Business Ethics

[WatVentu]

Scenario:

A small business owner decides to open a wholesale roasting operation and is looking to hire a coffee roaster.

A local competitor (40 miles away) is the head of coffee operations at an established roastery poses as a potential candidate for the job, just to get the low down and inside scoop of their business plans.

Is this common practice? Is the local competitor acting insecure and are his actions not completely unnecessary?
Just curious how the coffee folks over here feel about such a situation and characters involved, thank you.

 

[topher]

Are you hiring this person just to steal ideas from the other roaster? Or are you going to keep this person on after you learn all the secrets...just a heads up though. There really isn't any secrets anymore. If you need advice from experienced people in the business post your questions here. I am sure there is loads of people here that can help you out.

 

[ordobey]

Seems pretty sketchy to me.

But surely in the interview process you're not going to be giving out all your secrets?

 

[kylie2]

It was cool to find this post. Good job.

 

[bajorjoevel]

To be honest, it's a pretty unpleasant situation. I don't even know what I would do in such a situation if I were the owner of a new cafe. Perhaps when planning my business, I would try to study all the competitors from my city. Then I would be ready, and if one of them came to me, I would already know him. Before starting my business, I would use tools for startups to roughly plan not only development but also similar critical situations. And in place of that competitor, I would not even do that. It seems childish and stupid. Are there no other ways to find out the tactics of cafe development? In general, I would not like to get into such a situation.