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Eight years after acquiring a majority stake in Blue Bottle Coffee, Nestlé is reportedly exploring a sale of the specialty coffee chain.
Three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters’ Abigail Summerville that the move is part of a wider “strategic review” from the Swiss multinational. The company’s new CEO is looking to streamline operations and “exit the business of operating physical retail locations,” Summerville wrote.
Nestlé took majority control of Blue Bottle in 2017 in a deal that Bloomberg reported was worth $425 million. Since the takeover, Blue Bottle has expanded significantly, from 40 stores at the time to around 100 today, opening locations across the U.S. as well as in South Korea, China, and Hong Kong. In 2024, workers at stores in Boston unionized, a movement that spread to California’s Bay Area a year later.
The news follows a similar decision by Coca-Cola earlier this year to sell Costa Coffee. Reports suggest that the beverage giant is willing to sell the underperforming U.K.-based chain for half of what it paid; likewise, sources told Reuters that any sale of Blue Bottle is likely to be at a discount.
Over the years, Nestlé has been integrating Blue Bottle into its wider coffee business. Beginning in 2023, Blue Bottle and Nespresso launched a series of “co-developed” capsules. One source told Summerville that an option Nestlé is considering is to offload Blue Bottle’s roughly 100 cafes while keeping the company’s intellectual property to continue selling such products.
Read the full story on the sale from Reuters here.
Photo by Changyoung Koh on Unsplash
