Alfred Peet Goes to the Great Coffee Shop in the Sky

Last week was a bad one for pioneers and philosophers of our favorite beverages. On Thursday, beer (and liquor) guru Michael Jackson passed away at 65. A day earlier, Alfred Peet, founder of Peet’s Coffee, died in his Ashland, Oregon home. He was 87.

Had we known Peet lived in the Pacific Northwest, we would have made a pilgrimage to his home. We would have loved to pick his brain on bean-growing regions and roasting techniques, and hear what he thought about our Starbucks-ed nation. What coffee drinker wouldn’t want to meet the man who was credited with “starting the specialty coffee revolution” and “teaching America how to drink coffee”? Even you would, Folgers lover. Even you.

Alfred Peet helped his father roast beans in the Netherlands before immigrating to San Francisco in 1955. He opened his first coffee shop, in Berkeley, in 1966. He taught Jerry Baldwin, who’d go on to found Starbucks, how to properly roast beans. (Starbucks bought beans from Peet’s during its infancy.) Though Peet sold his company in 1979—to Baldwin—he stayed on as a bean buyer until 1983. His brand is now publicly traded (PEET) and operates over 150 retail shops in the US. (Next new store: Queen Anne.) And Peet’s roasts taste just as wonderful today as we imagine they did 40 years ago. Can’t say the same for SBUX, but can’t deny that it wouldn’t exist—nor would American coffee culture—without Alfred Peet.

Raise your mug—or paper cup or thermos—to Mr. Peet, a coffee industry legend, and quite likely the reason you’re imbibing caffeine today. Can you imagine Seattle, or your life, without it?