RIP, Alfred Peet
If you love coffee, this man should be one of your culinary heros. He’s one of mine.
Ever wonder where the funders of starbucks got the idea? From Alfred Peet, that’s where. The guy who founded Peet’s Coffee – the guy who pretty much started america’s current love affair with quality coffee. Odds are, if you’re not from the Bay Area, you’ve never heard of Peet’s; but next time your drink your extra-hot-no-whip-de-caf-fat-free-soy-milk-uber-grande-complicato, thank Alfred. Cause he started it all.
I won’t buy any beans but Peets, and their short-pull espresso has spoiled me for anyone else’s. No one else does it right.
Thanks, Alfred.
I don’t drink it. But I do know Peet’s. Raise a cup for me.
I’ve been a more-or-less constant Peet’s drinker since the mid-80s (when I discovered the Menlo Park store). It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in the Bay Area, but that’s what mail order is for. While I was living in Australia things got a bit more difficult, but I would recruit visitors to bring beans with them (there was once an ‘incident’ involving about 20lbs of Peet’s and Australian Customs).
Also, once I saw someone on the Melbourne Uni campus just walking along just casually dangling a bag of Peet’s! It was really surprising to see the familiar bag out of context like that. At the time I was out, so I considered working up a burst of speed and sprinting past them to grab it. (In the end I controlled myself).
See, that’s what happens to peets drinkers. It’s like an addiction. You have to have it. You’re spoiled for anything else.
I try to drink local coffees when I’m in hawaii, since it’s grown there (and I have a rule when traveling to always, when possible, consume and purchase local goods, to put what I can into the local economy). Yet, when I shop somewhere that carries Peets, I wind up putting down the local stuff, and picking up a bag of Peets. I can’t help it.
I drink Peet’s whenever I’m in San Diego. It’s better than Starbuck’s (what isn’t?), but it doesn’t hold a candle to fresh, home-roasted. Mmmm… Now THAT’S addictive. Makes me not want anything else. I prefer my coffee to seduce me smoothly rather than to just grab me by the collar and slap me around a bit.
Kirsten, I like coffee that hits me in the forehead like a deer slug. I like it to go off in my brain like a cement-mixer filled with too much dynamite.
Fuck subtle. I like pile-driver.
That’s not coffee- that’s swill! Yuckety!
MMMmmm Garuda/
Is it me or does that picture make him look a lot like Peter Sellers?
Peets card at the ready!
I was thinking Peter Falk actually.
http://www.ekogaraj.com/celik-jant