First Comes Family
...then coffee
Summer 2020
Written By: Evie Carrick | Images: Deborah DeKoff
If you’ve been around for long enough, chances are you know Rob and Ray Hibl. Twin brothers and co-owners of Park City Coffee Roaster (PCCR), you might’ve seen Rob closing a deal on Main Street or Ray giving a demo of the company’s latest coffee machine at Park City Hospital. But what a lot of people don’t know, is that the Hibl family business goes far beyond the brothers.
“ [Ray] has two kids and I have three kids and they’ve all worked at our coffee shop, including one who still does. It’s basically mandatory,” Rob laughs. But it doesn’t stop there.
“We have a pretty large family and most of our family is from Colorado and North Dakota. During Sundance, we operate food and beverage inside the
Eccles Center. This was our 23rd year and as you can imagine, it’s hard work, but we bring 10 to 12 family members in to work and stay with us,” says Rob. “That [used to] include my grandfather who worked 15 years with us — we still have people coming up looking for Grandpa Bob.”
With such on-the-ground support from family, it’s no surprise that PCCR is at the top of their game — even 23 years after opening. The Hibl family stood by when Rob and Ray first opened up shop at the top of Main Street, when they started roasting in their own facility, and finally, when they moved into their current home — a 6,000-square-foot flagship store in Kimball Junction and a warehouse in Silver Creek where the roasting and bagging takes place.
But even with the change in location, Rob says a lot of the clientele has remained the same. “On a daily basis I still see people who used to come to our Main Street location. Even the old mayor of Park City, who used to work with us on Main Street as a barista, still comes out to visit us at the Junction,” he says.
In addition to baked goods made in-house, PCCR sells things like breakfast burritos, smoothies, and quiche. And it goes without saying that the coffee is top notch.
PCCR sources beans from around 24 countries over the course of a year. Seventy-five percent of the coffee is fair trade and 85 to 90 percent is 100 percent organic. One of Rob’s favorite international partners is Mission Fiji, a nonprofit that helps create Native Fijian communities. PCCR provides Fijian farms with coffee harvesting tools and farmers sell their wild coffee beans to be blended, packaged, and sold by PCCR and by Mission Fiji. “All the proceeds go back to Mission Fiji,” says Rob proudly.
In addition to their flagship location, which Rob says is a “meeting location for bikers and hikers in the summer,” you can find PCCR coffee in retail stores, hotels, coffee shops, and perhaps most impressively, in 18 hospitals and 12 clinics within the Intermountain Healthcare system.
“We’re their sole provider of coffee and tea,” says Rob. “We handle all the servicing for coffee, teas — anything hot. We service all the [beverage] machines as well.”
Somehow amidst it all, Rob and Ray find time to camp and mountain bike in the summer, and donate their time to what Rob estimates has become “about 12 nonprofits around town.”
Through it all, the twins remain a team. And while it can’t always be easy, Rob notes that unlike typical business partnerships or friendships, which come and go, with family, you roll with the punches and keep moving forward — because family comes first. And 23 years later, it seems to be working.
