Alfred Peet was born in 1920 in Alkmaar in the Netherlands, where his father ran a coffee and tea business and young Alfred roasted and ground beans. In 1938 he moved to London to work for Twinings, then spent time in producing regions including New Zealand and Indonesia before settling in San Francisco in 1955. What he found in America was weak, sour robusta coffee, pre ground and left on diner hot plates.

In 1966 he opened Peet’s Coffee, Tea and Spices on Vine Street in Berkeley and refused to sell brewed cups, only fresh, dark roasted arabica beans to take home. Regulars called themselves Peetniks. In the early 1970s he coached the three founders of Starbucks, letting them copy his store layout and sharing his supplier lists. He sold the business to Sal Bonavita in 1979 and stayed on as a buyer until 1983. In 1984 Starbucks cofounder Jerry Baldwin bought Peet’s, and later sold the Starbucks brand to Howard Schultz to focus on it. Peet died in 2007 at 87.

• Opening in 1966 Berkeley placed the shop at the center of the counterculture near the Free Speech Movement.
• Selling only beans pushed customers to learn grinding, storage, and brewing at home.
• Peet’s went public in 2001 and was bought by JAB Holding in 2012 for nearly one billion dollars.
• The episode reports Keurig Dr Pepper acquiring Peet’s in August 2025 for 18.4 billion dollars.
• Workers at stores in Davis, Berkeley, Oakland, and Portland began unionizing in the 2020s, and the company spent over 125,000 dollars on consultants to counter the effort.