一个行业的开创者如何能够在接下来几十年持续保持颠覆者的地位？要想知道这个问题的答案，你可以去问问毕特咖啡（Peet’s Coffee）。这家已有50年历史的咖啡公司如今仍然把握着时尚脉动，努力吸引年轻一代的咖啡达人。

50年前的今天，阿尔弗莱德·毕特在加州伯克利创立了第一家毕特咖啡店。那是罐装咖啡一统天下的1966年。这位荷兰裔移民开始在自家小店里手工烘焙小批量咖啡豆，其馥郁而醇厚的味道在当时的美国市场无出其右。

“精品咖啡运动”就是这样开始的。

今天，毕特咖啡面前的最大问题是，如何在忠于品牌特色的同时，继续推动精品咖啡运动的发展。市场对精品咖啡的需求不断增加，行业的竞争也变得愈发激烈。

在几十年的发展历程中，毕特咖啡公司CEO戴夫·布威克和董事杰瑞·鲍德温（星巴克的创始人之一）学到了不少关于创业、颠覆和创新的经验。两人近日接受《财富》专访，向创业者们分享了五条推动企业发展壮大的经验教训。

（1）寻找行业翘楚，从头学起

开创一家新公司时，创业者必须掌握方方面面的知识。要想获得对行业产生精辟入里的见解，最好的方法莫过于寻找一个最受尊重的行业领袖来教给你一些窍门。在创办星巴克之前，鲍德温与他的商业合作伙伴杰夫·西格和戈登·鲍克就是这样做的。他们意识到，要想追赶上咖啡行业的领导者，最好先在毕特咖啡店打工，边干边学。于是，鲍德温开始在加州第一家毕特咖啡店学习咖啡制作。当他在1971年创办星巴克时，这些知识对他帮助很大。鲍德温也是星巴克这家全球咖啡巨头的第一名咖啡烘焙师。“我早期所有的咖啡知识都来自阿尔弗莱德，来自我们在那里的学习经历。”鲍德温表示：“我们清楚地意识到他的咖啡造诣深不可测，他非常了不起。我们很幸运地拥有这样一位愿意分享知识的导师。”

（2）不要害怕，迅速做出正确选择，然后继续前进

有些决策需要深思熟虑才能做出，不过如果你相信自己知道问题的答案，就不要害怕，要迅速采取行动。1984年，就在鲍德温已经在忙着运营星巴克的时候，他突然听说毕特咖啡正在谋求出售。他表示：“我当时喜不自禁，只好躲到洗手间手舞足蹈一阵子。”他很容易地做出了这个决定——买下毕特咖啡（当时毕特咖啡已经是一家拥有4间门店的连锁企业）。于是，他同时拥有了两家自己喜欢的咖啡公司。

几年后，他又面临另一个重大决定：他在星巴克的合伙人鲍克决定卖掉自己的股份。鲍德温咨询了他最信任的知己——他的妻子简。只用了短短的30秒，他就决定卖掉自己一手创立的公司，购入鲍克的全部股份——同时保留毕特咖啡的股权。他表示：“我知道，不管我们把星巴克打造得多好，它永远也不是毕特。”

（3）做大做强，快速扩张，但不要失去你的品牌价值

星巴克目前已有2.2万多家门店，年收益超过170亿美元。面对星巴克如此耀眼的成绩，毕特公司依然没有追赶星巴克的计划。毕特咖啡目前在全美共有240家门店，2016年的年收益预计在8亿美元左右。布威克希望在未来5年推动毕特咖啡的年收入增至20亿美元。

布威克表示，为了达到这个目标，公司必须保持咖啡的品质，“但为了公司的增长，并吸引更多消费者，我们必须采取一种与众不同的方法。” 2015年，毕特咖啡开始启动一波积极的收购浪潮，先后收购所谓的“第三波咖啡”品牌Stumptown Coffee Roasters和Intelligentsia。（注：所谓的“第三波咖啡”，是一些主打精品和高质量的咖啡公司相对于第一波和第二波咖啡提出的一种自我定位。第一波主要以Folger’s咖啡为代表，第二波主要以星巴克为代表。）有意思的是，这两家公司的创始人也都是从毕特咖啡走出去的。这两笔收购备受关注，一些忠实的咖啡爱好者在Twitter上颇有微词。为了冷却负面反应，布威克强调称，毕特将继续保留这两家公司的原有领导层，并且允许这两个品牌继续独立运营。

毕特咖啡之所以能历经50年而长盛不衰，还因为它保留了小而精的特色和对手艺的执著。就像布威克所说的那样，毕特咖啡的精髓就在于如何“将公司的‘小’做大”。

（4）勇于面对创新压力

消费者对新奇感的需求，是促进咖啡行业成长的一个重要动力。目前，冰滴咖啡已经成为一种热门趋势，受到24%的消费者热捧。（其中大多数是千禧一代。）

2015年，毕特公司在所有门店都推出了冰滴咖啡，并且对门店进行了重新装修，使其更迎合年轻消费者的品味。随后毕特公司又收购了冰滴咖啡领域的先行者Stumptown公司，以进一步攫取年轻人市场。

毕特公司还在利用另一个大趋势赚钱——单杯式的胶囊咖啡。目前，四分之一以上的美国家庭都拥有一台单杯式咖啡机。有鉴于此，毕特咖啡的母公司JAB控股去年12月收购了胶囊咖啡生产商克里格绿山咖啡公司。当然，并非每家公司都能如此幸运地通过收购而稳坐潮流前沿。这个故事传递的一个更重要信息是，企业必须时时把握市场脉搏，拥抱可能改变你的产品或服务的创意。

（5）勿忘初心

一家开拓性的公司要想保住市场主宰地位，就必须要试验新产品，但它永远不能动摇自己的“根”。布威克和鲍德温认为，毕特公司50年的历史是一种优势，而不是一个障碍。无论是收购，重新装修门店，还是推出冰滴咖啡，这些都是毕特咖啡为迎合消费者而采取的举措。但毕特公司如今做的最具颠覆性的事情或许可追溯至阿尔弗莱德·毕特在1966年开办的第一家门店，那就是依赖人类的精度来制作咖啡。

“你相信吗，到了2016年，我们还在使用手工咖啡机。”鲍德温说。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

审校：任文科

When you pioneer an industry, how can you continue to stay disruptive for generations to come? Just ask Peet’s Coffee, the 50-year-old coffee company fighting to stay relevant and appeal to craft coffee-chugging millennials.

Fifty years ago today, Alfred Peet opened the very first Peet’s Coffee shop. The year was 1966, when coffee from a can was the norm. From his shop in Berkeley, Calif., the Dutch immigrant began hand-roasting coffee beans in small batches, creating bold and complex blends that were unlike anything in the American market.

That was the beginning of the specialty coffee movement.

Today, the question at Peet’s Coffee is how to keep ahead of that movement while staying true to its brand. As demand for specialty coffee has exploded, so has the competition.

Peet’s CEO Dave Burwick and Peet’s board member Jerry Baldwin, who was one of the founders of Starbucks, have learned plenty of lessons about entrepreneurship, disruption and innovation over the coffee chain’s decades-long existence. The pair recently sat down with Fortune to share five key lessons entrepreneurs can use as they look to grow their business.

(1) Seek out the best players in your field and learn from the ground up.

When starting a new venture, entrepreneurs must know every aspect of their business in and out. And what better way to gain insight than to seek out the most respected industry leader to teach you the ropes? That’s exactly what Baldwin and his business partners, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker, did before opening the doors at Starbucks. They realized that the way to get close to the “Moses” of coffee was to work in one of his stores. Baldwin started scooping coffee beans at the original Peet’s store in California.That knowledge helped him when he started Starbucks in 1971; he was the coffee giant’s first roaster. “All of my early coffee knowledge came from Alfred and what we learned there,” Baldwin says. “What was clear to us was [how much] he knew about coffee, how credible he was and how lucky we were to have him share that with us.”

(2) Don’t be afraid to make the right decision quickly – and move on.

Some decisions require a great deal of contemplation, but when you’re sure you know the answer, don’t be afraid to act quickly. In 1984, while Baldwin was busy running Starbucks, he found out Peet’s was up for sale. “I had to excuse myself, go to the men’s room and dance,” he says. The decision was easy – he bought Peet’s (which was a four-store chain) and then owned two coffee companies he loved.

A few years later, he had to make another big decision: Bowker, his business partner at Starbucks,decided to sell his share of the company. Baldwin turned to his most trusted confidante – his wife Jane. In a matter of 30 seconds, he decided to sell the company he founded to buy Bowker out — and keep Peet’s. “I knew that no matter how good we would make Starbucks, it would never be Peet’s,” hesays.

(3) Grow big, grow fast, but don’t grow out of your brand values.

Peet’s still has no plans of chasing Starbucks, which now has 22,000 stores and generates annual revenue of $17 billion. With 240 stores nationwide,Peet’s will bring in about $800 million in revenue by the end of 2016. Burwick’s goal is to increase that number to $2 billion in the next five years.

To do that, Burwick says the company must uphold the quality of its coffee, but “do things differently to grow and to reach more people.” In 2015, Peet’s went on an aggressive buying spree, acquiring third-wave coffee brands Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Intelligentsia Coffee. (Interestingly enough, the founders of both companies got their start at Peet’s.) The acquisitions did not go unnoticed, and devoted coffee lovers sounded off on Twitter. To calm the uproar, Burwick emphasized that Peet’s will keep the leadership in place and allow the brands to operate independently.

The chain continues to abide by a vision of staying small and true to its craft. As Burwick says, it’s about “scaling a company’s smallness.”

(4) Give in to the pressure to innovate.

The coffee industry is largely driven by consumer demand for novelty. Right now, cold brew coffee is the hot trend, favored by 24% of consumers (most of them millennials).

In May 2015, Peet’s launched cold brew in all of its locations and remodeled its stores to make them more appealing to a younger demographic. The company later bought Stumptown, what it views as the pioneer of cold brew coffee, to further capture the millennial market.

Peet’s is also capitalizing on another big trend: single-serve K-cups. Right now, more than 1 in 4 households owns a single-cup brewer. Peet’s parent company, JAB Holdings, bought K-cup maker Keurig Green Mountain in December.

Of course, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to stay on top of the trends by buying up other companies; the larger message is to have a finger on the pulse of the market at all times and embrace the idea of changing your offerings.

(5) Don’t forget what made you great in the first place.

In order for a pioneering company to maintain its dominance in the market, it must experiment with new products, but it must never lose touch with its roots. Burwick and Baldwin see Peet’s age an advantage, not an impediment. The acquisitions, the remodeling of Peet’s coffee shops, the cold brew. It’s all part of the plan to adapt. But perhaps the most disruptive thing Peet’s does today is something that dates back to Alfred Peet’s original store in 1966 – the reliance on human precision to brew coffee.

“We’re still using manual espresso machines in 2016, for crying out loud,” Baldwin says.