pair for the session.

2. Second, you can save yourself some serious time by automating the employee pairing. 

Set up the trigger assignment field based on your preference (e.g., whether you want all your employees to be a part of coffee roulette or employees from a specific department only). Once you've selected your options, click on Activate automation.

👬 And that's it! Zavvy will take over from here and inform (and remind) participating employees to meet their co-workers over lunch or a cup of tea. All automated and via Slack, MS Teams, or mail.

📱 Real-Life Coffee Roulette Application: Hootsuite

Hootsuite went from a startup to a massive global enterprise in a short period. But while the management appreciated the fast growth, it also wanted to retain Hootsuite's company culture.

Inspired by programs like Mixer, Ten Thousand Coffees, and Innovate Brew, the company decided to see if coffee could help Owls (that's what Hootsuite employees are called) better connect with each other. 

While Noel Palin covers Hootsuite's #randomcoffee initiative in more detail in his LinkedIn post, the gist is the company designed a coffee roulette program and saw some incredible results.

Hootsuite's roulette started with Google spreadsheets and emails, but soon, the management wrote an algorithm to automate pairing employees from different departments.

Hootsuite received overwhelmingly positive feedback from excited employees, complete with improved collaboration and stronger interdepartmental relationships.

🚀Real-Life Lunch Roulette Application: Kickstarter

In a bid to ramp its culture, Kickstarter created a creative lunch roulette program to bring diverse and random groups of its employees to get to know each other over lunch.

Initially, Kickstarter's office manager Shannon Ferguson took full responsibility for organizing the lunch roulette and making random employees. However, as Kickstarter grew, so did the challenge of this task.

Offering Ferguson a helping hand, Fred Benenson, the data lead at Kickstarter, worked with Kickstarter employee Brandon Williams to build a standard algorithm to automate the company's lunch roulette program. Thanks to them, lunch pairing was entirely chosen at random while adhering to Ferguson's lunch pairing rules:

1. Never include three people who have ever had lunch together
2. No more than one executive 
3. Nobody can be on the same sub-specialty within Kickstarter

It's safe to say Lunch Roulette was a success. Read more about the process of developing the algorithm here.

➡️ Employee Bonding on Autopilot

Social technologies have completely transformed our lives, both threatening and improving collaboration and intimacy like never before. The concept of organizing a coffee roulette or lunch roulette shares the same spirit: companies can apply technology to bring their employees closer in real life, building stronger and healthier relationships and facilitating prompt/effective collaboration.

"The sense of exclusion was palpable and galling"

- said BIPI's Thompson when asked why he came up with the idea of a web application that would randomly pair people throughout the organization for lunch. Zavvy ensures your employees never feel like Thompson. 

With our Connection Programs, you can automate organizing a coffee or lunch roulette as easily as possible. Introduce employees via Slack or Microsoft Teams and watch them bond over simple coffee or lunch chats, walking meetings, or deep conversations. Get a demo right now to see it in action.