From Blue Bottle CEO Bryan Meehan

Dear Blue Bottle Community,

With COVID-19 now declared a global pandemic, to protect our communities, teams, and guests, we have made the very difficult decision to temporarily close all of our US cafes, effective Monday, March 16. While we wish we could remain open to offer you a safe haven in these uncertain times, we simply do not have the benefit of enough information to ensure our public spaces are safe. So we are doing what we know is right in the moment.

We will only reopen when we feel it is safe to do so. In the meantime, for the next three months, no matter what happens, we are not planning any changes to our number of staff, pay rates, or health care benefits. All our staff, including baristas, will be paid for their scheduled hours. Longer term, we are also thinking creatively about new ways to serve our guests with care, to meet the challenge of these unpredictable times.

Outside of the US, our cafes in Korea and Japan remain open for the time being. The information there is more complete, with extensive testing and medical support clearly in place. As a result, we believe it is currently safe to operate there with the enhanced health and wellness measures we have implemented.

In the meantime, we will offer moments of care everywhere we can. We will continue to operate our roasteries in the US and Asia with enhanced safety measures to deliver coffee to online guests and subscribers on our regular schedules. We will also continue to support your brewing at home, with brew guides, brew tools, and special coffee releases.

We are closely monitoring this situation and look forward to welcoming everyone back into our cafes just as soon as we can. For now, we encourage our teams and guests to stay at home with loved ones and to keep kindness at the forefront of our lives, so that together we can help flatten the curve of this spread. In the meantime, our profound thanks goes out to all in the medical community who are battling this virus on the front lines.

We look forward to welcoming you back as soon as we can.

Thank you for your patience, care, and understanding.