Blue Bottle Comes Out

Reported today in the pages of the NYTimes, TechCrunch, and the Wall St. Journal, James Freeman, the artsy, occassionally eccentric and overall generally loveable founder of Blue Bottle Coffee Company is no longer the owner, having transferred most of those remaining rights to the head of True Ventures, Bryan Meehan. True Ventures placed a 16.8 million dollar flux of cash recently, buying out the previous 6.8 million given by Kohlberg Ventures back in 2008 (remember how Mint Plaza, the MoMa expansion, and the New York adventure started all about the same time? Now you know). While James will be staying on as some sort of face for the company, he is officially announced that he is no longer the owner. 

The thing is, he hasn't been for a long time -- since the Kohlberg venture in 08, he's had a minority stake in his own company, having more or less a creative directorship of sorts. And since 08, the company itself hasn't even been a "local" SF or Oakland company, with Kohlbergs official legal title being in Portola Valley, CA, and True Ventures having their legal title in Great Falls, VA, the profits from those operations are diffused between different entities and individuals, most of whom do not live in the Bay Area. While Blue Bottle staffs many people in the Bay Area (and to this day, provides one of the best in-house pastry programs I have seen for a cafe, courtesy of Kate), it hasn't been a local player in the larger economic sense for a while. 

This is sort of the worry and the case study for investment capital typically -- whether the La Boulange example, or Stonybrook in the case of dairy -- the purchase of companies by entities that eventually take them (financially) outside of the local economy, as well as the ownership. Quality considerations are always in question, because the notion of who is in charge and what the qualitative stakes and positions are of the new company (including how much per pound green, in the case of coffee, should be expected). And while quality has never been a big suit to Blue Bottle (Chris Tacy, in a Wired piece on the matter, notes that Blue Bottle has mostly been about image, marketing, and concept. I think this is largely true, but also wasn't always the case.) the question of what the product, the service will become can be held in question. 

Consumers should be aware of such changes, and the gimmick of keeping staff on even though their overall power within a company might be limited. James is being kept on retainer with increasing shares to keep him at Blue Bottle. And Duane Sorenson, as the Willamette Week has checked into a number of times, hasn't quite been forthcoming about the control, ownership, and direction of Stumptown (despite whatever one might think of Todd Carmichael or Tony Dreyfuss, the documentation concerning the legal corporeability of Stumptown can bring into serious question what the nature of such relationships are, and what the overall nature of the relationships, purchasing methodologies, etc might be in the future). If we care about the issue of local economies, then these companies have little to offer. 

Now some say these investments are a great validation of the specialty coffee sector (aforementioned Chris Tacy gives the best evaluation of this argument in his blog). And I agree it is fantastic when capital gets behind good projects. This is contingent on two things however. One: the company has to still be lead by the same practices that made it awesome. The relationships must be kept in place, the procedural methods and the risk-taking, with a high focus on quality (be it conceptual and/or material) being maintained. And secondly, we have to remember that food products are different than technology. The quality of care in procurements, in the treatment of relationships, and the ecological, economic, and social concerns of those producing it, especially in the case of products such as coffee, chocolate, or tea, are conssumately protected. Capital tends to obfuscate or eliminate both of these goals; in the case of Stonybrook, smaller independent farmers gave way to larger cooperative dairies that would not meet the original Stonybrook mission of ecological protection (but fit the bill -- barely -- on organic standards). La Boulange swears that artisan materials can be maintained when being produced regionally and distributed nationally. In coffee, we have yet to see, but if the intial drop in quality that occurred when Blue Bottle grew in 2008 is an indicator, or if the generally lackadasical hiring practices that we've seen at Stumptown (has anyone had a really good shot of Hairbender in the last two years? Please let me know where), there is generally something lost when that geeky obbsessive, eccentric person no longer has control over what gets put out into the world.

Growth is a good goal, but it is not the only goal. Part of what makes specialty coffee -- and indeed, much of the sustainable food community worthwhile -- is that it is growth moderated by the ability to pay attention to social, ecological, and economic concerns. Quality fits into many of those, as people who are paid well pick better coffee; farmers paid more to pay attention to ecological concerns tend to produce better cherries and better harvests. And baristas and staff paid consummately and trained to be educated in their approach to coffee tend to be able to translate into better profits as they know hospitality and enthusiasm in their right place and balance with customers. If those are forgotten at any length of the chain, then specialty coffee ceases to be impressive, and simply becomes a marketing ploy. And if that kind of growth is what eventually becomes of specialty coffee, we might as well go and hit the showers.