Philz Coffee reopening many stores

Less than a month after closing all of its cafes across the country, San Franciscobased coffee chain Philz Coffee, which has more than 30 locations in the Bay Area, will reopen many of its outposts on April 8. All of the cafes will offer mobileonly service, with customers ordering drinks exclusively through the Philz mobile app for takeout.

The company said Monday that the forthcoming openings are a “test” to determine if the mobileonly service model would be tenable moving forward. The post did not include an end date for the new service. Philz CEO Jacob Jaber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In San Francisco, 14 of the 16 Philz cafes are set to reopen, including in Noe Valley, on the Embaradero, in Russian Hill and in the Mission District.

Philz temporarily closed all of its locations, including outposts in Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington, D.C., on March 17, following the Bay Area shelterinplace order.

While Philz officials described the venture on the website as a way to test the current coffee market, the company already made a foray into the mobileservice world last month with its cafe at San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center.

Customers who visited the cafe would place an order through the app. The app provided an estimated time for when a customer could pick up their coffee order and from which barista.

At the time, it was the only cafe chain in San Francisco focused heavily on online ordering. The coronavirus pandemic has since pushed local coffee companies into online services. While cafes were closed, Philz continued to offer coffee for delivery online, and waived shipping fees on orders between March 20 and April 20.

Starbucks closed its busiest locations in San

Francisco, in adherence to social distancing policies, around the same time but increased customer’s ability to use the Starbucks app for mobile ordering.

Blue Bottle closed its U.S. locations as well, but kept open cafes in Japan and Korea, and continued to allow wholesale purchases online.