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Case Study — Onboarding
How Roody helped one of Ireland's largest family-owned businesses give every new joiner a memorable first day — sustainably, and without adding work for the team.
A bit about Musgrave
Musgrave is one of Ireland's largest family-owned businesses, founded in Cork and still headquartered there. It's the group behind SuperValu, Centra, Donnybrook Fair and Musgrave MarketPlace — brands that between them reach communities in every county in Ireland.
It's also one of Ireland's largest employers, taking on hundreds of new employees every year across multiple brands, formats and locations. Sustainability is central to how Musgrave operates and reports, which shapes the decisions they make about suppliers and materials.
Roody has worked with Musgrave since 2022, running welcome boxes and own-product consolidation for new joiners, with scale now at 350 boxes a year.
The challenge
Musgrave came to us with four things they wanted from onboarding gifting.
1
An experience worth remembering.
A new joiner's first day sets the tone for everything after it. Musgrave didn't want a branded pen and a lanyard — they wanted something that felt considered, that a new starter would actually be pleased to receive and want to keep.
2
Sustainability, non-negotiable.
This was a genuine requirement, not a preference. Anything going out under the Musgrave name had to stand up against their own environmental commitments. A box of throwaway merch would have created a problem rather than solved one.
3
It had to be easy.
Musgrave's team didn't want to run a fulfilment operation. Ordering hundreds of boxes in one go means storing them, then picking, packing and posting one every time somebody starts — an administrative job that grows with headcount. They wanted the outcome without owning the process.
4
Some of it had to be Musgrave's own.
They wanted their own products in the box, not just supplier-made merchandise. For a food business, that's the part that makes the box unmistakably theirs — and it's the part most merchandise suppliers can't handle, because it means bringing someone else's stock into the build.
What we did
A box designed from scratch, not picked from a catalogue.
We designed and produced a custom welcome box to Musgrave's brand specification — right down to materials and packaging — so it reads as a Musgrave object rather than generic branded stock.
Sustainability built in, not bolted on.
Roody is a certified B Corporation, and one tree is planted for every item made. That means every welcome box that reaches a new joiner contributes to reforestation rather than counting against Musgrave's environmental targets. The sustainability story is something the new starter receives on day one, not a line in a report.
We consolidate Musgrave's own products into the box.
Musgrave supply their own items and we build them into the finished box alongside our production. The new joiner opens one coherent, branded package — not a Roody box plus a separate delivery of Musgrave product to be combined by someone internally.
We store the stock and ship weekly.
The finished boxes live in our warehouse, not in a Musgrave office. As people join, we dispatch to them directly, week by week. Musgrave holds no inventory, gives up no storage space, and nobody on their team picks, packs or posts a single box.
Onboarding gifting became a line item rather than a task.
Why it has lasted
The relationship started in 2022 with one order. It has since run continuously across eight separate engagements, growing to 350 boxes in 2026. Both current welcome box engagements are live and ongoing rather than finished projects.
It has also spread within the group: Roody now supplies La Rousse Foods, another Musgrave business.
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