Alyssa Cooper 4:24
Right. So they have to come out strong.
Greg Owens 4:27
Right, right. Right. Right. I think I think Marin County as a week ago, opened it up or two weeks ago that up for food services and that kind of stuff. And now it’s down to almost everybody can get it I think at this point. Yeah. You just got to do you just got to get on. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so tell us a little bit about what your what you’ve been up to in the big challenges over the last year because Philz has gone through. I mean, I go there almost every day, so Watch the changes, right? At least here in the corner Madeira store. I also stopped in your Davis store and your Sacramento One, two. Yeah,
Alyssa Cooper 5:08
go where I love that.
Greg Owens 5:11
It’s changed my life massively like so I’ll drive. I drive up to Tahoe a lot. And so Davis is right where the traffic starts. And I can pull in, I can go to pote lay, and then pop over to Philz right there. But they’re only open till 5pm or something like that. Yeah. And Davis.
Alyssa Cooper 5:30
Yeah. But that’s amazing. Yeah, we are some of our locations are on limited hours due to COVID, or due to different restrictions that we have within our stores. But as a whole, you know, we built this resilience kind of work ethic as we’ve gone through and sort of managed COVID. Right? Again, it’s a different, I don’t think any of us have really gone through this, especially in the corporate world, or even any world of what this looks like, I think, you know, so it was definitely confusing in the beginning. And the, you know, every company, I think, has gone through layoffs or anything like that. It was a very emotional time in the beginning, but again, we sort of built this strength and resilience to kind of move forward. And we’re seeing a lot of growth Now, within the company. You know, we just opened up our location on February 5 in Chicago, that was our fifth location. Oh, yeah, on March 5, we opened up our other location in Culver City. And so we’re in double digits down there. And then now we’re on track to open up our other location in San Ramon, and next week on Monday, the 29th. So we are starting to see that light outside of the vaccine shot of just like what that looks like, as a company on the whole, but it’s definitely been tricky.
Greg Owens 6:51
I bet you guys have I can only imagine you must have like daily zoom calls about operations in so many ways, right? Because it’s changing so fast.
Alyssa Cooper 7:01
Yes. Actually, what I love about Philz Our company is that we built this team Safety Committee, where we kind of brought together so many different home office partners, including our retail team. So some of the store leaders are involved on this committee, and we get to talk about all of those issues that kind of rise, you know, with Marin just reaching to their orange or red tea or whatever that looks like of how do we reopen safely. And what that looks like, operational standpoint, again, this isn’t something new, or this is something new for us, but like having to make sure we’re six feet distance and like, do we wear a mask? How do we order again from that barista? How do we bring that experience that Philz have given everybody back to the forefront? Because that’s what I think makes us so unique is that we really, truly care about the community that we bring in and out.
Greg Owens 7:53
Yeah, it totally shows I mean, there’s there’s a bunch of us that are down that one when you when before all of this when you could work inside Philz on a regular basis, there was a bunch of us that would be very dedicated to being there and see the same crew of people every every day. What blows me away, what blows me away? I don’t know if this is true of all your stores. But I know it’s Davis too Davis, and Marin here is the amount of like teenage girls working in the store that are just unbelievably smart. And really, you know, I think they’re teenagers. I mean, they look like teenagers to me. But it’s such a it’s such a great team, right? And there’s so like dedicated hard working, they seem like they’re like in sports or athletic, they’re going to go places Philz is like a launching pad for them in so many ways.
Alyssa Cooper 8:39
Yeah, absolutely. I honestly, I think every team member that we have we, our recruiting team and our people ops team very, they do an amazing job of really understanding what the roles that we need to have in our stores. And it looks like I think the biggest thing is that, you know, we really have to focus on our community. And those human connections is really what started Philz you know, Phil himself. I don’t know how many times you hear him and he says, like a community table, like, go up and meet someone. And I think having that backbone with our team members, or just having like, hey, how can we start this conversation? And that really drives it and I think we we built programmes within the company that really help all of our young team members that want to kind of go on that trajectory. Right?
Greg Owens 9:30
Right, right. I can only imagine it’s also so good for your like, you get to handpick some great people out of that to become store managers or other parts of Philz because Philz how many employees does Philz have now It must be incredibly big.
Katrina Stephenson 9:49
Coffee is essential. I mean, definitely essential.
Alyssa Cooper 9:53
Yeah.
Greg Owens 9:54
Yeah. I don’t know if you guys like yeah, you realise how essential it is. It become even more Essential during the QA because it became scarce to it. All the stores were closing early. Everything right? And so if I’m driving on a long trip, and then I’m like, Oh man, I have to go to like Arco to get coffee Really? Like I haven’t done that in 20 years. There’s no Philz, there’s no Starbucks. There is no Pete’s. Everybody was closing IRL. And still it’s still a little bit.
Alyssa Cooper 10:28
Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn’t, it was different. It was different. And even when we did for you open, it wasn’t reopening where, you know, we’re allowing people to come right into our stores, right. It’s just a mobile pickup. And even that experience, it had to shift in a way that it made our community to feel comfortable, but how do we still bring that human connection back to it all, and a lot of it is like pushing the table against, you know, the front door, so no one can get in. But how do we make that a little bit more inviting? So I think that it really is our true Philz fans of like really being there and supporting us, I think we even had a customer story where they had put up a sign at one of our stores, and I believe it’s that college, from College Avenue, but it was our team was just like, our community was just like, we’ll be here. As soon as you guys open up the doors, and it was just so own, you can just feel the love. And that’s what helped us get over this hump.
Greg Owens 11:29
Yeah. And you know, and I keep forgetting how unbelievably challenging 2020 was for California, right. And the particular you know, world for sure, but there was a bunch of different things like we were on a, I was on a call recently with some other business owners and we all completely forgot about the fires, right? And the smoke and like waking up in the morning, we’re in a pandemic, and and you look outside at 11 o’clock, and you can’t see the sun. Right.
Alyssa Cooper 11:57
Right. Right. It’s crazy to like zombie land. Yeah.
Greg Owens 12:05
And then on top of that, all the all the riots and racial tension and all the different protesting and things like that, and it’s I mean, it’s gonna be made your job incredibly challenging for 2020 is how many stores do you have in San Francisco? Gosh, I
Alyssa Cooper 12:21
feel like we have so many.
Greg Owens 12:24
lease least I know three.
Katrina Stephenson 12:29
Biggest wine on Van Ness. Still there?
Alyssa Cooper 12:32
Yes, yes. And Embarcadero. We have one on French tree Mission, our first flagship store, you know, we’re where it all began. No, I mean, we have tons of locations in San Francisco. But yes, to your point, it was just very, it was hard to navigate. You know, we had our coffee with Jacob. We do it once a month with all of our store leaders and all of our home office partners. And Jacob gets on the call. And you know, wait a minute.
Greg Owens 12:59
Wait a minute, there’s actually a Jacob.
Alyssa Cooper 13:01
Oh, yes. Yeah, sir. Jacob is Phil’s son. Yeah.
Greg Owens 13:07
That’s Phil’s son.
Greg Owens 13:10
Jacobs Wonderbar Coffee in my hand. And I never knew it was actually named after Phil’s Son. That’s crazy.
Alyssa Cooper 13:19
Yeah, yes, there is a fill and there is a Jacob and some of the blends actually, I think the majority of the blends that we have now, there is a story that’s behind them. And for a lot of anyone who gets hired onto fills you have to go through these research trainings. Every single person doesn’t matter what role you’re at, within Philz, you have to go through brisa training, which I think is amazing. And the trainers get to they have these stories, and they’ll let you know kind of what what is behind each blend. And it’s made. And then you also taste the coffee, right? was a really caffeinated week for me, but really,
Alyssa Cooper 14:02
really awesome, though. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so Jacob does get on the call. And we do talk about those kinds of things when it kind of happened, right, you’re going through a social issue and economically issue. I mean, science. I mean, there’s just so much happening within 2020 that it felt like five years condensed in 12 months, it was just I was definitely It was a rough time. And we again, we had a shift from being proactive in the facilities world to now be reactive, which in a lot of different sense. We will always want to be proactive, but I don’t think anything could have prepared anyone, not just facilities, but anyone in this of how can we be proactive? And then it was board ups and then we couldn’t then we had to shift our mindset to operationally flowing throughout the store and we had to shift back to like, what does this look like when we do get to reopen? Well, we ever reopen. I mean, these are just so many different That we just never knew.
Greg Owens 15:03
Each week was a new week there in 2020. Right. And right now, I mean, it seems like we’re getting these opportunities to be like you just said proactively thinking about, okay, what’s the next way? We’re going to open up? Right. And Katrina? It looks like you had something
Katrina Stephenson 15:20
being as at what Yes, thank you. As it was a year ago, I remember everyone thinking it’s just going to be two weeks, you know, oh, this thing will be over and two weeks or a month, max. I mean, six months. Very. And then it you know, Philz, we’re in orange here now, right here in Orange County, but that can change.
Greg Owens 15:41
Right? It can change. Yeah, I was just I was on another call before this one. And they were talking about there was the numbers were rising in certain states, and they were getting concerned, right. And then in Europe, and stuff like that, which I think right now, we’re all just turning like, we don’t want to know that. We’ve got the vaccine, we’re able to go outside the sun is out longer. The days are longer. This is everything’s looking up right now. We don’t need that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think about the proactiveness of it, I you guys are getting ready to start with food. Again, it looked like to at least the locations that I’ve been going to there hasn’t been food. And that must be so that’s a whole nother operationally end for you as the facilities in facilities that’s got to be a challenge, like, how do you bring this on? And what quantities and that kind of thing? What do you guys considering is that as that comes up,
Alyssa Cooper 16:34
you know, I think a lot of it is that, you know, again, from a facility standpoint, is just what are the equipments that they need to make sure that they’re functioning properly. And then, and you know, of course, during that time, when we weren’t serving food, a lot of the equipment was just sitting there. So we’re trying to make sure like, okay, putting together instructions, making sure that the teams feel comfortable and confident enough to clean and deep clean and make sure everything is operating perfectly before we launch in which a lot of the times we already done theirs. Right now we’re selling like, you know, different pastries and bagels, but we’re moving into like a new hot breakfast that we’re going to be one we’re only been testing in a few different stores. So more to come stay tuned. But But those are really cool things that we really, you know, you’re so excited about. But then we also again, to your point, we had a shift in his mindset of like, what does that look like now and COVID, right? We had all these different OSHA and health code, rules and regulations that we had to sort of live by now we have to take in a whole nother third party CDC and figuring out how does that all really align. So I think was really all hands on deck, we have a food safety manager who’s really amazing and did a really good job of trying to really navigate through that. And then on my end was just really trying to figure out how I can support and make sure that the teams have the right equipment, and we all know facilities, things break all the time. I mean, what we learned is just like how, again, how can we be proactive? If again, we are back in a situation like this? How do we take care of the machines that are not being used often?
Greg Owens 18:17
Yeah, and a lot of people don’t realize that machines need to run or they break down more often. It’s crazy, right? Like they you need to keep it they get hang or rot really fast and then it’s not working correctly, right. So it needs to be up it means to be maintained and clean, but it also needs to be working in order to make sure it’s going to continue working right.
Alyssa Cooper 18:37
Right. Right. I learned that when I used to be a ride operator I used to work at Six Flags were enrolled when I was when I was younger.
Greg Owens 18:46
Yeah, they go through a whole season where everything just sits right
Alyssa Cooper 18:49
it just sits and so you know, periodically when I was younger, I was 17 when I first started there we had to test you know we had to we had to operate these rides and a lot of times they have to make us get on the rides and make sure that they’re working properly which
Katrina Stephenson 19:05
at seventeen
Greg Owens 19:08
you’re right they’re like oh great Alyssa you’re here we’re gonna start the roller coaster that goes up and over we need some bodies in there can you get up in front and we got to make sure it works correctly.
Alyssa Cooper 19:19
Make sure the seat restraint works like the whole night it was fun times but yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, we have to we kind of have to make sure that those all things are are working