Scott Svenson: Co-founder and CEO at MOD Pizza and the Founder and Ex-CEO of Seattle Coffee Company went from creating a coffee company that

118: Scott Svenson: Co-founder and CEO at MOD Pizza and the Founder and Ex-CEO of Seattle Coffee Company went from creating a coffee company that Starbucks wanted to buy, to starting a pizza company that wants to make the world a better place to live.
Scott Svenson
Scott Svenson and his wife Ally Svenson are the founders of Seattle Coffee Company that was acquired by Starbucks back in 1998. This company is a company that they grew in the UK, even though they grew up in Bellevue, Washington just outside of Seattle. Scott moved to London with a US investment bank. His wife had a keen sense of everything that London could use, including a Starbucks-style coffee cafe experience. Scott had an investor partner to get involved and soon Seattle Coffee Company was born in the United Kingdom. Over the course of 2 and a half years, Seattle Coffee Company expanded to about 85 locations primarily in the UK, along with partners that opened stores in South Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East.

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Scott Svenson, co-founder, and CEO at MOD Pizza and the Founder and Ex-CEO of Seattle Coffee Company. Neither Scott nor his wife and partner Ally had any previous retail or coffee experience when they began Seattle Coffee Company. They just had a really clear vision and a strong belief that failure was not an option. Scott said: “The greatest gift I have had in my personal journey is the fact that I found someone (Ally), we actually went to high school together. We have been together since she was 15 and I was 16. To find that life partner, somebody who is kind of your proverbial better half, who is a great compliment to the way that I look at the world, it has been a total gift.”

What You Will Learn:

In what ways did Seattle Coffee Company differ from its inspiration, which was Starbucks? Scott explains: “When we decided to do it, we really made it our own and so Seattle Coffee Company really had a very different vibe and personality than Starbucks. We sold a lot more food. It just had a more European, kind of gritty feel to it.” Scott and Ally were initially paranoid about Starbucks coming over to London and taking their market share. They eventually agreed to sell to Startbucks and become their expansion partners in the UK, the Middle East, and Africa.

What was it like when Starbucks was interested in buying them out? “Orin Smith said to me most directly, he said, ‘we are setting out to build the world’s most loved and enduring brand. And we know to do that we need to be successful in two key markets globally. One is in Tokyo, where we are (they had just expanded into Japan several years before and that was their focus). The other is in London. And that is where you guys (Seattle Coffee Company) are. And so we know if we are going to fulfill our mission, we need to figure out how to work in the UK and we are either going to compete with you or we are going to work with you.”

There are now over 200 Seattle Coffee Companies licences through Starbucks in South Africa. Scott shares: “I stayed with Starbucks for about 2 years, and while I was here, my primary focus was integrating the businesses, coming up with a plan to transition over all of the sale of coffee companies over to Starbucks, and then putting into place a plan to launch Starbucks into continental Europe.”

What brought about their move from the UK and to bring their family back to Seattle, Washington? Scott shares: “I will never forget, flying on the plane and looking at my wife Ally and saying, ‘alright, now we have a chance to prove to ourselves whether or not we were just lucky or if we are any good.’ Since we have been back in Seattle has been largely that, bringing to bare all of the things that we learned while we were in the UK.”