Only a few people knew when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan decided to get married. The event was discretely planned to avoid all the limelight that comes with a celebrity getting married. The occasion was announced as a throw down party for Priscilla on completing her medical graduation. Even the couples’ parents thought the same until they saw Priscilla and Mark in their wedding dresses!
Mark Zuckerberg’s Trust in Philz
Of the few people who knew about the Silicon Valley’s top-secret were Philz Coffee owner, Phil, and his son Jacob Jaber. Such was Mark’s trust in Phil as a person and as an expert coffee maker. Living up to the expectations of the Social Media Mughal, Phil and Jacob served guests with their best of the blends, which became an instant hit with the attendees. Mark was so impressed with their services that he requested Phil to serve on the postnuptial ceremony.
Philz Coffee – The Journey
For decades, Philz Coffee has been San Francisco’s little own secret. It all began from a single coffee store in the Jabbers’ Street in 2002, which has now grown to become the Bay Area’s institution for specialty beach coffee.
When Jacob, the youngest of Phil’s three sons, joined him in 2005, the Philz was a small coffee bar. He encouraged his dad to expand the business. As a result, Philz opened three more branches in San Francisco, along with another one Palo Alto. The expansion came in at the right time as San Francisco was then fast booming into the technology hub of California. As Jacob expected, Philz Coffee soon became the go-to place for students, locals, techies, and the Bay Area tourists.
According to Forbes business estimates, Philz has a turnover of around $50 million per annum, which comes to approximately $1.8 million per month. This is far better compared to Starbucks’ monthly revenue, which approximately stands at $1.2 million. Apart from selling coffee, Philz sells coffee beans on a wholesale basis to companies such as Twitter, Apple, and Salesforce, which ensure a regular income to the coffee shop.
San Francisco Beach Coffee – Customized for You!
As more and more coffee shops started popping up in the urban areas, Philz Coffee has positioned itself to challenge Starbucks’s likes by serving only customized coffee instead of machine-made expressos. At Philz, you will not find any coffee brewing machines that serve your normal pour-over coffee. Instead, you will find various in-house blends made of grounded beans such as Phil’s own highly caffeinated Tesora, Jacob’s Wonderbar, and iced Mint Mojito, among others.
This is why you can find people at Philz waiting in a long queue to get their favorite fix served even though it charges them more than double what Starbucks does. Jacob is now planning to launch some more branches in Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston so Philz can reach a total of 1000 stores in the country, and thus ‘disrupt’ the existing coffee business for good. According to Jacob, Philz is more of a people’s business compared to a coffee business. And rightly so, after all, the coffee here is served on a cup by cup basis, depending on the individual customer’s taste!