Silicon Valley Coffee Hero Alfred Peet Dead
Alfred Peet, the man who founded Peet's Coffee & Tea, is DEAD. Peet's serves what is probably the best coffee in the world, with most of its 151 locations in or near Northern California's Silicon Valley. Peet, who was Dutch and moved to San Francisco at the age of 35, opened his first coffee shop in 1966 in Berkeley's "Gourmet Ghetto." Peet's coffee is an obsession in Silicon Valley, and has for decades fueled startups and giant companies alike. (I've known of employees at companies like Sun Microsystems, which has a Starbucks in the cafeteria, leave campus to go buy Peet's.) Peet inspired and trained the founders of Starbucks -- founder Howard Shultz worked at a Peet's to learn the trade -- but Starbucks has never managed to even come close to Peet's quality.
9:49 AM * PERMALINK * 3 comments
Comments:
My condolences to Mr Peet's family and friends, but "the best coffee in the world"?? Puhleeze. American coffee tastes like bathwater. Come to Melbourne for real coffee.
I knew I'd be condemed internationally for my comment. You're the first. Congratulations!
It's true. I've never been to Australia. But I've drunk gallons of coffee in Paris, Rome, Berlin, London, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Beijing (still alive!), Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Rio, El Salvador, Antigua, San Juan Puerto Rico, and many, many small and medium towns all over the world.
The worst cup of coffee I've had at Peets was an order of magnitude better than the best cup I've had anywhere else.
Peet's is really, really good.
Mike Elgan
By the way, the best coffee I've had outside Peets was in, of all places, Kawasaki, Japan!
I'll never forget it. There was a jar of pyramid-shaped objects at the table, and I asked the waitress in near-perfect Japanese, "kore wa nan desu ka?" (what is this?), and she rolled her eyes and replied in perfect, California-accented English, "It's sugar... Duh!"
Mike Elgan
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