Coffee Chain Stakes a Claim

With uneven tables, handwritten menus and unique names, three of Berkeley's best-known cafes-C'est Cafe, Cafe Milano and International House-line Bancroft Way with all the hallmarks of an independent coffee shop.

But all three are run by the same Emeryville corporation, Espresso Roma, which owns 17 other cafes in college areas from Los Angeles to Boulder, Colo.

Espresso Roma is Berkeley's largest coffee chain: With nine cafes in the city it equals the number of Peet's Coffee and Tea and Starbucks Coffee Company stores combined.

Roma's marketing strategy indicates how business in Berkeley works differently than in most other cities, local cafe and business owners say. They say only cafes that appear independent could prosper so closely together.

"Starbucks has to be standardized," says Andy Ross, owner of Cody's Books. "Customers, if they're given a choice, they will usually choose the independent businesses."

Only three of Roma's nine Berkeley cafes are named Espresso Roma, none of which are located within a mile of campus.

By naming them all differently, a North Bay cafe owner, Ron Salisbury, says, Roma gives up a main marketing strategy of any chain: branding.

"We look for branding," says Salisbury, who owns Deaf Dog Coffee, a North Bay coffee chain. "So that if you like our drink at Deaf Dog, you want a Deaf Dog coffee no matter where you are."

Several cafe owners say naming stores differently is uncommon in the coffee industry. Deaf Dog and Sacramento's Java City both give all of their stores the same logo and feel, says Jay Kistner, a wholesale supplier of espresso equipment.

Roma owner Sandy Boyd says he took another approach to accommodate the preferences of Berkeley customers. Boyd says that as he expanded the chain from his first location on Bancroft in the mid-80s, he separated the cafes in name and style partly because Berkeley's residents do not respond well to branding.

"Berkeley was pretty anti-brand back there in the 80s," says Boyd, a UC Berkeley graduate. "You go to other places, and they're into more brand recognition and things like that."

Boyd says he does not hide the fact that he owns all the cafes-the cups at all nine locations share the same Espresso Roma logo.

Cafe Strada owner Daryl Ross implements a similar strategy, operating three campus cafes with different names-the Free Speech Movement Cafe, Cafe Zeb and Cafe Muse. But Ross says his business is not like the larger Espresso Roma.

"I'm a small independent coffee house owner, and Roma is a fairly large corporation," he says. Of a 1985 rent struggle in which Strada beat out Roma for its Bancroft location, Ross says, "the David was me, and the Goliath was the other guy."

This David and Goliath struggle between corporations and independents is an old story in Berkeley. Whether between Starbucks and Strada or Barnes & Noble and Cody's, chains and independents have fought over customers for decades.

The chain detractors in Berkeley are fierce. Protesters hold anti-Starbucks campaigns and residents routinely starve chains like KFC out of business. Liberal magazine "Slingshot" once termed a stretch of Shattuck Avenue with Blockbuster Videos and Jamba Juice the "Block of Horror."

But if Roma and Strada are any indication, the Berkeley coffee business does not fit neatly into two categories. Ross calls Roma "Goliath," while Boyd himself says of Roma that "I was looking for the opposite of a big chain-I was looking for individuality."

Indeed, Roma seems to occupy an ambiguous middle ground between the independent and the chain. Kenneth Davids, a professional coffee taster and co-founder of "The Coffee Review" magazine, calls a coffee shop like Roma a "pseudo-independent cafe."

The tension between independent and corporate coffee was in many ways born in Berkeley. Alfred Peet started the first Peet's, a favorite of specialty coffee enthusiasts, on Walnut and Vine streets in 1966. Less well known is that, four years later, Peet supplied coffee beans to an employee Zev Siegl to help him and two others start a small Seattle cafe-Starbucks.

The quality of the coffee served at cafes like Espresso Roma is equally as hard to classify. Coffee experts say a few independents serve some of the worst coffee in Berkeley and Starbucks serves some of the best.

"Some of the smaller cafes, they buy a few muffins from Costco, and they brew a tub of coffee at 7 and leave it out until 12 or 1," says Au Coquelet owner Mehdi Kashef. "There isn't necessarily a correspondence."

Davids, a professional coffee taster, says Starbucks can be pretty good.

"If I'm driving in the middle of nowhere, a Starbucks can be a little oasis," he says.

So if neither taste, history or appearance necessarily separates independent cafes from chains, how does one tell the difference? Boyd suggests listening to the music.

"Starbucks plays Kenny G," he says. "I'd get shot if I were playing Kenny G in cafes in Berkeley."

A correction to this article can be found here.

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