Orange County coffee house chain, Diedrich Coffee is selling out to Starbucks. They’re only selling their retail locations and will remain a coffee wholesaler but the current stores will become Starbucks or close.
Almost all locations are in Orange County but the had two here in the LA area – one in Santa Monica and one in Malibu (which I’ve been to a few times). They offer a free hour of wifi with purchase at most of their locations, but that wasn’t enough to keep them in the black. The sale was for $13.5 million according to the LATimes, which seems a little low to me but then again they also reported that they lost $1.7 in their most recent reported fiscal quarter.
Diedrich was Orange County’s coffee house, their first store opened in 1983.
OC Register Article / The Oregonian article (covering the effects on the Coffee People side of the business).
Oh, suckage! Diedrich’s actually made good coffee.
This is awful news. After Peet’s, Diedrich’s was the best coffee house in SoCal. Oh well, I guess I’ll save the walk off campus to go to their Irvine location now.
i take it this means the one in Malibu will become a starbucks? and I will also assume that I can no longer go there for coffee and free wifi?
Lame, it was nice to have a variety here instead of just starbucks starbucks starbucks.