Peaberry aims for No. 2: coffee house touts different taste.

• Author: Gibbons, Eliza
• Position: Attitude at altitude

PEABERRY COFFEE, a Colorado original, is a small company with big plans. CEO and founder Bill Tointon plans to expand the current 22 stores, all in the metro Denver area, to 200 or so nationwide over the next five to ten years.

This expansion has been 14 years in the making, and began with The Black Hawk Roasting Co. in Arvada in 1989. Tointon's first foray into coffee lasted only a year, but the bean had been planted. One year later the first Peaberry store opened at Colorado Boulevard and Mexico Avenue in South Denver to serve the nascent movement toward specialty coffee houses.

Tointon, 44, envisions Peaberry as becoming the second name in coffee. Why not No. 1? "Starbuck's already leads the marketplace, and they have a lot more capital," he says. "We couldn't compete with their capital, so we differentiated our product. Our coffee tastes different from Starbuck's, and that's very intentional."

Peaberry originally roasted beans in-store to provide the freshest, best-tasting cup of coffee. By 1992, the company had grown to five stores, and the roasting process was consolidated at a warehouse to retain taste integrity across the chain.

About that time, Starbuck's came to town, recreating a coffee culture in Denver as it has throughout the United States, and replicating the way Peaberry did business.

Tointon realized that to stay alive and compete with the wealthy newcomer he had to make sweeping improvements. He focused on the four pillars underlying his industry: (1) an exceptional product; (2) outstanding customer service; (3) store decoration and function; and (4) merchandising.

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Development of the exceptional product was a two-year process from idea to conception. The result was the expansive Peaberry Profile System, which was a bold step to offer coffee grouped not just by geographical location, but also...