Rest In Peet's

[Writers Plot]

Posted by Sheila Connolly

Alfred Peet died this week. To most of the world that means nothing, but Alfred has been a daily part of my life for close to thirty years. Alfred Peet founded Peet's Coffee.

I first encountered Peet's coffee when I moved to the Berkeley area in the late 1970s. I found a dead-end job at the University of California, and I quickly discovered that the office coffee was surprisingly good. It turned out that everyone chipped in to buy beans from some place nearby with a funny name once every week or so. In the course of things, my week to make the pick-up came around, and I ventured forth to the heart of Berkeley (which I didn't know very well at the time).

Peet's Coffee occupied a funky corner building at the intersection of Walnut and Vine Streets, not far from campus. It was small, and it was always crowded, with people overflowing onto the surrounding sidewalk and the few benches. Upstairs there was open-air seating, where those in the know took their coffee and opened a book of pretentious poetry and tried to look hip or cool or at least interesting. The coffee they served there would remove paint, but it was always fresh and always delicious. I very quickly got hooked, and even in the years when I was working two or three jobs and living in University-subsidized housing, I managed to buy my bag of Peet's fresh-roasted beans and grind them at home and make spectacularly good coffee.

I had not realized until I read Alfred Peet's obituary in the Boston Globe on Sunday that the selfsame Peet's store I used to frequent was "the West Coast's caffeine mecca," but it doesn't surprise me. It was that good.

But Peet's was more than a local phenomenon (which I also hadn't realized). Alfred Peet actually first learned the tea business, working for Lipton's (as did my grandmother, so now I wonder if they ever crossed paths) after WWII, then moving to San Francisco, where he soon found himself asking why Americans were content to drink the world's lousiest coffee. He changed all that, working first as an importer of beans, then setting out with his own business. He roasted his own beans, and the result set coffee-drinkers on a whole new path.

I felt bereft when I moved away from California after ten years, then overjoyed when Peet's started a mail-order business (this was back in the dark ages before the Internet). Then we moved to Massachusetts a few years ago. One day I found myself in an 18th-century cemetery paying my respects to a few of my ancestors. I looked up, and there across the street was a Peet's. It was a stirring moment, believe me.

After nearly thirty years, my loyalty to Mr. Peet's coffee has never wavered. Oh, I've strayed on occasion. I'll even admit to enjoying a Starbucks latte now and then. But for day-to-day, year in-year out good coffee, I've never found anything better than Peet's.

So this morning, a fresh cup of Arabian Mocha Java in hand, I opened the paper and read of Alfred Peet's death at 87. And I raised my cup to him. Thank you, Alfred Peet.