A Legacy of Good Taste
I enjoyed the time that I spent working in the specialty coffee business and I try work my experiences of coffee into various posts on business and marketing. I was saddened to read that a man who is essentially the Godfather of Specialty Coffee has died at 87.
Alfred Peet came to San Francisco in the 50’s and got a job as an importer of coffee beans. He was initially disheartened at the lack of interest in quality that existed in the USA at that time. He had learned the trade from his father in the Netherlands and he was accustomed to small batch roasting of select high grown coffees. He eventually opened one of the first specialty coffee shops. It was located in Berkeley.
In 1971, Alfred gave advice, training and coffee to the founders of Starbucks. Peet’s is now a publicly traded company with 182 outlets. There are just over 13,000 Starbucks in the World.
I met many people in the specialty coffee industry that were interested in promoting the idea and the craft of good coffee and they didn’t keep many secrets. When I was a roaster, my company produced a number of custom blends for nice restaurants. I got to know a few manager/chef types who liked to have a hand in everything. One of these chefs was quite perturbed to walk in and see the ‘recipe’ for his blend on my bulletin board. I’m not sure if he liked to think of it as a trade secret or if he liked to give the information out to his appreciative customers and he felt that my public display devalued it. I had it in plain sight because he had just changed his mind about the blend for the third time. If you want a great after dinner coffee, get a French roasted Bolivian coffee.
Sources: Blanca Torres for the Mercury, Wikipedia
