Omar Fawzy was just four years old when he had his first sip of coffee and not surprisingly, he spit it right out.
Years later, Omar is now savouring every last drip as the founder of Fez Coffee Roasters, a business specializing in serving top-ranked specialty coffee to discerning connoisseurs in California’s San Francisco Bay Area.
Born in Egypt, Omar grew up in a culture where coffee anchored everyday life and social connection.
“Coffee was just the center of every household. When anybody comes into your house, the first thing that you offer them is a cup of coffee,” he said. “After my first sip, I didn’t think that I would ever be a coffee drinker growing up. But I loved the ritual of it.”
Although Egypt gave him his love for the ritual of coffee, it was a move to Sydney, Australia, that transformed Omar into a serious coffee student. In Australia, he went as far as earning a barista license despite having no intention of working behind a coffee bar at the time.
“I just wanted to understand the process,” he said. That curiosity laid the groundwork for Omar’s meticulous approach to sourcing and brewing specialty coffee, first for his family, and then for social media before taking his craft to the public.
“People were baking sourdough bread. I was trying to teach people on social media about coffee,” he explained. “We ended up going from zero followers to about 13,000 in less than a month. I thought to myself, one, this is insane. two, there’s still a screen. People are able to see the content and see the videos and see the coffee, but I wanted people to experience it.”
Fez launched in 2022 as a private corporate coffee cart. The business has since grown to about seven carts serving specialty coffee at private events across the region. Plans are already in motion to scale further.
“We have plans to expand to another, hopefully, 10 to 20 carts over the next couple of years,” Omar said.
Today, Omar said he balances what he describes as three full-time jobs – a corporate role at a big Silicon Valley company, owner and operator of Fez Coffee and being a doting husband to his wife and business partner.
“Trying to balance everything has been really challenging,” he said. “You’re always torn between what you give your energy to. I think to myself, what am I getting myself into almost every hour of the day.”
Planning for full-time entrepreneurship
As Fez grows, Omar is weighing when—and whether—to take the leap into entrepreneurship full time.
The decision is shaped by his experience as an immigrant in the United States and by his parents’ sacrifices. “As an immigrant, you don’t have a safety net. You’re taught early on security, security, security,” he said. “My parents, they sacrificed everything to come to the United States for a better life for us.”
That makes walking away from a stable job feel especially fraught, he said. “It’s not just your success, but they view it as their success and your company that you work for is the company that they are a part of, and it becomes a part of their identity. It creates a lot of this pressure, because you don’t want to let them down.”
Even as he imagines a future fully centered on Fez, the tension remains.
“It’s so hard to just jump out into the deep end on your own and say, I’m going to figure it out and it’s going to be okay. It’s really hard to believe that.”
If his success thus far is any indication, Omar can firmly believe in a bright future ahead for Fez.
So far, Fez has largely grown without outside financing and Omar said securing financial support will be the next step in his growth plan. Aside from expanding his cart footprint across the United States, Omar also wants to expand his offering at retailers. One day, he said, he may even to want to pursue opening up his own coffee shop.
Powering a cross-border coffee supply chain
Payments technology plays a central role in how Fez operates and grows.
“The beauty of our coffee cart is we get paid up front for most of our private events, and so we give people the opportunity to pay however they like. We accept all forms of payment - credit card, wire, PayPal, Venmo,” Omar said, adding that his familiarity with these tools as a consumer made it natural to integrate them into the business.
“When I started thinking about the tools that I needed to run my business effectively, it’s so easy to get bombarded with so many different providers but there is that level of familiarity as a consumer of PayPal and Venmo that just made it super easy to just turn on and then just begin running with it.”
The platforms now underpin Fez’s international supply chain and daily operations. “I describe it to everybody as it’s unlocking the global economy,” Omar said. “We use PayPal to pay our vendors, such as our designers that live overseas, our manufacturers for our cups and lids, and all the other equipment that we need to bring. The main form of payment that people accept and request is PayPal. Our entire supply chain goes across borders and PayPal helps us access those borders.”
On the domestic side, “Venmo has been the preferred method of choice for a lot of our baristas who are on contract,” he added. “We get actually a lot of tips for baristas through Venmo as well.”
Beyond coffee, Omar views Fez as a platform for economic opportunity, especially for newcomers navigating the U.S. job market. “How we run Fez coffee is based off of a series of different values that matter a lot to me and my wife,” he said. “It’s not lost on us that a lot of people that come to the United States, they’re also coming and looking for the opportunity that, you know, everybody else has access to here. And one of the coolest things about Fez is that I feel like we can give people this opportunity to learn about a whole new industry.”
Many baristas join Fez in moments of transition. “We have a lot of people who come to us in between jobs in this economy, and being able to give them a way to still have a source of income is a super special for us,” he said.
“As a small business owner, there’s nothing more rewarding than being able to change the lives of people.”
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