Black Day for Coffee

Founder of Peet's Coffee dies at 87

Chronicle Staff Report
Friday, August 31, 2007

Alfred Peet, who founded Peet's Coffee & Tea and opened its first store 41 years ago in Berkeley, died Wednesday at his home in Ashland, Ore., the company said today. He was 87.

Mr. Peet opened the coffee roaster's first store in Berkeley at Walnut and Vine streets in 1966, followed by outlets in Menlo Park (1971), Piedmont Avenue in Oakland (1978) and another Berkeley store across from the Claremont Hotel in 1980. He retired in 1983.

Mr. Peet was born in Alkmaar, Holland. He cleaned machinery and did other odd jobs at his father's coffee roastery in Alkmaar before World War II. After the war, Mr. Peet became an apprentice at Lipton's Tea in London, then moved to Indonesia to work in the tea business there then immigrated to San Francisco in 1955 to work at a coffee importer, E.A. Johnson & Co.