http://www.wired.com/2014/04/blue-bottle-tonx-handsome/

More in the L.A. Times: http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/l ... 0566.story

Inspired by Facebook's purchase of random tech companies, Blue Bottle is acquiring coffee businesses. In a comment from Blue Bottle: "We has got all your coffee!"

http://sprudge.com/blue-bottle-coffee-b ... -tonx.html

And it also appears they are going to be selling iced coffee in stores like Stumptown. Susan posted this in a different forum;

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... /140409579

So sad to see Handsome go.... Blue Bottle, the next Starbucks. Coming soon to your favorite shopping mall.

I had an espresso at Westfield shopping center in the Bay area a couple of months ago. I wouldn't have served it.

If you had a drink at the Westfield Mall, you weren't at a Bluebottle Cafe, but a place using BB beans. A tad unfair criticism, don't you think?

I agree. They are more like Counter Culture or Intelli. But for raising money it makes a big difference to be based in the Bay Area. So far I haven't seen anyone be super successful with iced coffee, especially one based off New Orleans which already has a myriad of its own iced coffees. Will be interesting to see how well Blue Bottle does. Acquiring Handsome was probably a smart move because Handsome has a lot of cafes across the country already and they had a drain on personnel from the recent resignations. Perfect timing, keeps the existing customers supported, probably nobody made much money but at least they all survived.

chipman wrote:If you had a drink at the Westfield Mall, you weren't at a Bluebottle Cafe, but a place using BB beans. A tad unfair criticism, don't you think?

You're right. Nevertheless I wasn't impressed by the coffee that's all. I watched the barista prepare my drinks and saw nothing unusual. Plus, this establishment served strictly blue bottle coffee and had a big "by Blue Bottle" neon sign next to their name..So if they weren't owned by Blue Bottle I would've never guessed it. Maybe they are business partners? If not, that barista was, like, totally faking it. Haha Next time I'm there I'll make sure to try "real" Blue Bottle coffee.

This God Shot blog post, "On False Equivalencies (Or How Hipsters are Ruining Coffee)," from 2012 is worth rereading in light of the acquisition:

http://godshot.blogspot.com/2012/12/on- ... sters.html

The author takes exception to a Tweet by @jlw that reads:

"Tonx! Tonx! Tonx! Its [sic] everything Blue Bottle and Stumptown were before they got bought!"

God Shot wrote:While I'm a huge fan of Tonx - this statement is deeply troubling to me -- and sadly ALL too common right now.

The implies a false equivalency - that Blue Bottle and Stumptown are (or were) comparable. And, in fact, they are comparable in a number of ways. But the implication is that their coffee is equivalent. I am confident that no-one at Blue Bottle or Stumptown would agree on this point. But the hipsters would argue to the death that they are.

After a few more mergers and acquisitions, that equivalency may not seem so false.

Eastsideloco wrote:This God Shot blog post, "On False Equivalencies (Or How Hipsters are Ruining Coffee)," from 2012 is worth rereading in light of the acquisition:

http://godshot.blogspot.com/2012/12/on- ... sters.html

The author takes exception to a Tweet by @jlw that reads...

Meh. Sounds a bit more like hate to me... Market based decision making? Oh no we've never seen that in coffee biz. Oo

Doug Zell, the owner of Intelligentsia, told me long ago that there is a "comfortable size" for a high end roaster aspiring to fill a market niche above Starbucks. He ticked off three points that seem reasonable to me.

• You need to be large enough to go out to origin and finance farmers to produce the high end direct trade and microlots.
• You need to be large enough to create legitimate coffee career paths for your employees.
• You need to be large enough to be able to either have or supply coffee to cafes in the foodie neighborhoods of several cities, not just one, in order to become a cultural presence and to be able to sell coffee as a well known high end vendor.

You have Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and Counter Culture succeeding at getting to this point, and a few other players trying to get there. And when I look at these three desiderata; I tend to agree more than disagree. I have a feeling that ambitious cafes and roasters see this size as a completely legitimate business objective.