Verve Roasters - San Francisco

A May 2020 Remote Review

The coffee shop that I have chosen to research is called Verve Coffee Roasters, and they have ten locations in California, but also two international shops. Verve was co-founded by Ryan O’Donovan and Colby Barr and their company CEO is named Mike Eyre. O’Donovan was chasing the best tasting cup of coffee that he could roast from home, when his college buddy Barr, called him out of the blue suggesting they start a roasting operation. O’Donovan was all on board with the idea. Barr had been introduced to farming from a young age, and during his college years developed a passion for coffee.

For this assignment, I will focus on their Market Street location in San Francisco, California. The thing that drew me into this location the most was that they incorporated green plants into the atmosphere of their shop and it pairs great with the wooden floor and interior. They feature six brilliant photographs of their shop, but the first one at the top of the collection shows the shop from the inside, showing how spacious the shop is. In this photo particularly, they have some of their merchandise for sale set up on the wall right when you enter the shop. My favorite image provided in this collection features people working on their Macs, as well as others socializing, but the way that the hanging ceiling plants as well as the other plants in the shop pair with the lighting and wooden interior is remarkable. Aside from these photos of this particular shop, when you click “Shop coffee” up at the top of the website, it dropsdown with eight different types of coffee they provide. This tells me that they strive to have a wide variety of coffee to reach as many different consumers as they can.

I decided to select the menu of their Market Street location, and it brought me to a very minimal PDF, with a black background and white font in all caps with the names of the beverages, as well as their complete food menu, which is served daily from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. I really like the basic aesthetic of this menu, with the Verve logo at the top of the menu, it looks very minimal and clean.  They offer a large variety of coffee and tea beverages, seventeen to be exact, they also offer add-ons like espresso shots, flavor shots and dairy alternatives. What struck me the most was that they offer hemp milk as an alternative for an additional seventy-five cents. Having had almond milk and soy milk and with my caffeinated beverages, I now need to have hemp milk to see what they hype is all about. I typically get a cold brew black with an espresso shot from my local coffee provider, which runs me about $4.11 or so, and their “nitro flash brew” which I assume is the most similar to my order costs $5.25 before tax. Another thing I find interesting about their menu is that they do not list different sizes for their beverages, which is normally a must have at coffee shops.

Overall, I would like to visit any of these Verve coffee shops. I like how they have multiple locations, and each location provides an entirely different ambience. Prices at the Market Street shop specifically seem rather high to me, and being a Dunkin employee, I find it very odd that they do not offer different sizes for their beverages. I am sure that these prices are high because they locally roast their own beans in Santa Cruz with vintage Probat coffee roasters, and the fact that this whole process is done by hand to ensure great consistency. Their website also features an area where they shout out all of their farmers, letting them know that their work matters and they are appreciated greatly.

 Here is the link to their Market Street location, so you can check out the photos of their shop, or even order some coffee through the main Verve Roasters website.

-- Jake Anderson
https://www.vervecoffee.com/pages/market-street