Blue Bottle | Coffee, It's a Helluva Drug

moving away from plastic & paper

Blue Bottle Coffee is in the news this week (h/t once again to my friend Karen), as it announced that it is undertaking a series of operational changes with the goal to be zero waste by end of 2020.

The drive starts with pilots in two San Francisco Bay area shops to eliminate single use cups, which they hope to roll out throughout their entire chain.

A company blog post from their CEO announcing the changes contains some frank comments, including an admission that current efforts just aren’t cutting it:

We recently woke up to the fact that our beautiful bioplastic cups and straws were not being composted even though they were 100 percent compostable. Too many ended up in landfills, where they couldn’t break down at all. So we switched to paper straws and sugarcane-paper cups. But that’s still not enough. We still go through on average 15,000 disposable single-use cups per cafe per month in the US alone, which adds up to 12 million cups per year.
-Bryan Meehan, CEO, Blue Bottle Coffee

coffee story: the evolution of Blue Bottle

Interesting CNBC article from this summer (h/t to my friend Karen) of the birth and growth of Blue Bottle Coffee. There’s also a lot of good stuff on the development of coffee’s third wave.

when is a chain not a chain?

When I was in Milwaukee last summer I visited an outlet of Colectivo Coffee, a local coffee business with 13 cafes in the Milwaukee area, three in Madison, WI, and four (soon to be five) in Chicagoland.

I liked the ambience, the coffee was very good (if not exceptional). Felt like a small, independent cafe, definitely nothing like a shop that’s part of a multi-outlet behemoth.

mini review: Blue Bottle Coffee, Georgetown

see my Georgetown field report

Blue Bottle, a roaster and cafe operator founded in Oakland, California, is a leading player in coffee’s third wave. It has grown significantly since raising capital from private equity investors, and global food megaconglomerate Nestlé now owns a majority stake in the company.

What was once a spunky little indie now is a growing global presence, with stores in California, New York, DC, Miami, Boston, Japan, and soon South Korea. But unlike certain other global coffee chains (cough cough), you’ll still get an amazing coffee from Blue Bottle.

Matty’s Holiday Coffee Gift Guide

this is the original 2018 version; also see my 2019 holiday gift guide

You can do better than a Starbucks gift card.

Here are a few suggestions for showing a little holiday love to the coffee drinker in your life. Prices are as of this date and, like much in life, subject to change. Shop around for best deals.