Case Study: Philz Coffee

“Philz Coffee is a premium product and ServiceChannel helps us provide a premium experience for our customers.“

Mahesh Sadarangani
CEO, Philz Coffee

Background

Philz Coffee opened its first doors in 2003 with the mission to deliver ‘better days for everyone, every day.’ With over 70 locations across California and Chicago and more than 1,300 team members, Philz Coffee is passionate about delivering a premium coffee experience to its customers one brewed-to-order cup at a time. This means asking customers to try their beverage before leaving the store to ensure it’s perfect every time.

Challenge

In the early days of the business Philz Coffee had no true facilities management team, instead relying on spreadsheets, phone calls, and a set of tools in the trunk of the founder’s car. As the company grew, store designs weren’t following a set prototype, and it became more complex to efficiently service systems. Work orders would often be stuck in queues for months and leadership had low visibility into cost analysis for repair vs. replace in the capital planning process.  

“ServiceChannel helps us stay organized, allowing us to communicate accurate and timely information to our store teams and effectively manage our vendors.”

Rob George
Facilities Manager, Philz Coffee

Solution

By implementing the ServiceChannel platform as the single system of record, the Philz Coffee teams now operate as one — using standardized automated processes and analytics dashboards to seamlessly communicate and work cross-functionally with leadership, store teams, and service providers. “In the beginning, emails, texts, phone calls were ruling the day. Today, our teams understand that ServiceChannel is the place to go for all information about work and the facilities team,” says Facilities Manager, Rob George.

In addition to gaining operational efficiencies, Philz leadership leverages ServiceChannel Analytics to help track costs and make decisions in capital planning when scaling the business for growth,” says CEO, Mahesh Sadarangani. “I’m a leader who operates on data to make a decision. I’m very quantitative. Having a system like ServiceChannel that supports that is only a good thing.”  

Results

Now with a central hub to track and manage facilities workflows, the Philz Coffee facilities team can focus their attention on delivering on ‘In pursuit of better’ — one of the company’s core values. “We’re always looking for ways to improve the way that we do our work. Whether it’s as simple as how we can we be more efficient in getting a service provider on site, or how something we’re trying to repair in the field can last longer, ServiceChannel is the tool that helps us keep everything together, managing the chaos, says George

Before implementing the ServiceChannel platform, work orders were often languishing for up to six months and vendors weren’t being paid in a timely fashion. Now work orders move efficiently through the system and vendor invoicing is processed quickly thanks to their enhanced tracking and reporting capabilities. “Our time to pay is fast because I can use ServiceChannel to move invoices through the system much more quickly,” says George.

Philz Coffee leadership has also leveraged ServiceChannel insights to make more informed business decisions in planning for new store prototypes. Initially, Philz Coffee stores used a certain type of lighting, but data from the ServiceChannel system showed that the lights had a high failure rate, with many tickets indicating frequent bulb issues and outages.

Armed with actionable insights from the platform, Philz Coffee leadership decided not to use the same lights in new stores, ultimately creating a more reliable and consistent store environment and enhancing the overall experience for team members and customers.

“As a CEO or a leader in Finance or Operations, you want  a partner that can help you sort through the massive amount of data so you can make better business decisions so your team members can focus on the customer and on your product, and for me that is ServiceChannel without a doubt,” says Sadarangani.