Yikes you're not selling me on the company with that statement. I don't know, I think third wave coffee houses are doing a pretty good job of training people that sugary, creamy coffees are crap.
In the long run I think that people are trending toward healthy, high quality, authentic experiences in many areas, but especially food. I'm not sure where 600 calorie coffees fit into that.
Starbucks creamy drinks are also roughly the same amount. And the reason Philz will do well in America is that Americans gravitate towards the creamy and sugary and carby (Anheuser Busch, Nestle, Hershey). They even got sustainable San Franciscans on board! While some Americans care about eating and drinking healthy, most Americans will happily continue ordering a 600-calorie cup of morning joe, contributing to Starbucks' $15B revenue.
American dollars always go to the fat and sugary flavors. While a lot of fine dining artist-chefs will disagree with the data, burgers and fries sell.
When you said that Philz would give "third-wave coffee a run for their money" did you more mean that you're skeptical that Blue Bottle will be able to take their brand national? I agree with that, that that could be hard. I think their best bet for non-urban areas would probably be to closely follow areas where Whole Foods has made inroads. Regarding expansion to urban areas, I wonder if too much good real estate for third wave coffee places is already taken up by local independents.
From what I've seen SF has surprisingly few third wave coffee shops. In Vancouver there are often several Blue Bottle quality independent coffee shops in each neighbourhood. When I saw that Blue Bottle got funding I wondered how successful they'd be in expanding to areas with well established locals. There's really not that much that they do different from others.
Truth be told, Blue Bottle's coffee and espresso quality has suffered from expansion.
I think big cities contribute to plenty of revenue, but Starbucks has built itself as common as a convenience store. That's really hard to compete, even with third-wave and Philz types. Even Tim Horton's revenue is $3B!
Hit me up next time you're in San Francisco--I don't think you got a very good tour of coffee here :) Aron Tzimas documents latte art around SF on his Instagram.
I also agree with your trending statement with support from the rise of things like BulletProof Coffee(with grass fed butter) and high end pure coffee options which are growing in popularity versus the espresso + tons of sugar/cream/etc toppings.