Remembering Diedrich Coffee

★★★★★

Diedrich used to be my favorite coffee chain. They were relatively small, and mostly based in Orange County – in 2005 they had a something like 20-25 cafes there, plus two each in LA and San Diego… and three each in Houston and Denver.*

The coffee was great. The atmosphere was great. I used to go to the Tustin and UCI locations all the time with friends and for takeout. The PCH location in Laguna Beach was a great place to hang out after the city’s fireworks show at the beach, have something warm (the ocean breeze is usually cool at night, even in July) and wait for traffic to die down. The one at the Irvine Spectrum was a post-movie and post-book-shopping hangout spot until the Barnes & Noble next to it moved (and added a Starbucks). Diedrich was off in a corner, and without the bookstore traffic it closed.

They also had a bit of an attitude. The cup sleeves were labeled “Of course it’s hot!” They sold T-shirts and travel mugs with slogans like “Not so big” and “Venti, Schmenti.” (I need to check whether that mug is still kicking around somewhere. I know I still had it in 2017.)

In 2006, after founder Martin Diedrich stepped down to focus on a single artisan coffee house in Newport Beach, Starbucks bought all the company-owned locations. There were a couple of franchised kiosks and one of the Texas cafes, but that was it. Over the next few years, Starbucks shut down or converted them all. Sometimes both: the one in Tustin had always been busy as a Diedrich. After it had been assimilated, though, I never saw it full, and Starbucks closed it in 2008. Amusingly, Martin Diedrich opened a second Kéan location there, and it’s still going strong 15 years later.

The last two Diedrich locations after the buyout were both in Irvine. Peet’s bought the one across from UCI in 2008, and the one at Barranca and Culver some time later. Within a year the Diedrich website was only handling online orders, and even that had disappeared by 2015.

I hate that Starbucks bought an (apparently) successful business and ran it into the ground. But I’m glad Kéan is still around, even if it’s too far from where I live now to visit regularly.

Notes

*It’s always funny when a chain has a whole bunch of locations in a smallish region, and then one or two halfway across the continent or even farther. Around the same time Diedrich’s was at its height, Kelly’s Coffee had something like 35 locations in Southern California, a handful in neighboring states…and one in Riyadh!

Wiki-Walking to Related Companies

Everything above is from my own memory or from blog posts I made across 2005 through 2015 (the later ones are completely incorporated into this page now, and I’m redirecting them here). Except I couldn’t remember which year the company sold off the retail business. So I checked out the Wikipedia article.

Apparently the company owned the US franchise rights for Gloria Jean from 1999, when they bought Coffee People, through 2009, when they sold the rights (back?) to Gloria Jean International. And then Green Mountain Coffee Roasters outbid Peet’s to buy what was left of the company. And Green Mountain is now…Keurig Dr. Pepper???

Coffee People appears to have been local chain in the Pacific Northwest, which explains why I wasn’t familiar with them, but now that I see the name again, I do remember it coming up in articles about the Starbucks buyout.

And the founders of Coffee People also went on to launch a new indie coffeehouse after leaving their chain behind! The good news is that Jim and Patty’s is still around, and still run by one of the founders! The bad news is that Jim Roberts died last year, and the two cafes are in serious financial trouble.