Peet’s opens new Bay Area roasting facility

PeetÆs opens new Bay Area roasting facility Emeryville-based coffee manufacturer and retailer Peet’s Coffee and Tea is up and running Tuesday with a new 138,000-square-foot roasting facility in Alameda.
   Opening just a month after the company celebrated its 41-year anniversary, and slightly more than a year after construction began, the new facility will employee 90 full-time employees with a capacity to roast 90,000 pounds of beans a day.
   “It took two years to find a location. We considered 300 places,” Patrick O’Dea, Peet’s chief executive, told InsideBayArea.com. The site of the new facility is located near Oakland International Airport on land purchased by Peet's.
   Peet’s, which also operates a chain of 150 retail outlet coffee shops, expects revenues to grow this year by about 20 percent to $250 million. This is in line with the firm's recent performance history, which has shown a year-over-year growth rate of about 20 percent.
   The firm employs more than 3,000 people and now markets its products in 4,400 grocery stores.