Yeah--I think it'll be hard for third-wave coffee shops to scale. The last number I heard about Blue Bottle was that they were making about $20M. That's a dro

Yeah--I think it'll be hard for third-wave coffee shops to scale. The last number I heard about Blue Bottle was that they were making about $20M. That's a drop in the bucket compared to Starbucks' $15B, and Blue Bottle is very well known. Truth be told, Blue Bottle's coffee and espresso quality has suffered from expansion. I think big cities contribute to plenty of revenue, but Starbucks has built itself as common as a convenience store. That's really hard to compete, even with third-wave and Philz types. Even Tim Horton's revenue is $3B! Hit me up next time you're in San Francisco--I don't think you got a very good tour of coffee here :) Aron Tzimas documents latte art around SF on his Instagram.