In August it was announced that Keurig Dr. Pepper was in the process of buying JDE Peet’s for an astounding $18 billion. The deal is still ongoing, and KDP has recently made an offer on all common JDE Peet’s stock as part of the takeover. Ahead of that, Peet’s has announced the sudden closure of multiple cafe locations around the San Francisco area.
As reported by SF Gate, the Berkeley-born coffee shop and roaster is scheduled to close an unknown number of cafes across the Bay Area by the end of January. Some reporting has the number of shops at two dozen while others state as high as 30. No information about which locations are scheduled to close was given. According to the Peet’s website, there are over 100 locations in the greater San Francisco area.
According to a spokesperson for the brand, the closures “reflect a broader effort to align our business with long-term growth priorities and current market conditions.” It correlates with moves being made by other corporate-owned entities in the coffee space, in particular, the move away from brick and mortar. In December, Nestle began exploring the sale of Blue Bottle as a means of divesting from retail (with Luckin Coffee of all companies being linked to the purchase). Coca-Cola meanwhile tried unsuccessfully to sell Costa Coffee.
The question remains if and/or how the downsizing will affect other specialty coffee institutions. JDE Peet’s owns Stumptown and Intelligentsia, though both brands act independently and operate within the higher end specialty coffee market. But if new owners KDP decide to continue moving away from retail, could that also trickle down to these two brands, Stumptown in particular given their larger presence outside of brick-and-mortar cafes, including retail cold brew and wholesale.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
