Why do IT bigwigs like Google Twitter invest in this coffee shop?

A few years ago, coffee chains were in the "fast-vanishing era", and people were keen to line up to buy a cup of coffee that could be ready in a few minutes, even though it had a mediocre taste.

Times have changed, and when people's demand for coffee is no longer limited to "refreshing", an innovation is imperative. When it comes to "innovation", we have to mention "Blue bottle Coffee" and its founder, James Freeman.

Freeman used to be a clarinetist, so he compared brewing coffee to an art that included practice, precision and the sheer fun of hand-made. He and his team insist on daily cup testing to remain sensitive to flavor and determine the variety and baking degree based on changing feedback.

In 2005, James Freeman's first Blue bottle Coffee opened in San Francisco. His stringent pursuit of coffee quality has led to more and more people's love for boutique coffee.

In 2015, Blue bottle Coffee completed $70 million in financing (Blue bottle raised a total of $46 million in the first two rounds), how on earth did this somewhat "non-mainstream" cafe win the favor of IT bigwigs such as Google Ventures, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr?

The following is an excerpt from the craftsmanship of Blue bottle Coffee:

For as long as I can remember, I have had my own ideas about coffee. My interest in coffee was seeded when I was four or five years old, when my parents asked me to open their MJB green cans with a can opener. I use tools like an adult (dangerous! Pried open the coffee can, when the can opener cut into the top of the metal can, the aroma hissed out of the vacuum sealed can, the fragrance was simply wonderful. I begged my parents to let me have a taste, but I was refused.

The meaning given to coffee by my parents is highly misleading after careful consideration and refusing to question it. We live in Fieldbrook, Humboldt County, a small town in northern California. My father works for the California Equity Commission (IRS) and my mother is a housewife. They have a Corning plug-in coffee drip filter with a classic light blue cornflower pattern. They put the coffee powder in the pot the night before and set the time with the light timer my father bought at the hardware store. As a result, the whole family could be awakened by the rumble the next day. As I got older, I realized that this was the sound of over-extraction of coffee. My parents would add extra strong milk to such coffee (note: this milk is rich in milk solids in addition to milk fat, suitable for making lattes and cappuccinos).

I repeatedly begged them to let me try the taste of coffee, and at the end of the protracted war, they finally agreed to let me take a sip. There is no doubt that I am filled with remorse after this sip. Compared with the charming aroma it smells, it tastes unbelievable. The aroma from the sealed jar turned out to be its best time. This cheap, improperly roasted, ground and canned coffee powder will never taste good.

The experience is unforgettable and far more ingrained than the idea that coffee tastes good. The strong contrast, which smells fragrant and the entrance is hard to swallow, haunts me for years. However, the idea that "drinking coffee should be more than this experience" lingers on my mind.

The confusion persisted until I went to Santa Cruz to visit my married sister and the situation improved. My brother-in-law was born in Italy, so (changing the way my parents make coffee), they brew Medagoria in "Mr. Coffee" brand American electric drip filter. My mother certainly can't accept the espresso powder of Doro.

They drink coffee one pot after another. They are younger and cooler than my parents. They talked about Solzhenitsyn, J.D. Salinger and Jerry? Brown, not road conditions, sales tax and grammatical errors. They put the same amount of milk and sugar in their coffee, so that coffee is no longer coffee itself-in their home, coffee is a way to socialize. At that time, I used to drink this kind of coffee near midnight to participate in pleasant cultural exchanges. After a cup of coffee, I feel like an adult talking about the events of the day. But having coffee with my sister didn't make me cool. In the process of growing up, on the contrary, I played the clarinet more and more wholeheartedly.

How devoted am I to selflessness? In ninth grade, I gave up playing the board game Dungeons and Dragons in order to free up more practice time. One day at school, a team of urchins pushed me to the locker and called me "flute boy", and I almost blurted out, "well, actually." To fight back. Wrong about the instrument I play, to me, it is really offensive.

In order to follow the famous musician Rosario? Mazeo studied clarinet, and I enrolled at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The musician lives in Carmel, and it takes an hour to drive there. I had a hard time in college. I went to Carmel to practice clarinet with Rosario for four to five hours a day, had a full schedule for a philosophy degree, and had to do a lot of reading and writing. I started drinking a lot of coffee-a lot of bad coffee.

On one occasion, when I finished a subject paper, I drank an average of a cup of coffee for every page I wrote. Coffee does not bring pleasure, but only pharmacology. The situation worsened when I started working as a musician. If you are going to have a four-hour performance at the theatre at 8 o'clock in the evening, you need coffee.

At that time, there were also some small shops in Santa Cruz that served drip coffee. I use a plastic tapered filter cup at home. I had a meagre income, but every once in a while I visited a store that sold Chemex coffee pots, French presses and coffee beans from different producing areas. The goods in their shop are so exotic that they are difficult to buy elsewhere. When I get a little spare money from a show, I come to this store to try a few things. This is the first time I have a chance to buy coffee beans from a specific producing area. Well, coffee from Kenya. That's interesting.

After graduating from college, I went to New York to follow another clarinet master, Carmen. Opaman studied and worked as a professional clarinetist for eight years, including working for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Graduate School and the Highway Philharmonic Orchestra (an orchestra of about 150 people all living in and around San Francisco. And performed symphonies in nearby areas, performing in cities throughout Northern California, including Monterey, Napa and Modesto). Since the season of each symphony is only five to six weeks, we have to make up our lives by working in different orchestras.

At the same time, my interest in coffee is growing. I began to try to bake coffee beans at home by myself. The first set of tools I used were an oven and a perforated baking pan. I occasionally need to fly to a city outside California to perform. At that time, if you wanted to have good coffee in Phoenix, you had to stand on your own feet (and should still be). I will bring coffee beans and Zassenhaus hand mill, and sometimes I will ask the flight attendant to bring me hot water to make a pot of French coffee.

I don't think everything about coffee is a problem for me, but my career as a musician. As a clarinetist, I always take the job I don't want, rather than win the job I want through auditions. I can find enough jobs to make a living, but these are not my favorite jobs. It feels like I need to keep driving a shabby used car for 30,000 miles.

At the beginning of 1999, my heart finally brightened. The freelancer's schedule was so sad that I had to play Holst's "Planet" suite three times in three different orchestras over a six-month period. Maybe you'll know this song. It comes back from the dead, all over John? Every movie music Williams wrote for Star Wars with a stroke of a pen was found in every pompous, shallow and tiresome action movie from 1970 to 1990, and Phrygia's fourth upward adjustment was found in early 20th century English classics ("talking about you", Gordon? Jacob; "and you", Edward? Elga). The "Planet" suite, plus Carl? Orff's "Bran Poetry" has become a growing problem in my career as a musician year after year. Playing the Planet Suite in three orchestras a year, this time as a second clarinet player in the Modesto Symphony Orchestra, made me realize that if I played it again, I might be so manic that I hurt people with a clarinet. I need another way out, and coffee is the only thing I can think of.

But there's an interlude. At the end of the website boom, some friends asked me to work at Mongo Music, a website similar to Pandora's personal online radio service, with the basic concept of "tell us what songs and artists you like and enjoy the music we play to you". Imagine a huge wall with an eye-catching dial and flashing lights. behind the wall is a group of squirrels running frantically on the treadmill so that the lights on the wall are always on. We are those squirrels, squirrels with headphones. Every 30 seconds, a piece of music plays, and then we do a very fast, rough music analysis.

I have never worked from nine to five. As a musician, I practice all day and perform on most weekend nights. Now I have a salary, a payday every two weeks, and I don't have to drive to Modesto. This is exactly what I need, but it only lasted seven months. After that, people in khaki pants and Polo T-shirts began to show up. They were Microsoft employees, and we were shipped to Seattle, where Mongo became MSN music. Soon they found a way to automate the work of the squirrels, and I was laid off after 9 / 11.

Losing my job started my coffee business. But I didn't want to sell coffee drinks at the time-that's what happens later. I want to bake and sell coffee beans. I roasted coffee beans at home, experimenting with different beans and roasting degrees, and I realized that I needed a commercial space for roasting coffee.

I saw a "for rent" sign on Telegraph Boulevard in Tmescale, Oakland, and called according to the number above. The landlady has a big space, but it's too expensive for me. However, she was attracted by my plan and said that she also had a 186-square-foot pot shed in the courtyard of Donna Thomas Restaurant that she could rent to me for $600 a month. I didn't know I could bargain, so I said yes. Despite being cash-strapped, I began to build my studio. I went to Idaho to buy a red Dietrich small raw coffee bean roaster. I remember opening the box and seeing the bean dryer with a little surprise and thinking, this is going to be my career. I put it at one end of the shed and installed three standard sinks as required by the Ministry of Health.

All these early experiences are deeply imprinted on my mind. When baking coffee, I take beans and grind them every minute or even 20 seconds. This is a wonderful process of self-study and exploration. I'm looking for what I think is a good flavor. The flavor I want is already in my mind, and I'm going to make it a reality.

I got up early because I had to finish baking before the restaurant opened at 5pm. When baking beans, the shed is very hot and the door has to be open. I usually listen to the opera with my stereo on. As soon as the bean roaster was set up, I began to write new baking records and match the coffee beans I sold when I first participated in the farmers' fair (mid-August 2002). After that, business began to pick up, and I baked beans all day during the restaurant break on Saturday and Sunday. The bean dryer can only bake 7 pounds (3 kilograms) of coffee beans at a time. I once baked 53 stoves in one breath, an average of one every 17 minutes. This record was set by me before I moved to the bakery in Emeryville, and it is still in the company today and has not been broken.

At that time, I ordered raw beans from Royal Coffee (which is still a raw bean supplier of some products of Blue bottle Coffee). I drove to the Emeryville warehouse and loaded two or three sacks of coffee and raw beans into my Peugeot station wagon. The process is mysterious and fun. I think, "is that from Yemen? beat all! Is that from Ethiopia? How wonderful! " I opened the sack and imagined the flavor of the coffee. The more I think about it, the more crazy I feel at that time. I came up and called myself a coffee baker because I said: put the shed back and set up a progress check mechanism so that it can be standardized. Just like I built this legal and viable business entity, mostly out of luck and stubborn character.

I have to pay the rent. I have to start selling coffee. I have just been born with the son of my first wife, Darcy. In order to achieve my goal of setting up a Saturday farmers' fair in San Francisco Ferry Square, I had to participate in the Friday farmers' market in the old city of Oakland.

As a promotion, I went to the Ferry Square market to deliver coffee to my favorite stall owner: Mike the Chocolate maker? Emperor Laiqi Wudi, Berkeley's top baker and Mita cake maker. The Saturday market at that time was just a prototype of today, Mike? Emperor Laiqiwudi and Mita do not have today's fixed storefronts.

One day, I was reading Paris to the Moon at the quiet Oakland market (Adam? (by Gopnik), one of Catelyn's partners in the Mita cake called me. They had an espresso car and wanted to use my coffee beans.

Great! I told myself that I could sell an extra 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of beans a week. When I started serving coffee drinks to Mita cake, they were keenly aware (perhaps because I emphasized it many times) that it was not easy to make coffee well. In the end, they sold me the coffee cart (I later found out that they decided to use my coffee because it was beautifully packaged). I met Catelyn the first time I wandered into the Mita kitchen for technical training in coffee truck operation, and I thought she was very special (we each had partners and we didn't start to have feelings for each other until a year later). She is agile, pragmatic, clever and strict.

She sells cakes in antique dresses at the bazaar and uses Sidekick (an early smartphone) to send messages to her parents. I nicknamed her "retro future baker". I didn't expect that a woman could be simple and natural, enterprising, dedicated and young at the same time, but she and the baker of the Honeytower were all the same.

Dedication to work will eventually have an inevitable impact on the partnership. When Catelyn and I were single, we communicated more often. After helping Catelyn and her colleagues make coffee at the Berkeley farmer's bazaar for several weeks, I bought their espresso truck and started operating at the bazaar twice a week. People are slowly beginning to notice my coffee.

At that time, it was rare for espresso to be perfectly extracted in a short time, or hot and foamy milk. I was still in the stage of using different extraction techniques, different coffee beans, different combinations, and different roasting degrees to adjust the flavor of espresso. I also use a rickety wooden coffee drip filter to make hand coffee: in the lab, one cup of coffee at a time. People think it's crazy, and they're not used to waiting. Today, people pay more attention to the details of coffee brewing, and more people agree that good coffee doesn't come from thermos-but it was different then. Some people are interested, some people think it's ridiculous, and it still is.

At the end of 2003, after the renovation of the ferry building, the bazaar moved to the adjacent square. I soon learned that the bazaar was going to open a fixed coffee car, and if I wanted to bid, I had to pass the coffee blind test. But I didn't know in advance that another coffee roaster was invited to compete, and there were well-prepared speeches and flawless handbags stacked in the wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow! Why didn't I think of it? The staff took our coffee to another room and gave it to the referee. A week later, I found out that I had been chosen. My booth is in a dead corner area, next to the roast chicken car. I hired an assistant to help an hour before the start of the market, otherwise it would be just me, my Peugeot station wagon and a wheelbarrow.

I still remember it was drizzling and quiet on several Saturdays in December. In January, the weather improved, and on the Saturday before the Fine Winter Food Show in San Francisco, many cooks and foodies came. I looked up and saw that there were 15 people in line in front of me, and this has been basically the case since then.

People wait for a cup of coffee for a long time. They must have found it different, to see how difficult and fascinating it took one or two people to make a drink. Eventually they fell in love with the product. But this puzzles me, perhaps because the background of my life is all of the above. I am exhausted all the time. When I'm not selling coffee, I'm baking beans. At the same time, I am dealing with the divorce and taking care of my children. In the intense pain, I started my new life.

The community of the farmer's bazaar is completely different from what I have experienced before. Friends from the classical music industry have a calm and formal style. The food industry is very enthusiastic, and everyone is curious about what I am doing. I want my friends in classical music to know that these strange, self-publicizing people (they spend a lot of time communicating with the outside world and have no reason to hug you). In addition, this is such an emotional world, in part because you are filling people up. This change in my life is breathtaking. I am doing heavy manual work, and the people around me are excited about what they and I are doing.

I like everything in coffee. Clarinet brings me practice, rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal. When you play, you exercise muscles that you can't see, causing the air to vibrate. Coffee is solid. I'm actually changing the chemistry of my customer's brain. The show of making an espresso lasts 90 seconds, and after one show is over, I move on to applause or booing.

After several futile efforts, I finally persuaded Catelyn not only to "hang out", but also to ask her to accompany me to inspect the coffee service of a new wholesaler client. The customer is now a story from Michelin 1-star 's restaurant and San Francisco, when his restaurant was a relatively unfamiliar location in the Richmond district outside San Francisco, called Azisa. Boss and chef, Murad? Lalo, who is trying to break the Arab academic style of Moroccan restaurants, emphasizes strict procurement and modern cooking techniques. It was September 2004, and although a lovely young West Point baker would be whispered to an embarrassed old guy, Catelyn and I have been together ever since.

The business of the ferry terminal farmers' bazaar began to take off. I wanted to open a cafe, but I was short of funds. However, a friend who has a building next to the San Francisco Civic Center in Hayes Valley said I could open a coffee booth in his property garage. I got permission in January 2005, and the first blue bottle coffee kiosk has been in operation ever since.

I didn't expect this coffee booth to be so popular. The coffee kiosk was in a dead end with the smell of urine, and I started with a credit card and a little poor deposit support. I need more money and more experience. I have to work in a coffee shop at least once before opening, right?

A few months later, the Blue bottle Coffee Pavilion began to get a lot of attention, not only because of its remote location, but also because we did things differently from any other cafe in San Francisco at the time. There are no different cup sizes or seasonings, and there are only six drinks to choose from, but I have the first Italian coffee machine in California with a proportional integral differential temperature controller to quickly extract every rich espresso; production begins only after placing an order; every cup of milk drink has a flower; strict management of coffee freshness; no coffee thermos All drip filter coffee is ground after the order is placed and extracted using a self-designed drip filter. Today's ordinary services throughout the country (not counting Sao Hutong) were extremely unusual at that time.

In this unusual way, we succeeded. Three years after the coffee booth opened, we opened the first blue bottle cafe in San Francisco Mint Square. Within a year we opened branches in the Ferry Building and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and opened bakeries and cafes in Oakland and Brooklyn-within a year we had two roasters and four cafes. Since then, we have opened cafes in Rockefeller Center, Chelsea and Tribeca in Manhattan and a coffee booth in High Line Park.

If I had any coffee business background or any business experience, I don't think I would have started it. I might say, "this is too hard." It's not realistic. How can you make money at such a slow rate? " In fact, not having a preconceived concept means I can leap more freely and do something more personalized and meaningful.

Ignorance is bliss. Just as people whose native language is not English can also use charming conversation, even if the technology is not correct. For example, when you sell coffee, it seems that you should have different cups, such as small, medium and large cups, or tall, extra-high, extremely tall cups and so on, right? But I don't have a cup. I also refuse to extract a lot of coffee and put it in a thermos. The flavor of coffee begins to age within minutes of extraction. If people are faced with only a switch, they will not have the experience of witnessing the coffee-making process. I decided to grind the coffee beans in front of you at the Blue bottle Cafe, put them in a filter cup and pour water slowly. We will make your own coffee.