Category: San Francisco Bay Area

Local Bay Area Businesses We Supported In May

This month, Fastmetrics supported the following Bay Area businesses through visits and purchases. Shopping locally is a great way to show your support for your local community. At least one of our team members visited each business and provided a quick review of what they saw, tasted, sampled and liked about each.

*These Bay Area businesses are not existing customers. We just like sharing what’s great about the Bay Area! To have your Bay Area business featured, send us a tweet or message @fastmetrics1. Every monthly post is shared with our followers.

Napa Soap Company

If you are traveling to the Napa Valley, do get some of these amazing soaps. The Napa Soap company crafts soaps by hand. Located in downtown St. Helena. With the bonus of keeping her 3 sons clean and the scent of lavender in the air, Sheila Rockwood founded and created the Napa Soap Company.

NSC only use all natural ingredients, buys organic, sources as many local products as possible and recycle all their packaging.  All soaps are hand poured.  This is a family business that started with a small business dream with a creative outlet. Hope you enjoy the soap as much as we did!  Here is a link to their beautiful shop.

Philz Coffee

Phil Jaber founded Philz Coffee in 2003. This coffee is delicious, considered one of the best in the US. “Cup of love” is their motto and Philz go above and beyond to deliver. It all started after the closure of Phil’s corner grocery shop on 24th and Folsom Street in San Francisco that transformed his passion into a reality.

After researching and tweaking coffee beans / brewing methods for more than 25 years, Phil opened his doors in 2003. Now it’s a family empire with multiple stores. The small grocery corner shop is now their HQ. You can buy great coffee through their website or at one of their locations. Try the Mint Mojito iced coffee!

Sun Basket

To busy to shop, think and prepare meals? Try Sun Basket. A new and amazing startup in the San Francisco Bay Area created by award winning chef Justine Kelly. Healthy, organic how-to meals that taste and look incredible. Sun Basket delivers the freshest ingredients from the best farms with customized pre-measured recipes.

Plenty of variety too; paleo friendly options, gluten free, vegetarian or the Chef’s basket. For $9.99 per person, a bargain. All made using organic produce. They have an incredible blog that shares delicious recipes and great tips. Thumbs up for this delightful startup.

The Vestry Restaurant  At The Chapel

Restaurant @TheVestrySF is located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, at 777 Valencia Street. Open 7 days a week from 5pm-1am + Sat & Sun brunch 11am-3pm. Live music, delicious food and bar with bottomless Mimosas and Bloody Mary specials. Thanks for your great hospitality.

H.D. Buttercup

Evan Cole is the founder and current CEO of H.D. Buttercup, a furniture store with a difference. Locations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Their mission: “Designed from the ground up to provide customers a new way to shop for home furnishings. Never a dull moment, never a dull item. At HD Buttercup, we are here to create a memorable experience. This is no ordinary furniture store”.

This shop has a unique boutique feel with always evolving collections at prices of large retail chains. It does deliver on memorable experiences, as a one-stop shop for luxury furnishings. It definitely caters for the creative. A highly recommend stop-by or check out their shop online.

Fastmetrics proudly supports Bay Area businesses by shopping locally, whenever possible. With so many great businesses and local produce available, there really isn’t any reason why you can’t too.

About Fastmetrics, Inc. Building & Business ISP

Since 2002, Fastmetrics is the Bay Area’s only dedicated business ISP. We provide telecommunication services in California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Reliable service – backed by better live and local support. From install to 24-7 proactive monitoring, get treated like a VIP customer. Not a number by a faceless call center. We specialize in managed business internet and phones, dedicated high speed business fiber internet, business WiFi, SIP voice solutions / UCaaS and managed network services. We are a Microsoft and Cisco Meraki Partner. Our team are Certified Cisco Specialists, Ubiquiti Enterprise Wireless Accredited and Polycom Authorized Solution Advisors. We take care of your business network, so you can focus on growth.

       

Support Local San Francisco Businesses

San Francisco is where Fastmetrics began in 1994 and we wouldn’t want it any other way. We love living, working, eating and drinking in San Francisco and enjoy it’s many characters and scenery. Without doubt – SF is one of the United States’ most diverse cities, with great local talent, innovative, thought-leading startups and enterprises.

To showcase this talent, each month our business spotlight post will provide info on 5 different local businesses. They are not existing customers, although we have visited many of these businesses, and have provided some recommendations below. To have your San Francisco business featured, please send us a tweet @fastmetrics1. Every post will be shared with our followers and on our other social media channels.

Sightglass Coffee

At 270 Seventh Street, San Francisco, you’ll find the coffee bar and roastery of this “independant, sibling owned coffee company”, with a focus on hands-on coffee crafting. Sightglass sources all it’s coffee beans in small amounts from origin. Shop Sightglass coffees and their range of brewing tools online.  Better yet, sip one of their freshly crafted lattes at a San Francisco location near you.

SF Flower Mart

The San Francisco Flower Mart is one of only 5 grower-owned flower markets in the United States. With origins dating back to the late 1800s, it has been quoted as “the best flower market in the country” by Martha Stewart Living Magazine and a “one-stop floral source for the Northern California area”.

The SF Flower Mart supplies to retail florists, events planners, interior decorators – or every event, gift shops and home owners. You can find it at 6th and Brannan Street, San Francisco. Check opening hours, contact details and vendor info on the San Francisco Flower Market.

Guitar Center

Starting in 1959 as The Organ Store in Hollywood, the business quickly evolved into the Guitar Center. Today, the business has expanded to a network of more than 100 nationwide stores. It also ships internationally to more than 90 countries.

The second ever Guitar Center was opened in 1972, right here in San Francisco. Innovative employees Ray Scherr and Larry Thomas both started at the San Francisco store, which is now at 1645 Van Ness Avenue. The Guitar Center story is best told through the timeline on their website, (rather than this post), spanning from the 60s through to today. Guitar Center wants you to get the “Greatest Feeling on Earth” and offers a range of free music lessons to help you do it.

Bacon Bacon

Bacon Bacon operates a cafe at 205A Frederick Street San Francisco, provides home delivery and also a food truck, which runs on a schedule which you can see here. Try their famous bacon burger, grilled cheese, tacos, range of sides and even some bacon flavored desserts! We also recommend the LGBT sandwich – that’s short for little gem lettuce, goat cheese, bacon and tomato. Best washed down with a nice cold Mexican coke.

Smitten Ice Cream

Smitten Ice Cream was founded by Robyn Sue Fisher. Smitten is based on the idea that ice cream at it’s best, should be fresh and shouldn’t contain preservatives and other ingredients that are hard to pronounce, just to prolong shelf-life.

Smitten makes use of liquid nitrogen technology to produce “new, old-fashioned ice cream”. The ice cream is made using a one-of-a-kind ice cream maker that perfects the process, to make the “smoothest, densest, most flavorful ice cream on earth”. The company has 4 Bay Area locations and is opening a new store at 2404 California Street in San Francisco in May 2015.

We recommend the TCHO 60.5% chocolate, which combines toasted walnuts, spicy brown sugar and caramel plus whipped cream. There’s also a range of seasonal flavors available, all made from scratch, using local produce.

We are proud to support many local San Francisco businesses with their ISP services. You can help support local business by sharing this post!