hchamp
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If you've ever lived in the Bay Area, you'll appreciate this. If you haven't, but have had a cup of gourmet coffee, then you owe your caffeinated experience to this man.
Coffee pioneer Alfred Peet dies
George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Alfred Peet, a pioneer in specialty coffee who shared the stage with the Bay Area culinary stars the shaped the region's food-centric reputation, died Wednesday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 87.
The company he founded, Peet's Coffee & Tea Inc., has more than 150 establishments, all but 22 in California, but the first opened at Walnut and Vine streets in Berkeley in 1966, taking its place in what would become the Gourmet Ghetto.
With his emphasis on specialty coffees and unique brewing techniques, Peet, the son of a Dutch roaster, put specialty coffee on the map - and in the process influenced the founders of Starbucks.
"Up until the time he started, in 1966, basic American coffee was swill," said Jim Reynolds, roastmaster emeritus at Peet's. "His father had been a small coffee roaster in Holland before World War II, he was aware of good quality coffee, but nobody in the States was buying it," Reynolds said. "He realized Berkeley was a place where good food and good quality coffee would work."
It was the time that Chez Panisse and other fine food establishments opened and Peet introduced quality coffee that helped change the coffee-buying habits of many people.
"I like to think that he taught America how to drink dark-roasted coffee," said Narsai David, the food and wine editor of KCBS in San Francisco, who, when he opened his Narsai's Restaurant on Colusa Circle in 1972, was Peet's first commercial account.
David said Peet was not crystal clear on the commercial account concept - he preferred the retail business, in which people gave him cash for coffee, and there were times Peet was on the phone asking for payment before his statement had arrived at David's office - but the restaurateur let it pass. "He was really rigid, but his coffee was so good we did not mind," said David.
After the Walnut and Vine shop, there came a store in Menlo Park (1971), another on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland (1978) and a second in Berkeley across the street from the Claremont Hotel (1980).
In 1971, the first Starbucks store opened in Seattle's Pike Place Market, with coffee roasted by Peet's. The company's co-founders, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker, learned about roasting from Peet.
Peet sold his business in 1979 but stayed on as a coffee buyer until 1983. In 1984, Starbucks co-owner Baldwin and Reynolds, the roastmaster, with a group of investors bought Peet's four Bay Area locations. In 1987, Baldwin and Peet's owners sold the Starbucks chain to focus on Peet's, and Baldwin and Howard Schultz, Starbucks' new owner, entered into a no-compete agreement in the Bay Area. In 2001, Peet's became a public company.
Alfred Peet was born in Alkmaar, Holland, on March 10, 1920. He helped his father by cleaning his coffee-roasting machinery and doing other odd jobs. When Germany invaded the Netherlands, he was pressed into working for the Third Reich in Frankfurt. When the war ended, Peet joined Lipton, the tea company, and for a time worked in the tea business in the then-Dutch colony of Indonesia.
He immigrated to San Francisco in 1955 and took a job with coffee importer E.A. Johnson & Co. He favored high-altitude coffee from Costa Rica, Guatemala and East Africa that his father used to buy, and although there was no market for it in the area, he decided to create one.
"He went to a great deal of trouble to find only the best beans," said David. "He knew his business like nobody I ever met."
Importantly, David added, Peet introduced customers to coffee they didn't know existed.
"We would drink it and it put us in a new realm. It had complexity and richness - that's the best way to describe it," said David.
Along the way, Peet influenced younger roasters like James Freeman, owner of Blue Bottle Coffee in Oakland. "He really opened the door for the specialty-coffee industry," said Freeman, who said Peet made a radical departure from the roasting style of the day, with smaller batches, darker roasts and higher-quality coffee.
"He really showed that people in America are willing to spend a little bit more money to get a little bit better when it comes to coffee," said Freeman.
Peet is survived by a daughter and two grandchildren, but Reynolds, speaking for the family, said they are private people and did not want to be identified. Reynolds said he and others will plan a memorial service.
E-mail George Raine at [email protected].
