specialty-coffee
(5)
Jeffrey Dietrich
Jeffrey Dietrich is a bioengineer-turned-coffee-founder who built Rarebird around paraxanthine, the molecule your body actually makes when it metabolizes caffeine. After a PhD at UC Berkeley in Jay Keasling's lab and nearly a decade co-founding and running R&D at the industrial biotech company Lygos, Dietrich turned his own dwindling caffeine tolerance into a company. Rarebird sells decaffeinated specialty coffee infused with lab-grade paraxanthine, promising the lift of coffee without the jitters, crash, or ruined sleep. Backed by Y Combinator, AgFunder, and two NSF grants, the company holds U.S. patents on the process and won the Specialty Coffee Association's Best New Product award.
Debbie Wei Mullin
Debbie Wei Mullin is the founder and CEO of Copper Cow Coffee, a Los Angeles based Vietnamese coffee company she launched in 2016 out of her sister's garage. A UC Berkeley economist and MIT-trained urban planner who once managed supply chains at the World Bank, she turned her mother's Vietnamese heritage into a single-serve pour-over inspired by the traditional phin filter. The company has sold more than 20 million coffees, reached over 3,000 retail doors including Target, Whole Foods and Costco, and pays its Vietnamese farmers roughly twice the market rate. She pitched on Shark Tank Season 12 in 2021.
Karl Strovink
Karl Strovink is the CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee, the Oakland-born specialty roaster now owned by Nestlé. A Berkeley native with an MBA from MIT Sloan, he arrived in 2019 from a twelve-year run at Converse and has spent his tenure pushing Blue Bottle toward oat milk by default, instant espresso, zero-waste cafés, and aggressive expansion across Asia, all while protecting the brand's small-batch identity inside a thirty-billion-dollar coffee parent.
Jake Miller
Jake Miller is the founder of Fellow, a San Francisco-based premium coffee gear company known for design-forward products like the Stagg EKG electric kettle, Ode Brew Grinder, and Carter Move Mug. He launched Fellow as a Stanford MBA class project in 2013, weathered 73 investor rejections and a failed first product, before building a nine-figure consumer brand sold in 45+ countries and backed by $42M in funding. Miller's mission is to transform everyday coffee routines into meaningful rituals by bridging the gap between specialty roasters and home baristas.
James Hoffmann
James Hoffmann is an English barista, YouTuber, author, and co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters. He won the 2007 World Barista Championship in Tokyo and went on to become the most-watched coffee voice on the internet, with a YouTube channel exceeding 2.5 million subscribers. Known for tortoiseshell glasses, knit sweaters and a dry sense of humour, he turned brewing minutiae into mainstream curiosity.