How Vista Coffee Catering Got Started (And What Nobody Tells You About Starting a Business)

Every business starts with a problem nobody else is solving.

For Zion, that moment came at work. As a barista at Elixr, one of Philadelphia's most beloved coffee spots, she spent her days pulling shots in a high-rise office building, watching caterers roll in and out for corporate events, parties, and gatherings of every kind. The food was thoughtful. The décor was intentional. The bar was stocked.

The coffee? A carafe of Dunkin'. Black.

For someone who had dedicated her career to the craft of specialty coffee, it was almost offensive. Ninety percent of people drink coffee, and yet corporations spending thousands on events couldn't offer their guests anything better than what you'd find at a highway rest stop. So Zion started asking a simple question: why isn't quality coffee part of the conversation?

Turns out, it can be. Mobile espresso bars are a real, growing, in-demand thing, and nobody in Philadelphia was doing it quite the way she envisioned. So she talked it through with a friend and decided to build it herself.

That friend was me.

What We Didn't Know Would Follow

When Zion brought the idea to me, it sounded exciting. It was. What we didn't fully account for was everything that comes between a great idea and an actual business.

Months of researching espresso equipment. Learning how to plumb a mobile setup. Building a website from scratch. Figuring out how to network in a city full of event planners who had never heard of us. Spending more money than expected at basically every turn. The kind of stuff nobody puts in the highlight reel.

Four months after the idea hatched, we held our first event. A soft launch with family and friends, a safe space to figure out what running an event actually feels like before doing it in front of paying clients.

For the first fifteen minutes, we couldn't serve a single drink.

Turns out I had accidentally changed a setting deep in the espresso machine's developer menu that was pulling shots in under a second. We spent the entire time convinced the pump was broken, quietly panicking while our guests stood there holding empty cups and smiling very supportively. Eventually we figured it out. The drinks were great. Nobody held it against us.

We count that as a win.

Where We Are Now

Since that soft launch, Vista has successfully served many events ranging from corporate gatherings to Christmas parties to sweet sixteens. Every single one has taught us something. Every one has reminded us why we started.

Zion wanted to combine her love of coffee with her love of serving people and build something that was truly her own. That's still what this is. A mobile espresso bar built on craft, care, and the belief that every event deserves better than a carafe of lukewarm black coffee.

We're only getting started.

If you're planning an event in the Philadelphia area and want coffee people will actually talk about, we'd love to hear from you.