Alfred Peet: Grandfather of Coffee Culture as we know it

Wed, Apr 29th 2009, 12:04

It was a Dutchman who first taught Americans how to appreciate quality coffee. Alfred Peet led the revolution in coffee drinking - he first introduced the founders of the world’s largest coffee retailer, Starbucks, to the joy of speciality coffee.


When Alfred Peet arrived in San Fransisco in 1955 he was horrified at the quality of coffee on offer in his adopted land. Since the war, Americans had begun buying the cheaper robusta coffee in an era of wartime thrift. Peet was accustomed to good coffee, particularly favouring rich flavoured high-altitude coffee beans from Costa Rica, Guatamala and East Africa.

Alfred Peet was born in the Netherlands and spent his childhood years doing odd jobs in his father's coffee roastery business in Alkmaar, Netherlands. After World War II he worked for Lipton as a tea taster in Indonesia before immigrating to the United States.

Peet decided to bring quality coffee to the people and opened a coffee shop in Berkeley in 1966. Here he introduced coffee drinkers to the pleasure of dark roasts and his blends of coffee soon became a firm favourite.

The radical community of Berkley embraced Peet's revolutionary opinions about decent coffee and Peet's coffee shops soon attracted a loyal following. Among them were the founders of Starbucks, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker, who learned about roasting from Peet. When the first Starbucks coffee shop opened, it was Peet who supplied them with coffee.

Peet's first coffee shop : picture credit

 

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