Monday, February 12, 2007


proof that i've been married a long time

"peet's coffee, a specialty coffee roaster and marketer, today announced the availability of its fresh, deep-roasted coffee within stop & shop supermarkets."

truly long-time readers may recall that i began my specialty coffee journey many years ago when a buddhist monk and beat poet, the late philip whalen, made me a press pot of peets sumatra. he was a complete peetnik.

i spent more than a decade after that ordering peets by mail, and was so fond of it that i actually visited every single peets then open on my california honeymoon. (that used to be easy to do, really -- i don't think there were more than 6 or 8, even if the one in palo alto was at first hard to find.)

since that time, peets' has expanded, gone to santa monica, moved east to boston, tried to sell itself in au bon pain, flirted with macy's -- held an ipo -- wow!

here in nyc i just couldn't get the stuff reliably fresh or properly made from any of the retail sources. so today's announcement is interesting.

peets has developed its own distribution network to rotate the coffees in new england and keep 'em fresh. this is certainly something no other specialty coffee company has been able to do reliably, in my experience.

it will be interesting to see how they manage to make this work. . .(and yes, to this day, i do prefer peets to the mermaid.

sorry: love of the major dies hard. in some ways it is the ultimate cafetiére coffee.)

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posted by fortune | 8:05 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 2 comments