Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The Ashton Kutcher connection? He’s the credited Executive Producer! The feature was directed and edited by Ryan Ovadia, and features Blue Bottle founder James Freeman, Handsome co-owners Chris Owens, Mike Phillips, and Tyler Wells, plus lots more. Check out more about Thrash Lab and Subculture Club here.

But the bigger question remains…who’d you rather?

Ashton Kutcher?

Or Michael Phillips?

Comments are open.

The post [Video] Handsome, LAMILL, Blue Bottle…and Ashton Kutcher? appeared first on Sprudge.com.

More on Brandon Loper:

Born, raised, and educated in Alabama, Brandon Loper has been working commercially in San Francisco for the past 6 years cultivating his craft of telling stories through advertising and short films. While his southern roots keep his directing style humble, conversational, and honest, Brandon’s experience in advertising demands a high standard of work that is stimulating, artful, and distinct. His disarming demeanor makes him uniquely adept at hearing and telling stories over strong cups of single origin coffee or a glass of small batch rye whiskey. Brandon’s first feature film, due out in 2013, will explore the global culture of specialty coffee.

Check out the gorgeous blog (can we get “gorgeous blog” on a t-shirt?) for developments on A Film About Coffee.

The post [Video] Official Trailer For “A Film About Coffee” Released appeared first on Sprudge.com.

A few days ago, pioneering media gossip rag TechCrunch (founded in the early 2000s, sold to AOL in 2010 for $25 million) broke the story that Blue Bottle Coffee had “raised close to 20 million” thanks to investment from the adventure capitalists at True Ventures and Index Ventures. Here’s the SEC filing form for you to go over with your lawyer friend – it basically says that a fellow named Bryan Meehan is now the president and CEO of Blue Bottle, as part of a group of investors who now own a controlling stake in the company.

Oliver Strand calls Mr. Meehan.

Drama, right? Only sort of. Oliver Strand, whose business reporting is the journalistic equivalent of a sure-footed billy goat, breaks down the deets over on the NYT Diner’s Journal:

Mr. Meehan is the Dublin-born entrepreneur behind Fresh & Wild, a London chain of organic markets sold to Whole Foods in 2004, and Nude Skincare, a line of natural beauty products. He now lives in Marin County, Calif., and the Blue Bottle Coffee investment group he leads draws from the Bay Area’s high-tech executives. It includes Tony Conrad, a founding member of True Ventures and the founder of About.com; Kevin Systrom, the co-founder and chief executive of Instagram; Kevin Rose, a general partner at Google Ventures and the founder of Digg; and Mike Volpi, a partner in Index Ventures, formerly of Cisco Systems.

Reached on the phone in Dublin, Mr. Meehan said that James Freeman, the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, would continue to occupy a central position in the company. “James promised to me that he’s going to spend the rest of his life growing his business,” Mr. Meehan said. “He’s the founder, and he’s still running things. My role will be chairman of the board.”

Mr. Strand goes on to quote James Freeman as saying “I’m still going to make decisions about where or if we open new shops, what the new shops look like, what the new shops feel like.” Which is kind of all that matters, right?

It’s one thing to say, “Hey, I’m selling the shop and moving to Timbuktu.” That’s not what James Freeman is doing. Wouldn’t it be super cool to build up your own small business from scratch, a small business that you’d put literally your entire life and soul and blood and sweat and brain into, and then be able to turn around and say, “Yes, please, $20,000,000 sounds fine, and I’ll keep running it and making it awesome just like before” - doesn’t that sound super cool? That’s pretty much what James Freeman got to do last week. We’d do it in a freaking heartbeat, and you probably would, too.

The scene inside the Wall Street Journal newsroom, “Finally! A frothy new deal!”

This breaking news was covered by The Wall Street Journal, who dubbed the transaction “a frothy new deal” and quoted True Ventures investor Tony Conrad as calling Blue Bottle “the Apple of coffee.” WSJ treats Blue Bottle’s partial sale as part of an ongoing trend, in which “tech cash pours into food start-ups,” or something. Last, Blue Bottle’s sale was posted about around an hour ago by Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine, in a feature that largely just paraphrased Mr. Strand’s piece.

So if you’re lucky enough to write about coffee, business, or the coffee business for a living, the last 36 hours have been a real bumpercrop of Blue Bottle sale news, for which we can all proudly file and invoice. Winner in the Blue Bottle Sale Journalism Sweepstakes goes to Oliver Strand, for actually picking up the phone and calling Mr. Freeman, Mr. Meehan, and other involved parties for his feature. Loser in the Blue Bottle Sale Journalism sweepstakes goes to Sprudge, for being jet-lagged and sick and felled by our schedules, and thus unable to, if not break the story ourselves, then at the very bloody least beat Nick Brown to it. Blogging is a lot easier when you don’t leave your house.

The post Our Modern World: Blue Bottle $20m Sale and Ensuing Media Bonanza appeared first on Sprudge.com.

After months of anticipation, 20-50 verbal inquiries per day at their retail outlets, and one tremendously hunty critical essay from Josh Ozersky, today marks the official release of Blue Bottle Coffee’s much-anticipated new book. Titled “The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee“, written by James Freeman, Caitlin Freeman, and Tara Duggan, and published by Ten Speed Press, curious would-be readers can now pick up their copy at any Blue Bottle cafe, or online via a variety of fine book dealers.

Readers can expect all of the following and more!

• Farmer profiles on Lorie Obra (Hawaii) and Aida Battle (El Salvador).
• Coffee growing, cupping, and roasting.
• A whole bunch of brew guides, including ones for Nel Drip, Turkish, and Siphon Pot
• Baked good recipes, including those “perfect for dunking.”
• A classical music dissertation from James Freeman himself.

But it is not enough for one to simply release a book. Good heavens, no – there must be a book tour! Blue Bottle has a pretty neat slate of events coming up, all of which are free, and should be fun, and will likely come with free pastries and stuff, etc. Folks in New York City can join Blue Bottle here:

Monday, October 15: Greenlight Bookstore – 7:30 pm – 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY
Tuesday, October 16: Williams-Sonoma – 6pm – 121 E. 59th Street, New York, NY
Wednesday, October 17th : 92nd Street Y – 7pm – 200 Hudson Street, New York, NY (presented by Edible Selby, with Danny Bowien, Caitlin and James Freeman, Chad Robertson, and Chris Ying).

The post Reading Rainbrew: Blue Bottle’s Book Is Now Available appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Local San Francisco NPR affiliate recently interviewed the owners of leading cafes in the Bay Area, including James Freeman of Blue Bottle, Jeremy Tooker of Four Barrel, and Eileen Hassi of Ritual.  One of our favorite coffee bloggers had this to say about the affair:

The radio program played out like your typical coffee innovator/”third wave“/bleeding-edge routine that we’ve become accustomed to over the past decade. While a bit heavy on the Coffee 101 — particularly when callers asked common FAQ-type questions that have been answered on the Internet 20,000 times over already — KQED produced a good program overall.

James Freeman noted Italy’s “industrialized system of near-universal adequacy,” which is a different but accurate way of summing up our long-held beliefs that outstanding coffee in Italy is almost as hard to find as unacceptable coffee. Other covered topics included coffeehouses eliminating WiFi, Berkeley’s Caffe Mediterraneum inventing the latte, the Gibraltar, and even James Freeman designating home roasting as coffee’s “geeky lunatic fringe.”

Listen to the whole interview right here on Sprudge.com:

The post KQED Forum With San Fran Coffee Barons appeared first on Sprudge.com.