Seattle’s Best Coffee, part of Starbucks Corporation, unveiled a new brand direction as part of a bold reinvention of the coffee company that was acquired in 2003. The new brand identity, including a new logo, will play a key role in Seattle’s Best Coffee’s strategy to redefine the traditional conventions of the coffee category, making high-quality coffee more accessible than ever before.
Seattle’s Best Coffee’s brand transformation is being fueled by significant, high-profile retail relationships and expanded franchising efforts that will increase today’s 3,000 points of distribution to more than 30,000 by the end of Starbucks’ fiscal year.
“After decades of experience in the coffee business and providing millions of customers with our distinctive and approachable coffee, we are fully unleashing the power of the Seattle’s Best Coffee brand to create the next global coffee brand, inspired by our belief that everyone deserves a great cup of coffee,” says Michelle Gass, president of Seattle’s Best Coffee. “We are setting out to turn the traditional coffee model on its head with innovative new approaches in every phase of our business—partnerships, retail, and packaged goods—and taking our premium coffee to the places our customers go in their everyday lives.”
From cafes and cruise ships to bookstores and grocery aisles, Seattle’s Best Coffee’s diverse distribution network is rapidly expanding. The brand has reached an agreement with AMC Theatres (AMC) to serve Seattle’s Best Coffee at the leading theatrical exhibitor’s nearly 300 AMC Theatres nationwide beginning in July, and as previously announced, Seattle’s Best Coffee will also be offered at all Burger King restaurants in the U.S. by September. These new relationships join Seattle’s Best Coffee’s growing roster of partners, which includes Alaska Airlines, Borders bookstores, and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, among others.
“Our new brand identity was inspired by the history of the Seattle’s Best Coffee culture, one of optimism and fun,” Gass says. “The new brand direction will bring a simplified approach to the coffee category in all the ways it will touch the customer.”
The Seattle’s Best Coffee logo’s reinterpretation maintains the brand’s historic association with its name and the color red while assembling a number of universal coffee symbols, such as a drop and a cup, in an unexpected way. The new logo was designed by Creature, an independent brand and advertising agency based in Seattle.
“Our ambitions for the new Seattle’s Best Coffee brand are as significant as our aspirations to become a multi-billion dollar business, and we designed the new logo to one day become a universally recognized and reassuring symbol for great tasting coffee everywhere,” Gass says.
