Philz Coffee is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain based in San Francisco, California, and is considered a major player in third wave coffee. Philz Coffee focuses on making pour over coffee.
Project Case Study
Philz Coffee was facing an issue most emerging brands know all too well; a single person IT department.
A single person to:
- Support all locations 24/7/365 across multiple time zones;
- Manage new store openings,
- Provide storage of and ship equipment as needed,
- Support the home office,
- Manage email systems and special applications such as Restaurant365,UberEats, DoorDash, etc.;
- Deploy new staff member technology;
- Stay on the bleeding edge of technology, bringing advancements to operations what will help move the brand forward;
With roughly 60 stores at the time of engagement, the single IT person hadn’t had a day or Holiday off in over a year. SpecGravity was able to quickly onboard and support the Philz Coffee stores nationwide, as well as take over New Store Opening Project Management and IT Operations, working with the construction and operations teams to create an IT package standard, budget, and schedule.
Our team deployed to all 60 locations, audited the technology, created recommendations and layouts, integrated with Philz Coffee’s ticketing system, and supported all issues that came in, escalating non-IT or issues requiring authorization to the correct staff members within Philz Coffee. We operate with blurred lines between Philz Coffee IT Support and SpecGravity’s team dedicated to Philz Coffee, working as one unified team, towards what is best for the brand.
A major project SpecGravity suggested as part of the initial audit and review of systems, was an ISP consolidation project, which allowed for streamlined billing, more reliable internet circuits, as well as backup internet for all locations, to ensure mobile orders and credit card processing is always online and available. Through these efforts, SpecGravity went to bid to three (3) ISP carriers, agnostically, on Philz Coffee’s behalf, and was able to save them more than $8,500 per month, while bringing in all the initial goals of the project, while improving the level of service and speed available at each store.