Sebastian Sztabzyb
Co-Founder, Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters
Our next interview with those who have been able to turn their passion into their profession. This time, it’s the near-obsessive seach for the perfect cup of coffee.
Many in their home town of Calgary, Alberta, Canada know Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters as a local, well-regarded chain of high end cafés. They are located in toney or rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods around the prairie city of one-and-a-quarter million located just east of the Rockies. Their cafés are certainly the most visible part of their company, but not the only part. There’s so much more to P&S than first meets the eye.
Calgary has been taking it on the chin for the past few years with the precipitous decline in oil prices — the city is still economically propelled by petroleum to a large degree. Even those who are not directly employed by oil & gas find themselves buffeted by the persistent financial headwinds. Every Calgarian needs to have their seatbelt buckled-and-cinched to withstand the brutal cycles of boom and bust in the oil business.
Sebastian Sztabzyb was a second order victim of these cycles, having been employed in the Calgary-based high tech sector after graduating from the University of Calgary in 2000 with a degree in engineering. It was after his fifth layoff he decided he wanted more control over his career destiny. He also had an instinctive entrepreneurial streak — he knew he wanted to build something, even if he wasn’t sure exactly what it was at that point.
Meanwhile, he had met and become friends with P&S co-founder Phil Robertson while still at university. At that time, coffee was a “functional drink” used to fuel all-nighters completing school assignments with the meticulous approach to work the two shared. They eventually realized they also shared a culinary interest which included the pursuit of that perfect cup of coffee they could make at home.
Approaching it in the way you would expect for a couple of engineers, they deconstructed the process, sought a detailed understanding of the individual moving parts, and then put it back together again in a manner which made sense to them with their systems-oriented minds. The results, according to noted local Calgary food writer John Gilchrist, was “coffee nirvana” when they opened their first store after seven years of methodical, home-based research.
This is the core of the P&S story. They started their business based on “passion and enthusiasm alone” and “we’ll figure out the financials after.” Stated another way, they focused almost entirely on producing the best possible product they could and figured that everything else would sort itself out eventually. Turns out it did. There were some quirky twists and turns, however, such as foregoing the two most popular drinks on the market: dark roast and frappucino. They didn’t like them and that was reason enough not to serve them. Yikes. But you really have to hear Sebastian explain it for that to really make sense.
Their obsession with the perfect cup led them to continually reach farther and farther back in the value creation chain, driven by an obsession to control every variable in every step of the process from seed-to-cup. They modelled their approach on winemaking and openly advocate that this is not only where they need to go, but their competitors should also strive for many of the same goals. He thinks that together they should focus on taking business away from Starbucks and their ilk, rather than from each other. It’s working. They may have been alone in their market when they started, but they have lots of company now.
Their pursuit of perfection led them to an unexpected place: to closely collaborate with growers in coffee-producing regions in Central American and more recently in Africa. While always keeping quality in the centre of their organization chart, you also get a sense the pair bring a youthful optimism to what else they might accomplish in coffee growing regions of the world. In some cases they have been working with growers long enough to see their families grow and prosper. They have become close with them. In our interview with Sebastian, it seems to go beyond simply commercial concerns. Better business and a better life for their producer partners is not a zero sum game.
But this only scratches the surface. You’re invited to listen to the entire, in-depth interview with Sebastian Sztabzyb on The WorkNotWork Show podcast. Take a ride from the early days through to the present and where they’re going from here. It’s truly remakable what they have been able to accomplish to this point, and the road from here on in is certain to be an exciting journey.
At least one other thing is certain: the coffee along the way is going to be damn good.
©2017 The WorkNotWork Show
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