Verve Coffee, started in 2007, operates 12 cafes, has a hefty B2B business and recently launched a canned beverage.

What do Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Airbnb and Salesforce have in common? Plenty of things, of course, but one odd detail is that many of their employees are drinking Verve Coffee.

The company, founded in 2007 by Ryan O’Donovan and Colby Barr, helped bring the so-called «third wave of coffee,» in which coffee consumers started becoming invested in how their brew was prepared and where the beans were sourced from.

What started out as a single cafe in Santa Cruz has evolved into an international business. Verve now runs nine standalone cafes in California — including one on Facebook’s Menlo Park campus — and three in Japan, and also provides coffee for more than 400 restaurants, cafes and grocers. It’s also the coffee provider for many tech companies, including the ones mentioned above. The company recently launched Nitro Flash Brew Coffee, a canned beverage sold in stores.

Barr sat down with Entrepreneur to talk about the founding of the company and the impact his coffee has on tech workers. The following oral history has been edited and condensed.

READ FULL STORY ON: Entrepreneur Europe

Originally appeared on: Entrepreneur Europe
Main photo credit: VerveCoffee