Blue Bottle Coffee Sale to Nestlé Closes

KO Represents Blue Bottle Coffee in Transaction with World’s Largest Food and Beverage Company

DENVER – Koenig, Oelsner, Taylor, Schoenfeld & Gaddis PC served as lead legal counsel to facilitate Blue Bottle Coffee’s sale of a majority stake of its equity to Nestlé. The international transaction closed at the end of October, and the KO team helped negotiate both the management and seller terms of this strategic acquisition.

“The legal expertise and practical advice provided by the KO team was invaluable in our achievement of a successful transaction,” said Bryan Meehan, Chief Executive Officer of Blue Bottle Coffee. “Over the past five years, we have enjoyed working with KO on financings, acquisitions and general corporate matters, and we consider them an extension of our Blue Bottle team.”

Founded in 2002, Blue Bottle Coffee has been committed to sourcing and roasting the world’s best, most sustainable coffees and serving them in their cafes in North America and Japan. KO helped negotiate terms for management to retain approximately 30 percent of the business in the partnership with Nestlé.

The KO transaction team was led by Jon Taylor, Jennifer Rosenthal and Melissa Mellen. KO has represented Blue Bottle Coffee since 2011 on numerous financings, acquisitions and general corporate matters. KO also represents a number of other investors and brands in the food and beverage industry in corporate transactional and commercial matters.

About KO
KO (Koenig, Oelsner, Taylor, Schoenfeld & Gaddis PC) is a corporate law boutique that helps its clients achieve success by providing practical and strategic legal advice to businesses, financial institutions, private equity funds, investors and individuals in a broad range of sophisticated transactional matters, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital investments, securities and credit finance transactions, entity formation, employment matters, commercial contracts, technology and IP agreements, and general counsel services. To find out more, visit kofirm.com or contact Jon Taylor at [email protected] or Jennifer Rosenthal at [email protected].

About Blue Bottle
Blue Bottle Coffee was founded by James Freeman in Oakland, California, in 2002. A self-declared coffee lunatic, James hand-roasted beans in a 183 square-foot potting shed and then delivered them to friends from his Peugeot wagon. Blue Bottle is now a small but mighty network of cafes in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, D.C., and Tokyo. Improbably and delightfully, the company continues to grow, but remains united by the simple purpose of sourcing and roasting the world’s best, most sustainable coffees and serving them at peak deliciousness. To find out more, visit bluebottlecoffee.com.