There has been something like a consensus among aficionados that roasters and retail shops cannot control quality beyond a certain size. Diedrich Coffee was a sad story of what can happen when the managers have to answer to Wall Street. So, small roasters and shops have been the perennial favorites on HB.

But recently some of those favorites have received large infusions of investor money or been acquired by multinationals. This has spurred some rapid expansion.

So my question is, if you were (or are) a happy customer of one of those roasters or retailers, how has the coffee or the service changed, if at all? Was the conventional wisdom right? Or did anything improve?

I've followed Intelligentsia since they opened in the mid 90s. When they were a single roaster/cafe, they had a reputation for quality, but they were quite limited in what they could offer. When they expanded in the 2000s, they did everything better -- more interesting coffees, a wider variety of roasts, better training for the baristas, much more outreach to consumers. In the last few years, after they went to outside equity finance, they've pulled back, and their local reputation has declined.

My guess is that equity finance often results in the shutting down of everything that isn't nominally profitable: "cost centers" like roasting, sourcing coffees, and training staff are made "more cost effective," while "profit centers" like institutional sales and branding are "capitalized." So what does a young barista hoping for a career that graduates to roasting and coffee buying do? They quit, hit up their family and friends, and start their own place, something that has become a pattern in Chicago. Soon the equity capital roaster is dominated by salesmen, advertisers, and spammers; while the few remaining coffee people wander around stunned, trying to figure out what just happened.

I have no idea how easy it is to find hands off financiers; at Intelligentsia, the climate seems to have become venomous: "you may know how to make a cup of coffee; but we know how to make a ton of money."

However, my information is second and third hand; so it may be heavily influenced by sour grapes and Schadenfreude.

Of two top local roasters I've seen opposite results and await a third - one expanded and became more upmarket with price and quality increase but another merged with a larger company and lost what I thought made their coffee interesting and consistent.
My recent go-to roaster has signed to big things after expanding their premises and I await their future...

A small roaster in my city had very good coffee when he was just roasting for his shop. He opened a second location, started brewing to Gold Cup standards, instituted stricter store policies, closed his original shop, opened a fancy larger shop, opened a fancy third shop, started traveling to origin, and recently opened a fancy lab with a what's-what lineup of all the latest and most expensive high-end equipment--all the while the quality and service went down as his Brand Recognition (capital "B", capital "R") increased. Go figure.

I drank blue bottle regularly when they were a bay area operation and have avoided them the last few years as they've expanded -- less on principle and more because other roasters emerged that I felt were better aligned with my taste. A couple days ago, I was gifted a bag of 17 ft ceiling and I've found it delightful and just as I remembered it. I've upgraded my equipment so pre/post probably isn't fair but I was still surprised by how much I liked the "new" blue bottle.

i bought some Hayes valley last week and again today after a long break. The coffee is generally like I remember, not as good as some of my more recent favorites (verve) but still a nice cup. I was at first puzzled by the amount of change I received until I realized the store was selling 8 oz bags, a somewhat silly amount to put into a large mazzer