So being in SF there are a lot of Stabucks and just as many Peet’s. I think both taste good, I’m not a big coffee lover. I have heard a lot of people say on occasions that Starbucks owns Peet’s and that is not true. There are some close ties. This link explains the history of Peet’s. I’ll point out some of the more interesting parts that’ll clear this up.
In 1984, the year espresso machines made their appearance, Jerry Baldwin bought Peet’s, adding it to a portfolio that included Caravali, a wholesale coffee brand, and a small Seattle chain known as Starbucks. Inspired by Peet’s, Baldwin and his two partners, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl, had pulled together $8,000 in cash and loans in 1971 to found Starbucks. That was when Baldwin first met Peet; in 1971, he and his partners traveled to Berkeley to learn about Peet’s coffee before Arthur Peet would sell it to them for use at Starbucks.
In 1987, Baldwin sold off Starbucks, which then had only six stores, to Howard Schultz, a former Peet’s employee who had left Peet’s in 1986 to start his own coffee company, Il Giornale. Baldwin’s reason for selling off Starbucks was that it would never be as good as Peet’s. The deal included a noncompete agreement, which expired in 1992, the year that Starbucks went public and began its astronomic expansion worldwide.
