Peet's Coffee & Tea is the American coffee company Alfred Peet started in Berkeley, California, in 1966. It is widely credited with sparking the country's specialty-coffee movement: Peet roasted darker, fresher, better beans than anything most Americans had tasted, and the people he trained went on to found Starbucks. Today Peet's runs a chain of cafes, sells bagged beans in thousands of grocery stores, and belongs to one of the world's largest coffee groups. This guide explains the company and its cafes; for the deep-roast beans themselves, see our companion Peet's Coffee brand guide.
What is Peet's Coffee & Tea?
Peet's Coffee & Tea is a roaster and cafe chain founded by Alfred Peet, a Dutch immigrant who opened his first shop at the corner of Vine and Walnut streets in Berkeley on April 1, 1966. The original store was called Peet's Coffee, Tea & Spices, and at the start it sold whole beans and loose tea rather than cups of brewed coffee. The "& Tea" in the name has been part of the identity from the beginning, and tea remains on the menu to this day.
The Peet's coffee company built its reputation on one idea: roast small batches darker and sell them fresh. At a time when most American coffee came pre-ground in cans and tasted thin and stale, Peet's offered something richer, oilier, and more aromatic. That contrast is why people still call Alfred Peet the grandfather of specialty coffee.
Alfred Peet and the start of the story
Alfred Peet (1920-2007) grew up in Alkmaar in the Netherlands, where his father ran a coffee and tea business called B. Koorn & Company. He learned to roast and grind as a boy, apprenticed with the tea trader Twinings in London in the 1930s, and worked as a tea taster in the Dutch East Indies, where he fell for the syrupy richness of dark-roasted Indonesian coffee. He settled in San Francisco in the 1950s, was unimpressed by the weak American coffee he found there, and decided to do something about it.
The Berkeley shop was small, but it became a destination. Customers lined up on the sidewalk, and a culture grew around the counter: regulars who cared about origin, freshness, and roast level. One of those regulars, a retired army sergeant named Key Dickason, helped develop a house blend so good that Peet promoted him in name to "Major." Major Dickason's Blend, created in 1969, is still Peet's best-selling coffee.
Peet's idea was simple and radical for its time: treat coffee like a fresh food, roast it in small batches, and sell it quickly.
The Starbucks connection
This is the part of the story most people know without realizing it traces back to Peet. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, three friends in Seattle who loved good coffee came to learn from Alfred Peet: Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. Peet became something of a mentor, sharing his roasting know-how and supplier contacts and letting them model their store on his. With his guidance they opened a coffee-bean shop in Seattle in 1971 and called it Starbucks. In its earliest years, Starbucks bought roasted beans from Peet's; in 1973 Peet urged them to build their own roastery.
The relationship came full circle in 1984, when Jerry Baldwin, by then a Starbucks owner, bought Peet's. (Howard Schultz, who later built Starbucks into a global chain, joined Starbucks in the early 1980s and bought the company from Baldwin's group later that decade.) If you want the other side of that history, read our Starbucks brand guide.
The cafes and what's on the menu
A Peet's cafe today looks like a modern coffeehouse, but the menu still leans on the deep-roast house style. If you have ever wondered what a cafe actually is and what it serves, Peet's is a clear example of the format. You will typically find:
- Espresso drinks — espresso, lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, and flavored seasonal drinks, all pulled from Peet's darker-roasted espresso beans.
- Brewed coffee — batch-brewed house blends and rotating single origins, plus pour-over in some locations.
- Cold drinks — bottled and on-tap cold brew, iced lattes, and seasonal blended drinks.
- Tea — a curated tea range, true to the "& Tea" in the name, including black, green, and herbal options served hot or iced.
- Food — pastries and light bites that vary by location.
The signature flavor cue across the cafe menu is roast. Peet's espresso tends toward bittersweet, syrupy, and bold rather than bright and acidic, which is exactly what made the original shop stand out.
How Peet's cafe coffee differs from what you make at home
Many of the drinks on a Peet's board are simply careful versions of things you can build in your own kitchen. A latte is espresso plus steamed milk; a cold brew is coffee steeped long and cold. If you want to recreate the cafe experience, our guides on making espresso at home and making cold brew walk through the method. The main thing a cafe adds is consistency, trained baristas, and that distinctive house roast.
How big is Peet's, and who owns it now?
From four Bay Area shops, Peet's grew into a national company. It went public in 2001, was taken private by the investment group JAB Holding in 2012, and over the following years was bundled together with other big coffee names. In 2015 the Dutch group Douwe Egberts merged with the coffee arm of Mondelez to form Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE); JDE then combined with Peet's in 2019 to create JDE Peet's, which listed publicly in 2020. Along the way Peet's also acquired specialty roasters such as Stumptown and Intelligentsia and the tea brand Mighty Leaf.
The corporate picture shifted again in 2025-2026: Keurig Dr Pepper agreed to acquire JDE Peet's, took control in early 2026, and the JDE Peet's shares were delisted from the Amsterdam exchange. Keurig Dr Pepper has said it plans to separate into two businesses, including a standalone global coffee company that would house the Peet's brand. In other words, the corporate name above Peet's keeps changing through large beverage-industry deals — but the brand, the cafes, and the deep-roast style have stayed consistent. As of the mid-2020s, Peet's operates a few hundred cafes concentrated in the United States and sells bagged coffee through thousands of grocery stores.
Quick facts at a glance
| Detail | Fact |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1966, Berkeley, California |
| Founder | Alfred Peet (1920-2007) |
| Original name | Peet's Coffee, Tea & Spices |
| House style | Darker, deep-roasted Arabica |
| Signature blend | Major Dickason's Blend (1969) |
| Famous legacy | Mentored the original Starbucks founders |
| Owner today | Part of the global Keurig Dr Pepper / JDE Peet's group |
Peet's coffee and tea versus the wave it started
It helps to place Peet's in context. The brand sits in what people now call the second wave of coffee — the move from canned supermarket coffee toward darker, fresher, cafe-served coffee, the same wave Starbucks rode to global scale. A newer third wave of lighter-roasted, single-origin specialty roasters followed; you can read about that side of the industry in our coffee roasters guide. Peet's matters because it came first. Without that little Berkeley shop, the cafes and roasters most of us take for granted might look very different.
Where to go from here
Peet's Coffee & Tea is, at heart, a story about treating coffee as something fresh and worth roasting well — an idea that reshaped how much of the world drinks coffee. If the company history is what drew you in, the natural next step is the beans themselves: our Peet's Coffee brand guide covers the deep-roast philosophy, Major Dickason's Blend, and how to brew Peet's at home. From there, keep exploring the wider world of cafes and roasters in our coffee hub.