Jimmy, Jake and Jordan DeCicco are brothers you should be keeping up with…They are the owners of Super Coffee, the fastest-growing coffee company in America and the third biggest ready-to-drink coffee brand behind Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. Like the siblings themselves, the company is built on the premise of spreading positivity and operates on the simple principle, “Work hard and be nice to people.”
The DeCiccos, all collegiate athletes, started Super Coffee just over six years ago when youngest brother Jordan began mixing coffee concoctions in his dorm room to find a healthy alternative to Starbucks Frapuccinnos. The company is now valued at nearly $400 million and has investors including Alex Rodriguez, Jennifer Lopez, Aaron Rodgers, Baron Davis, Patrick Schwarzenegger and more.
This month Super Coffee was honored as one of Inc Magazine's top workplaces and opened an 8,000 square foot headquarters in Austin. We caught up with them to learn more about the move and motivation.
What drew you to make Austin your base of operations?
Jimmy: The entrepreneurial energy, the creativity and the collaboration.
Jake: Our distributor Anheuser Bush and 3 of the 5 largest beer distributors in North America are located in Texas. Austin is a hub for bottled coffee companies, High Brew and Chameleon coffee are both in Austin. So, it’s cool be part of the culture that exists here.
It’s very Austin of you to be excited to work with similar brands.
Jimmy: Not just coffee, there are so many cool brands here. I’ve enjoyed being here and meeting with founders of very different brands in very different categories but facing the same problems and helping each other, making introductions, collaborating. You just didn’t get that in New York.
What makes Super Coffee so super?
Jordan: First it’s the people and the culture, people with the same shared vision, mission and values working really hard together but having fun doing it. And then you have a product that’s no sugar, high in protein and has MCT oil in a category that’s loaded with sugar, calories and carbs. We always start with removing the negatives, then we add positives.
How much sugar have you eliminated from the bodies of consumers?
Jordan: We have a tracker where we measure it and for every bottle of Super Coffee sold, we assume it’s one bottle of Starbucks that wasn’t consumed. By June 1, in 2021 alone we’ll be at just under 2.5 million pounds for the year.
Jimmy: We’ve already removed 5 million pounds and the goal for 2021 is to remove 5 million more.
You’ve mentioned converting sugar to energy?
Jimmy: Yeah, these kids from MIT figured out a way to convert sugar into electricity and since our whole brand is based on this idea of removing the negatives and adding positives, we’re talking about how we can use this new invention for something positive. We’re messing around with funding a robotic barista that pours coffee or powering an electrical vehicle that delivers Super Coffee.
Did you foresee Super Coffee becoming this big?
Jordan: We definitely thought we could become a billion-dollar company. I think we knew and we believed in ourselves, but we had no idea how we would get there or what it would take. So, we’re not surprised that we’re at this point, but how it’s unfolded has been beyond our wildest dreams.
Jake: I do think it’s important to mention we did always think this would be a few hundred million or billion-dollar company because that guided our decisions and made us make decisions on scale the whole way. We always said we’re more for Walmart than Whole Foods and that helped us get the scale we wanted to achieve.
Jimmy: It’s not like it’s a bottom’s up let’s build a billion-dollar business. It’s let’s be the healthy alternative to Starbucks everywhere and if we successfully do that, it will be worth a lot of money and we’ll create a valuable company in doing that. Back then we had no idea how to get here, we learned along the way, but we always knew in order to compete with Starbucks, we had to be a really big company.
Final thoughts?
Jimmy: Every year something big happens or changes in the company and moving to Austin and opening the new office feels like the start of a new game, a new energy and a new challenge, and we’re so happy to be in Austin. For the first time in my life and my career I feel like we’re right where we should be.
The more you know: By the end of 2021 Super Coffee will have removed about 10 million pounds of sugar from being consumed. They’re working to turn the sugar into electricity to power things like robotic baristas and electric vehicles