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Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Gerald Baldwin: Reflections on the Rise of New Coffee Culture Interviews conducted by Heather Nelson in 2008 Copyright © 2016 by The Regents of the University of California ii Since 1954 the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, formerly the Regional Oral History Office, has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Gerald Baldwin dated October 7, 2016. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Gerald Baldwin, “Gerald Baldwin: Reflections on the Rise of a New Coffee Culture” conducted by Heather Nelson in 2007, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2016. iii Gerald Baldwin iv Gerald Baldwin is a founder of Starbucks and former owner of Peet’s Coffee and Tea. In this brief, student conducted-interview, Baldwin reflects on the emergence of a new coffee culture in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and two of the most important chains that spread that culture across the country and around the world. v Table of Contents—Gerald Baldwin Interview 1: December 6, 2007 Audio File 1 Hour 1 1 Birth in San Francisco, childhood in the East Bay and Marin County — Sparse memories of food culture in the home — Mother’s French-Canadian background — Early immigrants and later cultural impact — College of University of San Francisco in an era of little indigenous American food culture: “It was really European derived” — 1966 ushered in an era of change in the Bay Area, especially Berkeley — Learning to cook in college, shopping at Petrini Foods — Post WWII advent of supermarkets and large household refrigerators: “fresh wasn’t part of the conversation” — Aside on the anatomy of tasting tea — Farming industry and technology changes: increasing efficiency, consolidation, fewer American farmers — Growth and decreasing price of processed foods, Americans prioritize other spending over fresh food — Comparing Seattle and the Bay Area — Pikes Place Market changes as farms are pushed further out of the city — Alfred Peet: background in Europe, learning to roast and sell tea, move to San Francisco in 1955 or 1956 — Work for Freed Teller and Freed, opening coffee shops in Berkeley and San Francisco starting in 1966 — Meeting Peet in 1970, learning to roast coffee from him — Deep vs dark roast, European influences give way to an “indigenous sense of quality and sourcing” — UC Davis’s influence on California wine — Peet’s unique approach to coffee and tea — Changes in American coffee production, quality, and popularity — Changes in produce distribution drive changes in end product — Food prices, prioritizing purchase of consumer goods over high quality food — Comparing Peet’s and Starbucks — Simple beginnings selling beans and cups of drip coffee give way to complicated drinks menus — Home consumption and beans sales — Blending coffee for price and flavor — Searching the world for good coffee: geography, climate, and altitude Hour 2 18 Changes at Starbucks after Howard Schultz’s arrival in 1982: increase in beverage sales, growth from regional to global — The original Peet’s on Vine and Walnut in Berkeley — Starbucks as a “third place”: “it evolved, it wasn’t part of what happened early on” — The rise of to-go beverages and culture — Increasing portion sizes, 20 ounce lattes: “I haven’t drunk that much milk in the last two years! It lasts forever. People are drinking them till they’re cold.” — Defining terroir — Amy Trubek’s 2004 Gastronomica article “Incorporating Terroir” — American, French, and Italian notions of terroir: “New-Worlders in general, we are the inheritors of the genes of adventurers, people who sought change.” — Global, a-seasonal food availability has transformed modern eating — Designing the interior of Starbucks — Business growth and the idea that if a business isn’t vi growing it’s dying — Keeping core values intact but remaining flexible — Cultivating a respectful and diverse work culture — Increasing business size enabled access to higher quality raw materials — Evolving views on profit: “when we were profitable, we had a lot more to share” — Embracing the positive aspects of change and compromise — Favorite Peet’s blends — White tea, green tea, and brewing technique 1 Interview with Gerald Baldwin Interview date: December 6, 2007 Begin Audio File 1 1-00:00:00 Nelson: Hi. My name Heather Nelson. I am an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Today’s date is December 6th, 2007 and seated with me is Starbucks co-founder Gerald Baldwin. This interview is being conducted at Peet’s Headquarters in Emeryville, California. So, first of all, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to meet with me and conduct this interview. I know you have a very busy schedule so, I really appreciate it. I want to start more generally just about your growing up and the influences that you experienced in the early part of your life, and then, kind of zero in on some of the more particulars about your involvement in Peet’s and Starbucks, and then hopefully by the end, find some aspect of Bay Area terroir in relation to coffee, tea, and business. So, tell me about your background a little bit, where you grew up, where you went to college, any early experiences you had with coffee or tea. Anything you found interesting out of those questions, we can start on. 1-00:01:05 Baldwin: Well, I was born in San Francisco, grew up principally in the East Bay, and Marin; spent two of my pre-college years outside of Northern California, so, I’m a Northern Californian. There wasn’t much about food in my upbringing. Although I was interested in food, I started my first cooking, experimenting when I was about 11, or something like that. Don’t remember much about coffee and tea, except that my parents switched from coffee to tea when I was in high school. As I recall, it was tea bags, and I have no recollection of the coffee at all. My mother is a French-Canadian, so her father, my grandfather, wasn’t what we think of as modern-day French, preoccupied with food at all. My grandmother was a decent cook. I have no recollection of my mother’s cooking at all. [laughter] Nelson: Must not have been that memorable, I guess. [laughter] Baldwin: I don’t think it was. I mean I don’t think it was awful, but I don’t think it was particularly good. But my family on both sides has been in North America since the 1600s. So I have no recent immigrant experience at all. One of my theories about American food, and why we really, until this generation, have lacked a food culture is that immigrants were all poor people. If you had land, or money, or even, for that matter, a good job, you would stay in the Old Country. But people who came here came for opportunity, or for a religious freedom, and that was freedom to practice a more strict form of religion, typically, not a more liberal form of religion, which I think heavily influences our culture. 2 1-00:03:10 Nelson: That’s interesting that you talk about the immigrant cultures, and the kind of food influences they brought to the U.S. I think we covered a lot of that in the class, and there was one article that we read about how hot dogs, which people now think of as very American, like you bring it to a baseball game, it’s the most American kind of food next to hamburgers. And we were talking about how it was actually a Germanic food, brought over by poor people, and kind of got indoctrinated into our culture and all that, so that’s an interesting topic that you brought up. So, you did grow up in San Francisco, so you’re whole life has been based in California. Baldwin: Yeah, I spent several years in Oakland, a couple in Alameda, and Marin County, so, I kind of circled the Bay.

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