Persimmon Coffee is an independent roaster and shop in Fishtown, founded by Chaereen Pak and Sawyer Beckley, who met working in coffee at different stages of life and bonded over their attachment to the city and its people. It offers one single origin coffee every month, roasted in Philadelphia, and a Friday Coffee Club subscription that delivers it.

The business launched on Christmas Day 2020 “as a gift to our loved ones”, in the middle of the pandemic, and ran as a mobile pop-up for a year and a half, from University City to Queen Village, growing from once a month to every weekend to every day. The first pop-up was held in below-freezing weather with two Zojirushi carafes of drip coffee and a small space heater. The storefront opened in the summer of 2022, a three-minute walk from SEPTA’s Girard Station.

A persimmon tree can take up to ten years to bear its first fruit, and the patience and care it demands, and the warmth it brings in the cold months, are what they wanted the shop to stand for. The persimmon spread from China to Korea and Japan and reached California in the mid-1800s, yet it is often overlooked or mistaken for other fruit in North America, which is why inclusivity sits at the centre of the shop’s identity: everyone is welcome, “come as you are. Because you are enough.” Persimmon also supplies brewed coffee and retail bags to a list of stockists around the city and takes wholesale orders from multi-roaster cafés and shops.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Persimmon Coffee