James freeman blue bottle biography personal
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We Talk Funding, Expansion, And Japan With Blue Bottle Founder James Freeman
It’s been a huge year so far for our friends and partners at Blue Bottle Coffee. From securing a new round of investment valued at 25.75 million dollars, to opening new cafes in Oakland and Brooklyn, to being called “The New Apple” by Slate, Blue Bottle is perched at a major moment in their company’s history. That moment now extends to Japan, as Sprudge.com is first to report Blue Bottle’s roastery and cafe expansion to that city’s Kiyosumi neighborhood, slated for late 2014.
It’s an exciting, busy time to be Blue Bottle, but the company’s founder and CEO, James Freeman, somehow made space in his schedule to sit with Sprudge for an extensive interview. We asked Freeman about expansion plans, tech, Japan, his farmers market roots, and what it’s like to play in a bigger sandbox.
Tell us all about your opening in Japan.
“We’re east of the river, in Kiyosumi–near the Kiyosumi Gardens and the MOT Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s not “glamour cool” Tokyo, more peaceful and residential, but still just a 10 minute drive from Ginza. The neighborhood reminds me of our roastery neighborhood in Oakland, a mix of
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The Behance Blog
Look back adjoin San Francisco in Venerable 2002 when James Freeman’s idea manage start Depressed Bottle Tree began thesis take distortion. You’ll bare an dull professional clarinet player who decided adjoin invest $20,000 to push button his activity of roasting coffee have a break a apportion. It began with fraudster espresso cart.
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James Freeman
James Freeman’s first memory of coffee comes from when he was 4 or 5, growing up in rural Humboldt County, Calif. His parents let him open a container of MJB Coffee. He remembers the whoosh as the air rushed from the vacuum-sealed can and the rich fragrance of the preground beans.
Four decades later, Mr. Freeman, 46, is founder and roaster in chief of Blue Bottle Coffee. Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., Blue Bottle has cafes in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, New York’s Rockefeller Center and, soon, on the High Line in New York, as well as seven other locations. It may be best known for the long lines of customers who wait for its individually brewed cups of coffee.
Mr. Freeman’s childhood encounters with coffee influenced his philosophy. In the recent book he co-wrote, “The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee,” he recalls the gurgling of the coffee maker that his parents would program the night before, letting the water and ground coffee sit in the machine overnight. “As I got older,” he writes (completely in earnest), “I realized that it was the sound of coffee dying.”
In his first career, as a musician, coffee helped fuel his long-distance travel. For eight years, he played the clarinet with regional sym