Coffee for Heroes
On March 16th, 2020, San Francisco entered shelter in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Like many businesses, Andytown was hard hit by the lock down. Our wholesale revenue plummeted by 70%, and we had to immediately shut three out of our five locations.
Two days later, we launched a program called “Coffee for Heroes.” This program would allow us to rehire several employees and over the course of four months, deliver coffee, pastries, juice, and granola to over 14,000 frontline healthcare workers in San Francisco.
The Coffee for Heroes program was born out of necessity—from both community need, and business survival.
When the mayor announced shelter in place, we were terrified. We knew that we didn’t want our staff exposed to unnecessary risk, but the financial impact of closing all locations would be devastating. Being a small business without large investor financing, we have always been very hand-to-mouth financially. We quickly realized that if we completely closed our doors, we would never open them again. Without some revenue, we would not be able to make payroll the following week.
We made the decision to close three of our five locations. The remaining two locations were being staffed by our salaried managers—our accountant, HR, and location managers worked as baristas so we could make payroll. We had kept everyone on our health insurance, and were allowing people to use their paid time off, but we had no idea how long we were going to stay closed.
As the severity of the pandemic was realized, other small businesses were also closing their doors. By San Francisco’s hospitals, the restaurants and cafeterias that essential healthcare workers relied on for coffee and food were also closing. A regular customer who worked in an emergency room contacted us to let know the situation, and asked if we could deliver some coffee. From this, the Coffee for Heroes program was born.
The concept was simple—we opened a page on our website for customers to buy coffee and pastries that would later be delivered to frontline workers. Customers could nominate a hospital or other facility and then we would coordinate a large delivery. Multiple customer’s orders would be combined to make up a mega-order of sometimes hundreds of servings to feed entire departments of healthcare facilities. After a delivery was made, we would calculate how much product we delivered, deduct that from our total fund, and email the customers a photo of where their purchase went.
Not only were we able to support our local frontline healthcare workers in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, we brought back jobs for our team members who were laid off. Our staff were able to come in and work, brewing coffee or baking pastries in a low-risk environment, and the coffee got delivered, usually by Michael, one of Andytown’s owners.
Early in the program, we were asked by the healthcare heroes to broaden our offerings. We started what we knew best—coffee and pastries. But we wanted to have some healthier and more shelf-stable options. That’s when we brought in our friends Happy Moose Juice and Nana Joes Granola. Their juices, wellness shots, and granola bars were welcome additions to the program. We also dialed in our cold brew concentrate—a godsend for the nightshift, as it lasts for up to two weeks in the fridge.
From March through June, we were delivering to hospitals, homeless shelters, and even the USPS—bringing delicious coffee, pastries, juice, and granola bars to essential workers and updating our customers after every delivery.
At the end of June, we had finally run through our fund for healthcare workers. We quietly took the webpage off of our site, and shifted gears to safely reopen our Outer Taraval cafe. We wound down to just one delivery a week, and eventually stopped as our bakers and baristas went back to their usual work, focused on our newly reopened cafe.
We are so grateful to our customers for giving us the opportunity to feed San Francisco’s frontline workers and keep our team employed during the early and uncertain days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, we served over 14,000 essential workers over four months.
As we have shifted focus to reopening our cafes, we are no longer doing the Coffee for Heroes program. If you would like to order a high volume of pastries, coffee, or cold brew, please reach out to us at info@andytownsf.com and we will set up a special order.
Thank you all for your continued support.
