La Kaffa International Co., Ltd (La Kaffa) has cooperated with the government to promote the industry-university cooperation policy by actively investing in corporate resources and committing itself to cultivating professional talent in international business management. Since the summer of 2016, La Kaffa has been in industry-university cooperation with National Pintung University of Science and Technology’s (NPUST) International Bachelor Degree Program in Finance. During the summers of 2016 and 2017, La Kaffa provided 10 students with internships at their headquarters with positions in the finance, international business, marketing and administrative management departments so that they may accumulate international business management experience and plan their careers in advance.

La Kaffa’s executive vice president Wang Li-Yu stated that the company’s collaboration with NPUST’s International Bachelor Degree Program in Finance is an innovative industry-university cooperation model. Initially, students can learn about international business management and workplace environments during the summer after their freshmen year. The students can comprehensively enhance their workplace competitiveness through year-long practical research projects during their junior year, and official credit internships during the 2^nd semester of their senior year. Such a collaboration will also integrate NPUST and La Kaffa even further to create a win-win cooperation model. Should this cooperation model between NPUST and La Kaffa be successful, the collaborations will look to expand to other departments of NPUST. This will allow students that have yet to enter a workplace to learn about the developmental trends of international business practices and become professional international catering management talent.

La Kaffa has created a business group that spans across 4 continents, with locations in more than 100 cities and 33 countries. In addition to its active outreach in the Asia-Pacific region, La Kaffa is also the industry’s first to expand to places in North America such as New York, Florida, California, Toronto, Vancouver, etc., and even successfully expanded across the southern hemisphere to Europe and to Central and South America. To propel the internationalization and upgrading process of Taiwan's catering industry, the industry-university cooperation with NPUST not only provides opportunities for internships but also comprehensively implements the tight-knit industry-university cooperation through further research project discussions and the potential implementation of the teacher-enterprise deep roots project.

This industry-university cooperation model was conceived by Hung, Rern-Jay, chair of the International Finance Department of NPUST. Chair Hung, Rern-Jay said that the NPUST International Finance Program began enrolling students during the 2015 school year. Internationalization and voluntary short-term internships starting from the freshmen year are the most important features of the program. Although the program only enrolls a little more than a dozen students each year, there are 4 foreign students from Republic of the Gambia, the United Kingdom, Burkina Faso and Vietnam in addition to the other Taiwanese students. The program is very grateful to La Kaffa for its strong support in providing scholarships for the program’s students, including all of the foreign students. It is projected that more than 10 students will benefit from La Kaffa’s scholarships.

La Kaffa pointed out that the group’s business expansion in the international market has never stopped. In addition to constantly searching for like-minded partners all around the world and quickly authorizing regional brand agents to open stores, the group has to innovate the brand and strives to represent new brands. La Kaffa has also continuously expanded the number and types of listed catering brands as the group aims to be the largest Chinese world-class compound catering group. The NPUST International Finance Program uses internationalization as its primary characteristic and developmental belief to cooperate with La Kaffa. Both parties hope that a substantial cooperation can be a starting point to a deepened interaction and alliance between La Kaffa and NPUST, which will create a mutually beneficial, win-win vision for talent development.

NPUST’s students and teachers tour La Kaffa

Chair of the NPUST International Finance Program Hung, Rern-Jay heads a company visit delegation

Students from the NPUST International Finance Program interact with colleagues from La Kaffa

(CNA Information Services 20180117 09:15:06)