Seattle's Best Coffee started out as the Wet Whisker, a Vashon Island ice cream and coffee shop founded by Jim Stewart. In the early 1980s, the name changed to Stewart Brothers Wet Whisker, then to Stewart Brothers Coffee. Business began to expand, and new shops opened in Bellevue and Pike Place Market around 1984. In 1991, the company was renamed "Seattle's Best Coffee" after winning a local competition for "the best cup of coffee in Seattle." As of 2017, Seattle's Best is a wholly owned subsidiary of Starbucks, which purchased the company in 2003.
In this photo, Matthew Radford moves burlap bags of coffee beans in the Vashon Island warehouse of Seattle's Best Coffee.
Caption information sources: Seattle's Best Coffee website; Wikipedia.org Caption information also derived from captions written by Post-Intelligencer staff and attached to the back of the photograph.
Physical Description: 1 photographic print : b&w ; 8 x 10 in.
Additional Information: Digital copy of this item available thanks to funding from a 2016 Institute for Museum and Library Services grant. Metadata updated as part of a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Library Services and Technology Act, through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.
Credit: MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.039.02.07, photo by Kurt Smith
