Celebrating 20 years of Blue Bottle Coffee

It’s been 20 years since Blue Bottle Coffee opened its first café in Oakland, California. Tobias Pearce speaks to the brand’s CEO Karl Strovink about scaling without compromise, navigating the pandemic, and why boutique store experiences remain at the heart of the business’ DNA

From becoming one of the first boutique coffee shops to successfully scale internationally, to courting significant corporate investment and committing to an ambitious carbon neutrality goal, Blue Bottle Coffee is a business that frequently pushes the envelope of quality and experience.
 
A quintessential 5th Wave coffee shop group, Blue Bottle has grown from a single California store in 2002 to a 103-store specialty coffee powerhouse with locations across the US, Japan, South Korea, mainland China and Hong Kong.