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Tag Archives: Peet’s Coffee & Tea
Perk up at the Berkeley Coffee and Tea Festival
Sina Carroll is a committed tea enthusiast. She travels to China twice a year to source high-end tea from local farmers and sells a wide selection through her online store Red Circle Tea. Carroll has no employees and acts as the company’s owner, accountant, and buyer; her favorite part of the job, however, is teaching others about the craft of tea making.
“I love the process of steeping tea for others,” said Carroll. “I like to show people how easy, elegant, and fun it can be to make tea in this beautiful and traditional way. The look of wonder on their faces when they see this ritual is amazing.”
Carroll’s favorite place to share her enthusiasm and meet other tea connoisseurs is the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce’s Coffee and Tea Festival. The second annual festival, which will be held on Saturday, August 18th at Hotel Shattuck Plaza, will feature dozens of local coffee, tea, and dessert vendors. Along with Carroll’s Red Circle Tea, other offerings will include traditional lattes from Berkeley favorite Caffe Mediterraneum, and unique Vietnamese coffee from V Café. (See below on how to win free tickets to the Festival!) … Continue reading »
Foxtails Brigade: Roots on Berkeley’s Fourth Street
On a sunny day, Berkeley offers few better venues than the corner of Fourth Street in front of Peet’s Coffee. Prime real estate for buskers, the unregulated spot seems to attract an unusually accomplished array of performers, from Berkeley High jazz combos and string bands to soul outfits and lone fingerstyle guitarists.
Hanging out there last year with my toddling daughter led to my first encounter with Foxtails Brigade, a captivating chamber pop band created by Oakland guitarist/vocalist Laura Weinbach. While she launched Foxtails in 2006 with violinist Sivan Sadeh, by the time I caught up with her she had recreated the duo with violinist Anton Patzner, a highly sympathetic accompanist who’s also a founding member of the East Bay string metal trio Judgment Day. … Continue reading »
Everyone deserves to eat: Andre Green’s kitchen wisdom
Andre Green’s mission is both simple and heartfelt: no one should go hungry. It’s a mantra that has worked for him in his more than seven years serving food to the homeless and poor.
After a long stint in the kitchen at the East Oakland Community Project, Green began cooking for Berkeley’s most vulnerable residents on Valentine’s Day this year, as the new food services coordinator for Berkeley Food & Housing Project. The non-profit group serves hot meals to homeless men, women, and children from food purchased from the Alameda County Community Food Bank and wholesale grocery stores, along with donations from individuals, organizations, and businesses. … Continue reading »
Shop Talk: The ins and outs of Berkeley businesses
HOT TO TROT Hot sandwich restaurant Toaster Oven is crossing the bridge to the East Bay and opening soon on Telegraph Avenue. The chain, which has three locations in San Francisco, serves meat and vegetarian grilled sandwiches, as well as breakfast sandwiches, shakes and cookies. Toaster Oven Berkeley will be at 2309 Telegraph, right next to Chipotle.
LOCAL COFFEE FIX For Berkeleyans who can’t get enough caffeine fixes from Peet’s, let it be known that the city’s ninth store opened on November 14th at 3200 College Avenue (at Alcatraz) in the space formerly occupied by A’ Cuppa Tea — as previewed by us in September. … Continue reading »
Shop Talk: The ins and outs of Berkeley businesses
LOCAL BREWS Peet’s Coffee & Tea has introduced two very Berkeley-centric blends: Café Solano and Café Domingo, in honor of two of their Berkeley stores on Domingo Avenue and Solano Avenue. Café Domingo is described as a smooth, balanced and medium-bodied Latin American blend “with hints of toffee sweetness and a clean, crisp finish”. While Café Solano is “a lively and aromatic medium roast coffee. Perfectly rounded with floral notes and a subtle fruit essence”. Peet’s was, of course, founded in Berkeley in 1966, and is about to open its 9th store in the city on the corner of College Avenue and Alcatraz.
MIX IT UP Amanda West, owner of the shuttered Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food, is making a low-key comeback with the launch of a new collection of drinks, known as Amanda’s Freshly Made Sodas. As one would expect from someone who espouses the concept of healthy food, the mixes contain fresh fruit and no sugar. They are currently stocked in the refrigerator case of Almare Gelato at 2170 Shattuck Avenue. More distribution channels are on the cards. [Hat-tip: Elizabeth Jordan]
No more morning cappuccinos with pooch on Peet’s patio
Berkeleyside contributing photographer Nancy Rubin happened to be sitting outside Peet’s on Fourth Street the other day when she saw a sign being affixed to a garbage can that read: “By order of Health and Human Services: No animals are allowed on Peet’s patio area. City of Berkeley.”
The wording certainly suggests the city is cracking down on four-legged friends keeping the company of their latte-loving owners. However a quick call to Berkeley’s public information officer reveals this is not … Continue reading »
Tagged Coffee, Nancy Rubin, Peet's Coffee & Tea
New to Berkeley: Festival celebrates all things caffeine
Whether you’re partial to a cup of third-wave, single-origin, shade-grown espresso, a frothy decaf cappuccino, or a low-fat soy chai, it’s likely you enjoy coffee or tea in some form.
Cognizant of this, and of the fact that there are dozens of coffee and tea purveyors in our midst, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce is holding the first Berkeley Coffee and Tea Festival on Saturday September 24th at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza in downtown Berkeley.
More than 30 … Continue reading »
Shop Talk: The ins and outs of Berkeley businesses
COFFEE CLOSE-UPS Peet’s Tea & Coffee is to open a new store in the old A’Cuppa Tea space on the corner of College and Alcatraz Avenues, no doubt sending shivers down the spines of Cole Coffee aficionados which is at the other end of the block at 2007 College. It will be the ninth Berkeley store for Peet’s which was founded in the city in 1966. As we reported in July, A’Cuppa Tea is shunting down to … Continue reading »
Doctor’s orders: Eat your greens says Preston Maring
Here’s a notion that hardly seems radical: longtime Berkeley resident Dr. Preston Maring thinks physicians should prescribe healthy eating along with dispensing drugs to their patients.
Maring, Associate Physician-in-Chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, believes doctors should also walk the walk about the preventive health benefits of sound nutrition.
He’s so committed to the good food cause he’s willing to show other medical professionals how to mince garlic and whip up vinaigrette from scratch for … Continue reading »
The Mushroom Guys: A Business out of UC Berkeley
There’s so much buzz around the fledgling food business launched last year by two former UC Berkeley students, you’d think they were pumping out premium honey.
BTTR Ventures, run by Haas School of Business graduates Nikhil Arora and Alejandro (Alex) Velez, has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and on the BBC.
Launched on Earth Day last year, the company has won a steady stream of awards for its innovative, socially conscious, green business.
The pair, both 23, were named among America’s most promising social entrepreneurs by Business Week this year and in the top 25 young entrepreneurs by the same publication last year.
So, what are they doing? Well, they’re in the mushroom business: using recycled coffee grounds (from Peet’s Coffee & Tea), they produce spore starter kits so people can grow their own oyster mushrooms at home. It’s part of a zero-waste system that diverts 7,000 pounds of coffee grounds a week into a delicious and nutritious food source. Their production process also results in nutrient-dense soil amendment suitable for fruit and vegetable gardens.
The duo spent four years in business school together but they barely knew each other then. The seed for the company was planted by a visiting lecturer in a business ethics class who mentioned that women in Columbia and parts of East Africa were growing mushrooms from coffee grounds to fight malnutrition. This got the guys thinking about America’s coffee addiction and the farming, food, and financial potential of a consumer waste product destined for the landfill.
That idea spawned some serious mycology research and, in short order, led to the lads producing around 500 pounds of oyster mushrooms a week for Northern California Whole Foods stores and local farmers’ markets. BTTR then “mushroomed” into a D.I.Y. enterprise; their Gourmet Garden Grow-it-at-Home Mushroom Kits retail for $19:95 online and are sold in Whole Foods Markets across the country. Their topsoil product can be found in Northern California Whole Foods stores and local nurseries.
The mushroom guys, as Arora and Velez are locally known, passed up lucrative job offers (in investment banking for the Colombian-born Velez, and consulting for Arora, whose family hails from India) to launch their urban farming start-up on a shoe-string budget in a fraternity kitchen.
I met with Arora this week at the company’s warehouse in Emeryville before he flew to Washington, D.C., where the pair accepted their latest honor, a young entrepreneurs award from The Hitachi Foundation (with a $50,000 check attached), before speaking at a Tedx event on Saturday in the nation’s capital. … Continue reading »
Berkeley Bites: Lisa Rogovin, Epicurean Concierge
A former ad sales rep for Gourmet magazine (R.I.P.), Lisa Rogovin had what she calls her Eat, Pray, Love moment in 2005, meaning she left an unhappy marriage, sold the house, and embarked on a food-fueled journey around the world, visiting 14 countries (yes, India was in the mix) in seven months.
Before she left on her edible adventure, though, the food enthusiast sowed the seeds for her future happiness, both personally and professionally. She met the man who … Continue reading »
Tagged Acme Bread, Alegio Chocolate, Cafe Gratitude, Cesar restaurant, Cheese Board Collective, Chez Panisse, Coffee, epicurean concierge, Epicurious Garden, In the Kitchen with Lisa, Lisa Rogovin, Love at First Bite Cupcakery & Bakery, Lush Gelato, Michael Lewis, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Saul's Delicatessen, SOOP, The Juice Bar Collective, Vintage Berkeley
Peet’s caters to commuters, Saturn opens today
Still dragging yourself to BART in the morning with bleary, unfocused eyes and barely stifled yawns? For shame. You no longer need to sacrifice your morning cup of Joe to make your train — the Downtown Berkeley BART station now boasts a full-service Peet’s Coffee & Tea stand, complete with seven tables’ worth of seating.
The location, which has been in the works for three years, has already served almost 1,000 customers since it opened with a flourish on Tuesday, according … Continue reading »
