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The History of the famous American Coffee Brand Shudun City and intellectuals of Peet's Coffee & Tea

Published: 2025-09-11 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2025/09/11, From: Wechat official account [Coffee Salon] Abstract: not long ago, Peets Coffee Tea acquired the famous American coffee brands Shudun City and intellectuals. Become a hot word in the coffee circle. Let's talk about Peets Coffee Tea today. Thanks to the "boutique XX study" of Taiwanese coffee friend Han Xizong, coffee people in China have officially met this coffee company for the first time. Front array

From: Wechat official account [Coffee Salon]

Abstract: not long ago, Peet's Coffee Tea acquired the famous American coffee brands Shudun City and intellectuals. Become a hot word in the coffee circle. Let's talk about Peet's Coffee Tea today. Thanks to the "boutique XX study" of Taiwanese coffee friend Han Xizong, coffee people in China have officially met this coffee company for the first time.

Not long ago, Peet's Coffee & Tea acquired the famous American coffee brands Shudun City and intellectuals. Become a hot word in the coffee circle. Let's talk about Peet's Coffee & Tea today.

Thanks to the "boutique XX study" of teacher Han Xizong, a Taiwanese coffee friend, coffee makers in China formally met this cafe for the first time. Peet's Coffee & Tea, known as the initiator of the second wave of boutique caffeination. I don't quite get it, but I think you are really terrific.

From eastern China, across nine time zones, to Berkeley, California (yes, the University of California, Berkeley is here). In 1966, Alfred Peet, a Dutchman, came here and thought it was full of Reiki and suitable for making coffee, so he founded Peet's Coffee, Tea & Spices locally.

Why did a Dutchman come to America?

This is about the story of Alfred Peet's childhood. He was born in 1920, when World War II broke out in his prime. His father ran a small bakery in the Netherlands that supplied coffee beans to the military, so Peet has been dealing with coffee since childhood. After the war, Peet left continental Europe to work as a teacup surveyor under Lipton in Indonesia. On the commonality between tea and coffee

In 1955, Peet emigrated to San Francisco to work for a raw bean import company in San Francisco. At this time, he found that most of the coffee beans imported by the United States came from low-grade "intermediate coffee" from Brazil and El Salvador and were very stale. At this time, American coffee has a title inherited since World War II, "foot wash".

How to open a shop?

These rotten coffee are completely different from the high-quality coffee from Costa Rica, Guatemala and East Africa that I knew when I was a child. Even if I imported these high-quality raw beans, there were no customers to buy them.

What shall I do?

Do it!

Open a shop!

With the characteristics of "freshly roasted, high-quality raw beans, deep roasting and choking fragrance", Alfred Peet has become the godfather of American boutique coffee (the godmother is Erna Knutsen). Before him, no one had extended the concept of "boutique coffee" to the whole country on this scale. Within 10 kilometers of the editor, there are two Peet's in Philadelphia. As a so-called "boutique cafe", this scale is simply appalling.

Where is the great place?

It has been 49 years since the first Peet's in 1966, and now Peet's has 200 stores and 4000 employees. In 2011, Peet's 's market capitalization was $636 million, which is 2.3% of Starbucks's market capitalization over the same period.

If that's all, it shouldn't be enough to explain the greatness of Peet. "it's only 2.3% of Starbucks," but what if I say Starbucks inherits Peet?

When Peet became famous, he didn't forget to receive his apprentice. Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker inherited the deep baking style of Peet, and then the three men founded Starbucks in Seattle and passed on Peet's baking philosophy to this day. Although the success of Starbucks is not due to these three people, and it is doubtful whether Starbucks has inherited the "boutique coffee", as the foundation, Starbucks coffee beans come from the hands of Peet.

Well, we finally got to these two questions.

Is Starbucks a boutique coffee?

Is Peet's a boutique coffee?

The first question is not too much to elaborate on here. Even though Starbucks has recently begun its so-called "success" at the store level, it is still an out-and-out crap in terms of coffee quality. The editor really does not understand why teacher Han Xizong classifies Starbucks as "the second wave of coffee boutique" in "boutique XX". The editor has doubts as to whether Starbucks has inherited the baking essence of Peet, and does not rule out the possibility of walking and running.

The second question is that the editor has no conclusion. The editor has not had a chance to taste Peet's 's coffee since he came to the United States, but I would like to raise a question here: the degree of boutique of Peet's may not be high. The editor has never opened a coffee shop, but there is one truth that everyone knows: quality is inversely proportional to quantity. As a "boutique cafe", Peet's can open more than 200 stores in the United States, can it really guarantee that quality will not be sacrificed? The editor will fill this hole for you in the near future. Please wait and see.

Despite doubts and shortcomings of one kind or another, the contribution made by Peet's and Starbucks to the coffee industry cannot be ignored. Perhaps they can not be said to have done a good job, at least, there is great progress, without them, the next real "boutique" is impossible, where is there a place for us coffee people?

Alfred Peet died of illness in Oregon on August 29th, aged 87

Coffee industry in the United States and Europe was shocked by it.

Alfred Peet is recognized as the forerunner of the "coffee revolution"

Over the past few decades, both Peet's and Starbucks have changed, acquisitions, restructuring, leadership changes and natural death, we can no longer speculate from the current situation of the Coffee Man's story 40 years ago. In the new era of coffee, we are growing, and so are the two of them. Starbucks acquired Clover automatic brewing system, started the construction of Zhenxuan store in China, and opened Seattle Starbucks Zhenxuan roaster ™in the United States. Peet's has made various corporate acquisitions. The recent acquisition of Shudun City boutique cafe, which detonated the coffee circle, is a big step forward. Before that, Peet's also acquired a famous boutique teahouse in the Bay area, Peet'. S boutique may have been moving forward at a slow and firm pace, I can still see the shadow of Alfred Peet in this coffee brand, "boutique, quality, service".