our coffee

Peet's Coffee

Peet’s coffee has options available for small, medium or large businesses that want to offer the pleasure of our artisanal-crafted coffees and teas at all refreshment stations, brewed to perfection with no barista needed. The craft of artisan coffee is a story of selectivity. The perfect cup has to start with perfect beans, which can only be found on certain farms at certain times. Knowing what to look for and understanding what makes these beans special — then carefully selecting the very best of them at each step of their journey — is the only way to unlock the coffee’s full flavor potential through roasting.

Nobody is better at identifying exceptional coffees and achieving consistently unmatched quality than Peet’s buyers. Their extensive knowledge and tasting skills give them an incomparable talent for choosing the world’s finest premium beans, but their passionate efforts and unwavering dedication are what truly define the identity of Peet’s coffee. They work tirelessly with the network of skilled growers we’ve established over more than 30 years to implement our exceedingly high standards for cultivation, and return every year to ensure those standards are being maintained.

Coffee trees of many different types flourish around the world, yet only two species are cultivated for commercial purposes — arabica and robusta. The best flavor comes from the older “heirloom” varietals of arabica, so that’s what we insist on for Peet’s coffee. Although successfully transplanted across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, these tropical evergreens are fragile and require precise growing conditions to yield high-quality coffee. They’re intolerant to frost but thrive in cool temperatures where they also have partial shade to protect them from too much sun.

We select beans strictly from high elevations, ideally 4,000 to 6,000 feet, with volcanic soil rich in nutrients. The nighttime temperatures at these heights drop significantly, without freezing, slowing the growth of the coffee cherries and allowing them to develop more concentrated flavors with better acidity. This is what produces the very finest arabicas, but it’s just the beginning of the crop’s path to your cup.

Only fully ripe coffee cherries produce top-quality beans. So when it’s time to harvest, our growers individually handpick just the fruits that are completely ripe and ready to be processed. It’s not the fastest way; there can be months between a tree’s first ripe cherries and its last. But the truly quality-conscious growers send pickers out as many as five times per season to harvest ripe cherries, because they understand such selective picking practices are essential to making their coffee good enough for Peet’s.

peet's coffee and tea