The Employer Branding Strategy Behind Dutch Bros’ Career Site Success

When it comes to shop roles, Dutch Bros Coffee hires externally for exactly one position, the Broista. Every shop lead, shop manager, and business coach in the organization started at the drive-through window and worked their way up. 

That single hiring decision carries an outsized weight. A poor fit at the entry level doesn't stay contained; the consequences ripple through the leadership pipeline for years. A great hire, on the other hand, is an investment in a future operator who may one day run four locations in a new market.

At IAMPHENOM 2026, Danni Burkard, Talent Attraction Manager at Dutch Bros Coffee, shared how the team built a career site from a blank page in their Content Management System (CMS) to a 79% conversion rate in just four months.

Watch the session here, or catch the key insights below!

What Made Their Previous Career Site Difficult to Work With?

Before the investment in Phenom, the team had never had a real career site. "A career site is a little generous in terms of what we had before. It was basically a search results page at best, and as a talent marketer, there was no way for us to tell our story or talk about our employer brand." Burkard shared.

Alongside the absence of their employer brand, there was limited visibility into how candidates engaged with the page. Conversion rates, time on page, and drop-off points in the application flow weren't measurable. Without that data, the team had no baseline from which to improve. "We didn't even know what bad looked like when we had Workday in terms of our metrics for getting the conversion of Broista talent," said Burkard. No platform for storytelling and no performance data meant improvement was essentially impossible to plan or measure.

How Did Phenom Design Studio Turn a Job List into a Digital Window?

The team's north star was bringing the culture to life to attract the right Broista talent. To achieve this, they developed the concept of a digital window. Just as the drive-through window is where Dutch Bros becomes tangible for its customers through energy, relationships, and the feeling of the brand, the career site needed to create that same experience for a candidate encountering the organization for the first time.

Using Phenom Design Studio, the team built a customized experience with video, layered text, imagery, and interactive elements that expressed the brand rather than defaulting to a generic careers template. The process required pushing the tooling beyond its defaults. Working with their implementation partner Talent EXP, the team broke apart existing widgets, introduced custom borders and overlays, and restructured elements to serve their specific design intent. 

Burkard used AI tools like Gamma to prototype layouts visually before committing to them inside the CMS, a practice she recommends for any team without a dedicated design function. "If you don't have a graphic designer or a UX/UI person, using an AI website builder to visually play out different layouts before you go in and drag and drop them into Phenom is a great way to get started," she said.

How Do Attract-and-Repel Narratives Fuel Top-of-Funnel Quality?

The most deliberate editorial choice in the career site build was how the Broista role was framed. Rather than relying on aspirational messaging alone, the team embraced high-grit realism. Candidates could see both the rewards of the role and the expectations that come with it. This dual approach addresses the psychological contract, the give and the get of joining an organization.

To attract candidates, the full career trajectory is on display — from Broista at the window to shift lead, shop lead, master of Broista, shop manager, operator, and business coach. Each stage represents a compensation and responsibility step up. Real employees who started at the window and built six-figure careers as operators are featured throughout, making the growth path concrete rather than aspirational. 

Since frontline service work means physical demands, inclement weather, managing high-volume lines, and showing up fully for every customer interaction, the site clearly identifies these challenges without softening them.

"Our career site should really mirror who we are, but it should also be really honest. We talked about high-grit realism and what it actually takes to work as a frontline service worker, because we wanted to make sure we were leaning into that honesty," Burkard said. Filtering for candidates who understand the role before they apply targets reduced 90-day turnover at the source.

How Did the Career Site Help Fill Roles Faster and Support Revenue Growth?

Building a Self-Sustaining Talent Community

Attracting candidates who apply is only one part of the challenge. To reach 2,029 shops by 2029 across new markets, the talent pipeline must outpace the locations that don't yet exist. The talent community became the infrastructure for that. Opt-in points were embedded at every meaningful moment in the candidate journey: at the search results page, as a recurring footer widget, at the end of the application flow, and in rejection emails reframed as invitations to stay connected. For candidates who began an application but did not complete it, Phenom's leads functionality ensured they still appeared in the job's candidate view, creating a conversion opportunity without manual effort.

When a new location broke ground, new “shop near you” campaigns activated community members who had already raised their hand, reaching warm, pre-interested candidates before a single shift was available. "We have a lot of people in the talent community right now where Dutch Bros doesn't even exist,” said Burkard. As soon as we start to break ground on the shops, we go in and say, 'Hey, we have a new shop coming. Come interview with us.'  Instead of bringing a passive holding list, the talent community is a demand-generation asset that runs independently once the opt-in infrastructure is in place.

Turning the Career Site into a Consumer Touchpoint

The same forward-thinking approach is extended to the consumer side of the business. The team recognized that people most likely to apply are often already customers, so a "Feelin' Thirsty? Find a shop near you" call to action and a prompt to download the Dutch Bros app were embedded as a widget on the site. 

"Our customers are also our applicants,” said Burkard, “but could our applicants also be future customers? This was a great way to show that yes, we're bringing in great Broistas, but we're also bringing revenue back to the business." 

For a talent function often characterized as a cost center, consumer impact changes the internal conversation about what recruiting infrastructure is worth investing in.

What Did Four Months of Candidate Behavior Reveal?

The career site first launched to a 40-person pilot group before rolling out organization-wide, driven entirely through organic channels with no paid media. "I'm incredibly proud,” said Burkard of the results. “This is 100% a team effort." Their efforts netted:

• 719K career site visitors engaged with the branded experience

• 79% conversion rate from apply started to apply completed

• 75% career site retention showing candidates stayed to explore rather than bouncing

• 121K applications submitted through the new career site

• 25K talent community members captured for future opportunities, many in states without a shop yet

• 40,000+ chatbot click-to-applies driven through the career bot

• 631 widget clicks on the consumer app integration, producing 164 app installs and 302 application re-opens

How Do You Begin Building a Career Site That Converts?

Begin with the theme configuration. Establishing foundational brand elements at the outset, specifically colors, fonts, and spacing, creates visual consistency across every page and prevents rework that compounds as the build progresses.

Prototype before committing. Using AI tools like Gamma to mock up layouts before attempting them in the CMS surfaces design problems early and removes guesswork from the process, particularly valuable for teams without dedicated design resources.

Write the attract-and-repel narrative with intent. A career site that aims to appeal broadly will resonate with few. Honest, specific copy about the demands and rewards of a role self-selects the right candidates in and reduces early attrition before it begins.

Treat implementation partners as strategic collaborators. Talent EXP helped the team understand what was possible within the tooling and challenge assumptions about widget configuration. That relationship shaped the outcome as much as the platform itself.

Ready to see what Design Studio can do for your career site? Access the Dutch Bros Employer Brand Checklist to get started.