Why Blue Bottle Spent $6 Million to Build Out One Store

The Bay Area chain's latest retail location based in Brooklyn supplies coffee to each of its East Coast cafes.

Arion Paylo spent nearly a decade working on product design at Apple, before recently trying his hand at coffee. Paylo is now head of retail development at Blue Bottle, the Oakland, Calif-based coffee roaster that has more than 30 locations from New York City to Tokyo. Since its inception in 2002, Blue Bottle has fast-become the go-to watering hole for Silicon Valley's elite.

On a recent summer Thursday, Paylo helped lead a tour through the company's newest location in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This is where, in addition to selling drips and lattes as a cafe, Blue Bottle actually produces the coffee it supplies to each of its nine East Coast stores. (That only encompasses New York City at present, though the company will soon launch in Miami, Boston, and Washington, D.C.)

Blue Bottle's CEO, Bryan Meehan, explains that setting up a commissary was necessary for maintaining the quality of the product as the company expands. Here, it processes as much as 2,000 pounds of coffee per week, though it has the capacity to do even more. The company spent a total of $6 million to build out the plant.

"We don't want our signature espresso to taste differently here than it does in San Francisco," Meehan told Inc. over freshly baked scones and pour-overs in the cupping room. "Obviously the water and milk changes by region, but the coffee more or less tastes the same. That's because of how we produce it, and how we train the baristas," he adds. (Pro tip: When pouring over grounds, be sure to start in the middle and spiral outwards. That way, you spread water over the folds of the filter, so no grounds are left behind.) Read more

Zoe Henry - INC. - 6 June 2017