As I was listing out recommendations for friends visiting San Francisco, I remembered that they enjoyed coffee, so I included some of the bigger name artisan cafes in the city. Of course that list included the Blue Bottle Coffee Company, the biggest name in the single-bean, quality preparation game. That got me wondering where was the first Blue Bottle Coffee location?
Apparently, Blue Bottle’s history runs much much deeper than the Blue Bottle most of us (in San Francisco and New York) are familiar with. Ok, so outside of the European/Turkish origin, where was the first modern Blue Bottle location?
The Blue Bottle website doesn’t really tell us where the company opened their first location, only that it originated in Oakland, CA. Even without the direct info, the website does list it’s various current locations with descriptions that mostly include a month and year when they were opened.
Of all the locations that mentioned an opening date on their website, the first standalone Blue Bottle location is the kiosk on Linden St. in Hayes Valley which opened all the way back in January of 2005.
Hold on. After some more research, I found this article from Inc. which details the first Blue Bottle. That Blue Bottle outpost was manned by founder James Freeman with his own pour-over brewing equipment back in 2002 at the Old Oakland Farmers Market.
There you have it. The first Blue Bottle was in Oakland at a local farmers market.
