Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

Before we begin, I must admit that this is not a principled act of journalism. I love Coupa Café, plain and simple. This piece is an ode to my joy for its presence on Stanford’s campus. 

I moved to Stanford amid personal turmoil last April, mid-way through the academic year. I landed at San Jose International Airport (SJC) the night before spring quarter started and shuffled into my Rains apartment at midnight. The act of ordering groceries, let alone cooking, was too much for me at the time. So imagine my relief when I stumbled across the Coupa Café at Green Library the next morning. I ordered and thoroughly enjoyed a chicken chipotle quesadilla, my first of many Coupa Café meals.

How popular is Coupa Café on campus?

I now visit Coupa Café every week or two. There are four Coupa Cafés on the main Stanford campus: Green Library, Y2E2, GSB and a grab-and-go “express” corner in the Huang building; there’s even a Coupa Café at Stanford Research Park. Curious about the notably high traffic they manage, I conducted a voluntary response survey to better understand usage trends. The survey was publicized through fliers posted near Coupa Cafés across campus and through a random sample of undergraduates.

31 out of 45 respondents answered the question: “Which Coupa Café(s) do you order from the most?” Unsurprisingly, the Green Library and Y2E2 locations dominated the responses. 

Also unsurprising, the most popular times to visit were morning (before 11 a.m.), lunch (11 a.m.-2 p.m.) and afternoon (2-5 p.m.), according to 42 respondents who answered. What’s surprising is the nearly equal preference for all three of those times.

The most common constructive feedback received is that the prices are too expensive. When asked if they would like another Coupa Café on campus, 48% of respondents declined, one respondent was unsure and the remaining 48% of respondents reported that they’d like to see another Coupa Café around Escondido Village Graduate Residences (EVGR), West Campus or Tresidder Memorial Union.

What’s the story behind Coupa Café?

To understand how Coupa Café came to open so many locations on campus, I interviewed co-founders Camelia Coupal ’05 and Jean Paul “JP” Coupal ’07, who confirmed my suspicions that the café was a family business. Their mother, Nancy Coupal, moved from Venezuela to join her three children at Stanford in the early 2000s, where all three earned their undergraduate degrees. She opened the first Coupa Café on Ramona St. in downtown Palo Alto in 2004, choosing the name “Coupa Café” as both a play on their last name and the phrase, “cup of coffee.”

Her two youngest children, Camelia and JP, said they joined the business after graduating. In 2008, they opened the Y2E2 location, followed by the Green Library location in 2010 and the GSB café a year or two later. 

Their flagship café on Ramona St. inadvertently became a supporting character in Silicon Valley lore thanks to their proximity to local tech giants like Facebook, whose first office was only a few blocks away. According to Camelia Coupal, the café’s location and coffee cups make cameo appearances in films, such as the infamous “The Social Network” scene where Eduardo discovers his shares in Facebook were diluted in an attempt to remove him from the company, and Hulu’s mini episode on Theranos. 

According to JP Coupal, Facebook developers prototyped the concept of business pages using their Ramona location as a model. Coupa Café’s page became the first-ever Facebook business page, even before this feature was deployed in production. He also quipped that he has to fight over domain names with Coupa, a “unified AI platform for finance, procurement and supply chain,” according to their website.

The company is purportedly named after the café that had fueled its developers through many long days in the company’s founding.

The team also likes to keep up with the times. According to Camelia Coupal, Coupa Café transitioned to compostable foodware years before the City of Palo Alto promulgated the Disposable Foodware Ordinance, which banned plastic disposable foodware starting 2020.

Then in 2017, JP Coupal designed a white-label app which now processes 40% of their sales and has “4.8 stars, 1300 reviews [and] over 10,000 monthly active users.” This works especially well for students, who’d rather grab their meal to-go than wait in line, or customers who prefer to order via app instead of at the cashier. 

“Tim Cook comes [to the Ramona location] every two to three weeks,” JP Coupal said. “He has the app, and he likes to scan the QR code on the table to order.” 

He also reported that revenue increased since the app was deployed, but he was quick to share the credit: “An app is only as good as what is happening offline,” JP Coupal said. “You can have a great app with great images… great user-experience… but if it’s not ready on time, who cares? If the food is lousy, who cares?” He believes that their team’s ability to consistently deliver delicious, freshly-made meals on time is the key to their success. 

What does it take to run a Coupa Café?

It’s not easy doing what Coupa Café does. Everything is made on-site, sometimes in a comically small kitchen. Their first Stanford café, Y2E2, is only 350 square feet.

Liliana Valencia, the head shift lead at the Y2E2 location, said that the limited space makes meeting demand challenging, especially during lunch time. Limited space also means a limited inventory, a huge hurdle given the amount of customization they offer.

“There is that expectation nowadays that you need to have almond milk, oat milk, pistachio milk, cow milk [and] coconut milk, which makes it a logistical nightmare,” Camelia Coupal said.

Keeping that many ingredients fresh in a limited space requires shipments each morning to restock just enough ingredients to last one day of sales. And I, for one, am grateful for their effort. I love trying different non-dairy options for my lattes and sauces in my wraps. Not once has Coupa messed up my order. That takes a dream team.

And a dream team they have. I asked a few shift leads how long they have been working at Coupa Café and heard numbers ranging from four years to well over half of my age. 

“This company is really more like a family than a corporation,” Valencia said. She said she also loves working with the Stanford community. “The people we see are always so nice and happy to see us. It’s a joy to be working here.”

I asked Camelia and JP Coupal for any parting words to the Stanford community. JP, in classic Stanfordian fashion, advised me to “take risks early on, and take lots of risks.” Camelia, as bubbly as ever, shared her love for Stanford University: “We love this community, and we want to continue to grow with it.”

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