Stefania Marzelia remembers taking her first sip of coffee over 10 years ago at a diner with her paternal grandfather, who she described as a “huge coffee drinker.” She said a weekend at her grandparents’ house meant the constant waft of “around-the-clock caffeine.” That day, her grandfather encouraged the then-teenager to try the local diner’s brew.
“I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, but I took a sip and was like, ‘Wow, I really like this,’” Marzelia said.
At first, like so many others just starting out, Marzelia said she was a “sweet coffee drinker,” noting that she would take her “cream and sugar with a little bit of coffee.” As she grew older, she said she started to enjoy the flavor of black coffee more and more but believes there is “always room” for some fun. She discovered much of that fun while working as a barista in high school and college.
Now, Marzelia, 25, is the founder and owner of Sips, a business she started in October that offers freshly made syrups with minimal ingredients for coffee and other foods. The syrups, which are gluten and dairy-free, are flavored to be complementary to a traditional cup of coffee or espresso beverage but can be used in a number of innovative ways from desserts to non-coffee drinks.
She said she “always had a kind of entrepreneurial spirit.”
“I’ve always been one to step up and be the leader or problem solver,” Marzelia said. “It’s kind of fueled me and motivated me to never let anyone tell me that I can’t do something.”
Her entrepreneurial spirit poured into her passion for coffee, and Sips was born.
Marzelia has maintained a presence on social media since 2020, sharing funny stories from her barista days and her own coffee crafts and espresso hacks.
Gale Parmelee is a Sips customer from just outside of Portland, Maine, and has been following Marzelia on social media since before Sips’ inception. Parmelee said coffee “fuels my life,” so when he stumbled across Marzelia on TikTok and Instagram, he said he enjoyed her “barista-based” videos.
Parmelee said the major difference he noticed after trying Sips syrups is the feeling he has afterward, compared to “those mass-produced coffee syrups and flavors that make you feel a little run down.”
Parmelee said he loves when his Sips order arrives. “You can just tell when someone has a passion for something, and Stefania has a passion for coffee and I love supporting people through their passion,” he said.
Marzelia has built her following on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube — over 800,000 followers across all three platforms — since 2020 and continues to create content. She said she especially enjoys conversations with baristas through her platforms.
Early in 2024, she put together a coffee bar in her apartment and stocked it with store-bought syrups until she decided one day to make her own. She started experimenting, perfecting and sharing online her recipes for homemade syrups and how to use them to make cafe-quality beverages at home.
The first syrup she posted about was the vanilla bean syrup, which Marzelia said is now one of Sips’ best-sellers, using real Madagascar vanilla beans that she special orders.
After that, she was flooded with followers suggesting other flavors and she began introducing a new line of syrups every week or two. She put out flavors such as bananas foster, lavender and earl gray.
“All these different, unique flavors people were seeing and they were intrigued,” Marzelia said. “One video kind of hit the algorithm and picked up steam, and suddenly I was getting tons of comments from people saying I should start a business.”
Marzelia said she knew she would love to eventually build out her brand around coffee, “but it’s really funny how one day turns into today.”
Since its launch, Sips has had a few rounds of syrup “drops,” which Marzelia said tend to be inspired by the season. Current flavors include tiramisu and chocolate-covered strawberry. A Sips “classics trio” order comes with vanilla bean, warm brown sugar and hazelnut toffee.
Sips also sells coffee, such as a Gold Coast medium roast and a Bronzeville dark roast. The beans come from a coffee roaster in Connecticut that Marzelia said she found and decided to partner with.
She said Sips’ roots are in Chicago and her customers, who are based all over the country, like to learn more about the city, thus the spotlight on Chicago neighborhoods. There was a State Street holiday blend during the winter season.
Marzelia said she is working on the spring drop, with plans to release a light roast as well as a decaf option.
“My goal is to really incorporate something for everybody,” she said.
Delen Potter, a customer from Buffalo, New York, uses Sips syrups in hot chocolate and baking because she is not a coffee drinker. She said using one of the syrups as an extract in recipes is a game-changer.
Her favorite so far was an apple cinnamon crisp syrup that is no longer available, but she said she is “begging” for it to be brought back. Potter said she used a bit of that flavoring in french toast and it gave the meal a “nice twist.”
Potter not only appreciates that Sips products are gluten free, because of an intolerance she has, but also that she is backing a small business.
“She actually cares about the ingredients that she’s using and is making her dreams come true the right way,” Potter said.
In addition to its website, Sips products are available at Chicago Health Foods in the Gold Coast and collaborations with other city businesses are “on the way,” Marzelia said.
Sinisa Rasberger is the owner of Chicago Health Foods and said he prides himself on supporting local entrepreneurs in the health and wellness arena. When Marzelia reached out for a partnership, he couldn’t refuse.
“I really liked her enthusiasm, her business plan,” Rasberger said. “I like that she is not a lawyer starting a restaurant but somebody who’s been a barista for so long and actually knows what she’s doing and found the niche that I very much appreciate as someone who is fighting against all these preservatives and sweeteners.”
Rasberger said the Sips products he has tried “taste very clean, very tasty, and you can tell that they’re genuine.”
Sips ships to all 50 states and Puerto Rico, and Marzelia said she wants to expand to international markets because a good portion of her online following comes from Canada, Europe and other parts of the globe.
Marzelia grew up in Crystal Lake, which she said was like other major suburbs in that there were “a lot of Starbucks around.” After she turned 16, she went around town applying for jobs and ended up working at the Starbucks inside a local Target. At the time, she said she “didn’t really know a whole lot about serving coffee,” and her Starbucks savvy started and ended with cake pops and pastries. Then, suddenly, she was a barista.
“I had no intention of becoming a barista; I went to Target to apply for a cashier position, but the opportunity really just fell in my lap,” Marzelia said.
She ended up working at a couple of Starbucks stores in the area before she graduated from Crystal Lake South High School in 2018 and went off to college, during which time she continued to work as a barista.
“Ever since I accepted that position at 16 to be a barista, coffee honestly feels like the main focus of my life,” she said. “It’s been such a huge part of my life and how I’ve developed my social skills and my customer service skills. I credit being a barista for a lot of who I am today.”
Marzelia first went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for about a year before transferring to the University of Iowa in Iowa City. She was there for a little longer than a semester when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and she went home to Crystal Lake. Eventually, she went back to Iowa for a couple more years then moved to Chicago in 2022 while finishing her last semester of college virtually and earning her degree in entrepreneurship.
Marzelia has since been living in Chicago and currently resides in Greektown with her partner.
For about a year after she moved to the city, Marzelia worked at Caffè Umbria in River North, which shifted her perspective, going from working for a corporation to a coffee shop that is locally owned.
“I had to unlearn certain things that I had known, and I was taught the true art of brewing a quality espresso shot,” Marzelia said. “There was an emphasis on quality over quantity, on slowing down and really producing a cup of coffee or a latte that you’re proud of serving.”
She was inspired by the syrups and spice blends made in house at the coffee shop and that inspired her to create her own syrups using minimal and high-quality ingredients.
“I remember when I was working at Starbucks and was in charge of putting away orders and I would see the ingredients list on the back of some of these coffee syrups and sauces and thinking how are these ingredients even pronounced,” Marzelia said.
She wants the Sips experience to be noticeably different, she said, where a customer never has that kind of reaction to her product’s ingredients list and recipe.
Marzelia, who said she wears “every hat imaginable” in running her business, gets help from a couple of people, including her previous manager from Cafe Umbria and her mom.
“It’s a small but mighty team right now, and I’m just so grateful for them,” Marzelia said.
Sips currently operates from a 200-square-foot private kitchen within the Hatchery, a nonprofit food and beverage business incubator in East Garfield Park. The syrups are all made, packaged and shipped from the kitchen. The coffee is roasted fresh every week and comes to the local kitchen packaged and labeled, ready to be shipped.
Looking into the future, Marzelia would like to see Sips grow into a physical cafe or coffee truck where she can share her products “through an actual beverage.”
“I’m so grateful for where we’re at and love everything that we’re doing now, and there’s been so much learned and probably a million things we still have to learn, but eventually, I really do see Sips growing into an in-person experience,” she said.
