Alfred Peet

Peet was born in Alkmaar, Netherlands, where his father ran a small coffee roasting establishment, prior to World War II. Following the war; Peet left London, where he had apprenticed with Twinings coffee and tea company, to work as a tea taster in the Dutch East Indies and New Zealand, prior to emigrating to San Francisco, California, in 1955, where he worked in the coffee importing industry.

Dismayed with the poor quality of coffee in the United States, Peet opened a coffee store in Berkeley, California, on 1 April 1966. He compared the low quality coffee in the United States to World War II "rationed" coffee.

Although often encouraged to expand the business, he remained stalwart in keeping the original location at Walnut and Vine, zealously guarding the quality of the coffee bearing his name. After several years of roasting beans in the back of the store using one-, and then five-pound, roasters, in the early 1970s, he acquired a 5,000 square feet (460 m2) warehouse in the adjacent town of Emeryville, in which he installed a 100-pound roaster, followed by a 300-pound roaster, in 1976. By that time, Peet had two additional retail stores: one on Piedmont in Oakland, and one on Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park. He then also sold roasted-to-order, 20 to 50 pound bags of beans to restaurants throughout the Bay Area.