you fucking guessed it! "Last year, Philz was purchased by private equity firm Freeman Spogli & Co., which also owns Popeyes Chicken and El Pollo Loco, for a reported $145 million, according to Mission Local, though the company did not provide details of the deal."

April 09, 2026 - 18:33 UTC

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I don't understand what they think they're doing. All their stores are in areas with lots of gay people and lots of other coffee shops.
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imagining an iceberg of homophobic customers
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private equity is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
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do the owners know this brand is based in … San Francisco
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to be fair.. Philz has been an epicenter of awful coffee and stupid politics since at least 2020
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“Philz way” as a name for doling out cream and sugar like it’s spice on Arrakis always felt like a slide towards fascism.
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3 more companies who are now dead to me
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it's genuinely incredible that any time a beloved institution does something shitty, I think "private equity?" and then am right something like 95% of the time.
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i used to have a game where my friends would complain about some dumb thing one of their fav companies did and i’d try to guess which PE firm bought it in the previous 2 years lmao
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Now they have terrible politics to go with their terrible coffee and gatekept cream and sugar.
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Look what they did to old employees who had invested in the company:

www.kqed.org/news/12051278/no-layoffs-in-philz-coffee-sale-but-stock-owning-former-employees-will-lose-out
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It’s becoming a very useful adaptation of the Reagan Rule
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