Introduction to Foreign Coffee Brand Peet's Coffee - What's Its Market Position and Relationship with Starbucks

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The Legacy of Peet's Coffee

The founder of Peet's Coffee was Alfred Peet, a Dutch immigrant to the United States. He discovered that American coffee was simply undrinkable, so in 1966, he opened the first Peet's Coffee in Berkeley. How influential was Peet's Coffee? Peet's Coffee introduced many Americans to good coffee for the first time. There are far too many people who have entered the specialty coffee industry who, when asked why they chose this profession, will tell you it's because they tasted Peet's Coffee and discovered that coffee could actually be this delicious.

The Starbucks Connection

Among Peet's enthusiasts were three people: Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker, who founded Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. Yes, Starbucks was inspired and created because of Peet's Coffee. In the early Starbucks era, they didn't sell espresso, latte, or cappuccino. In fact, they didn't sell brewed coffee at all! They only sold beans, and you only had the opportunity to drink coffee in their store when tasting their beans. Initially, Starbucks didn't roast their own beans but ordered coffee beans from Peet's. However, Baldwin and Bowker later imitated Peet's roasting methods and gradually developed their own style.

A Brief Merger and Separate Paths

In 1984 (1984 was indeed a peculiar year—it's the title of George Orwell's novel and the year the Macintosh appeared), Alfred Peet decided to sell Peet's. Starbucks's Baldwin and Bowker, seeing their dream coffee shop for sale, excitedly bought Peet's! So, for a period, Starbucks and Peet's were essentially the same company! After acquiring Peet's, Starbucks managers had to fly back and forth, exhausted from managing both the Seattle Starbucks and the San Francisco Bay Area Peet's locations. Eventually, Baldwin and Bowker surprisingly gave up the Starbucks they founded and sold it to Howard Schultz, who had been one of Starbucks's managers. Today's Starbucks was certainly influenced by the early Starbucks, but more accurately, it was founded by Howard Schultz in collaboration with Dave Olsen, owner of Cafe Allegro, the pioneering Seattle espresso shop near the University of Washington—though that's another story.

The Dark Roast Philosophy

Peet's Coffee belongs to the dark roast school. We can certainly debate whether this is a good roasting method. Their theory is that coffee must be dark roasted to bring out many flavors and achieve complete taste profiles. I personally somewhat believe in their theory. The problem here is that dark roasting essentially pushes coffee flavors to their limits, and pushing flavors to the limit is only a thin line away from failure. This means that for dark roasted beans, roasting must be done with great care, ensuring freshness is more important than with light roasts, and brewing cannot be careless. Peet's roasting maintains a certain standard—in fact, it's much better than many people who constantly criticize Peet's.

The Challenge of Consistency

The problem is, they don't have sufficiently good staff, or brewing methods that can demonstrate the wonderful qualities of their beans.

Let's not even talk about espresso. If you're ordering a latte or something similar, it's probably better than Starbucks, but that's not much of an achievement. It's not easy to get good espresso at Peet's, so let's put our hopes in regular coffee. Regular coffee in America has traditionally been brewed by machine, and for a dark roast like Peet's, you really need to carefully find the right temperature and drink it immediately after brewing for the best experience. Although Peet's stores supposedly discard old coffee every thirty minutes, thirty minutes is still too long. If you really want to increase your chances of getting good coffee, you'd probably rather wait for the next fresh brew. This increases your chances of getting good coffee, but it's still not guaranteed. I suspect it's related to temperature, though there could be other reasons.

The Peet's Experience: Hit or Miss

From my countless experiences at Peet's, probably nine out of ten times you'll get undrinkably bad coffee. What's peculiar is that the bad coffee we usually encounter is either tasteless or has a strong burnt flavor with nothing else. Peet's bad coffee is mixed with many strange flavors, plus other unpleasant stimulating sensations. However, bad is bad. But if you're lucky, you might experience the most wonderful coffee of your life. From the first sip, as the temperature changes, each sip takes you through different beautiful worlds. Naturally, buying Peet's beans to brew yourself is also an option (if you're in the US). Making it yourself is less likely to go wrong, though I haven't yet been able to replicate that one perfect experience I had "right" at the Peet's store.

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