The Coffee Visionary
The Life and Legacy of Alfred Peet
“The coffee tells my story.” —Alfred Peet
At a time when most Americans drank coffee percolated from canned grounds, the son of a coffee roaster from a small town in the Netherlands laid the foundation for specialty coffee in the United States. When Alfred Peet opened Peet’s Coffee, Tea & Spices in Berkeley, California, in 1966, and started selling small batches of on-site, hand-roasted coffee beans, the renowned roastmaster had no way of knowing that he was brewing a coffee revolution and defining the coffee culture we know and love today.
Jasper Houtman is an editor for the Dutch financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad and has twenty-five years experience in writing for magazines and newspapers in the Netherlands. Traveling through Guatemala and Honduras in 2004, he became interested in coffee, which led to a fascination for the story of Alfred Peet, who is relatively unknown in his motherland, the Netherlands.
