The parent of Peet's (and Caribou) closed all our local Caribou a few years ago and replaced them with a much smaller number of Peet's. It was a downgrade (the nationwide Peet's is nothing at all like the great ones I remember from the Bay Area) and a year later, they closed those Peet's and abandoned the region entirely. The Peet's they closed did a decent business (as did Caribou) so it was all just mysterious.

It sounds like they just skipped a step with you guys. Efficient!

We had half the Caribou stores in our area convert to Peet's, and the other half were shuttered. Then the Peet's that remained closed about a year later.

Probably the result of hiring some consultants. ;-)

What is Caribou? If they were as bad as that, why are you surprised Peet's would shut them down?

If you want good espresso, make it at home. The equipment pays for itself after a few years of not driving out to get espresso on a regular basis.

Just a smaller coffee company. Never been in a location, but I have had many of their k-cups.

Ah, well if a company makes k-cups I wouldn't expect them to make decent espresso. Not sure what the OP is getting at.

Caribou is a chain out of Minneapolis / St Paul (the "Twin Cities"), if I recall correctly. I'm not saying they were particularly good. What I meant was, Peet's was somewhat better, bought out their local locations, and announced that Peet's shops were coming. Instead, in Dad's location, they got another Dunkin Donuts. Overall, I've not heard of Peet's actually opening stores in any of the locations they purchased.

I don't know what's behind all that. But the end result has not been an improvement in product/choice, in our area.

Anyway... I wouldn't have mentioned it, except there was the OP about the Keurig deal. My personal perspective is that if and as Peet's was once a well-regarded set of shops in the Bay area, it's quite another thing, now. As such, Keurig deals and the like not only don't excite me, they engender an actively negative reaction.

Perhaps that says something about putting growth before quality.

> Perhaps that says something about putting growth before quality.

Right there with you on that one.

There is usually no coffee supply connection between the company operating coffee shops and the company producing retail coffee for sale.

The Dunkin' Donuts coffee you buy in the grocery store is made by JM Smuckers (the jelly company), which also recently purchased Cafe Bustelo.

Peet's bought out our Caribou and took quite a while to remodel it before re-opening. It was open as a Peet's for maybe 6 months and it closed for good. I just don't understand how they came to that decision.

> It's looking like Peet's is primarily a money game, now.

And they weren't before?

There was a time when Starbucks in our area had pretty much gone to the dogs (years earlier, some of their shops were actually run pretty well and could serve a good espresso, particularly when they still had the manual bars). There were a couple of Peet's, significantly farther away but still within occasional range, and they were then significantly better than Starbucks at that time.

At that time, Peet's seemed to be proceeding more slowly and setting a certain quality level ahead of rampant expansion.

If they are moving into Keurig / Green Mountain, and selling properties to DD, then they are just another corporate customer.

Mars (yeah, that Mars) came in and bought another local outfit in a nearby city. Fortunately, the deal I guess left the actual shops out of it, or they reverted a year or two later to independent ownership. They rebranded and are still / once again busy serving up a good product to loyal customers. The original brand name appears now to have moved into a stable of similar names and products that I expect to see floating around corporate settings -- hollow, genericized echos of what they once represented.

I suppose all this is getting more than a bit OT for HN. But I'm older, "lives on coffee" kind of guy. And I've found that big and/or public money just does not produce an exceptional product, in that market.

A bit frustrating, when those same forces force out the local operators. Fortunately, the one that has opened near me is in a town that can afford it and is surprising me with more of a population that is embracing the shop than I would have expected to be present.

And yeah, there is "make it yourself." But there is also something social -- and simply "getting out of the house" -- to heading over to the local joint and maybe striking up a conversation.