Characters In Coffee
A Conversation with George Vukasin Sr.
Story by Steven Krolak
Photo by Kurt Prassé

George Vukasin Sr. is the Chairman, CEO of Peerless Coffee and Tea, of Oakland, Calif. Peerless Coffee and Tea was founded by his father, John Vukasin, in 1924. The company is known for quality custom blends and blending innovation. It comprises three buildings, with 96 full-time and part-time employees and 75 service dealers around the country.

Steven Krolak: Where did your parents come from?
George Vukasin: They came from the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia. My father was born about 25 miles inland from Dubrovnik in a little village called Zubci. When I say village, I mean about three or four homes. He grew up in a town about 10 miles from there called Trebinje.

SK: What's the coffee culture like there?
GV: It's very old fashioned, like most of the Mediterranean area. Coffee is the number-one beverage. You have it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. When you go to visit, the woman of the house will go and get her little hand-grinder out, put some beans in it and grind it to a powdery form, then boil a pot of water, put the coffee grounds and sugar in it. Then, after about five minutes, when it has had time to settle, she pours it into demitasse cups. The grounds will sink to the bottom, and you'll enjoy your cup of coffee. My wife and I have been over there half a dozen times. Every time we go, we bring green coffee beans. They love us, because we're bringing arabicas, while most of the coffees in the Mediterranean area contain a high percentage of robustas out of Africa.

SK: When did your father come to America?
GV: When he was about 14 years old, his father sent him and a brother to the United States, more specifically to Nevada, where my father ended up working in the mines. When the owners found out about his age, they moved him into the kitchen, where he worked as a dishwasher and then as a kind of sous-chef. Now, the nearest Serbian Orthhodox church was in San Francisco. So when the church celebrated religious holidays, he would take the train with his brother and come down for the weekend. He met my mother and eventually settled here in Oakland, where her roots were.

SK: San Francisco has been traditionally a center of coffee importing. How did that market contribute to your father's start in coffee?
GV: He wanted to go into business for himself. He saw that all of his friends were opening restaurants, mostly little ones. And he thought, 'Why do I want to compete against them, when what I want to do is sell to them?' He liked coffee, and eventually met somebody who offered to put him in touch with green coffee brokers in San Francisco and Oakland. So he started out with a very small roaster. He roasted the coffee in the morning. He ground it. He then weighed out what his orders were for that day, and then he would deliver in the afternoon. We still have the ledgers that were kept in the 1930s and 1940s. It wasn't unusual for my father to receive checks from three customers on one day, maybe $40 each, while the expenses for the day amounted to maybe $75 or $100 dollars. It was truly a very small business.

SK: What was it like to grow up around coffee?
GV: I had coffee in my veins, not blood. My father was a perfectionist. He knew he was an immigrant, and wanted to be an American and be the best he could in whatever he did. And so he worked seven days a week. Every time I'd come in, whether I was in the business or even before then, my father would be sitting at the cupping table, cupping coffee. He was very good at it. And in the course of it, he evolved certain rules. Number one was, if you're going to be successful in whatever you do, you need to focus and concentrate on it, and have a passion for it. And the second thing is, quality is your best salesman.

SK: Did you want to follow in his footsteps right from the beginning?
GV: No. I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in criminology, and actually thought I'd like to be in the FBI. Then I was commissioned and had a two-year obligation in the Army from 1955 to 1957. I almost made a career out of the Army because I was a pretty patriotic guy and I believed in what was happening. But when I came home, it was obvious that although my father had been working very hard, the business was still small. He had maybe seven or eight employees, and he was counting on me to come into the business when I came out of the military. So I came in and haven't left yet.

SK: How many cuppers have you had?
GV: Very few: my father, my mother, my wife, my son, my daughter-that makes six. It's the heart of our business and we spend a considerable amount of time cupping since we want to be able to keep with our guidelines and procedures that have made us successful.

SK: What has been the biggest challenge you have faced?
GV: Developing a mental framework to meet the growth of the company. We were a mom-and-pop operation for so long. Then it became obvious, as we were getting bigger, that I needed to raise my level of knowledge and intelligence, not so much about the product, but about running the business. So I went to the Stanford Graduate School of Business for a summer seminar in 1989, and came back so excited. I hadn't realized there was so much I was lacking. I learned how to develop the business and learned, at the same time, to bring outsiders into the business who will contribute to its success.

SK: What do you consider your greatest success?
GV: The obvious one is the continued compliments we get on our product and our service. Now that sounds kind of corny, but it's not meant to. About 10 years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle voted our coffee the best from among 16 other coffee roasters. I think that was great for the whole company, to see how, when you preach quality, think positive and have passion for the product, you will succeed. At the Western Hospitality Show in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, a tremendous array of customers and potential customers came in to compliment us on our service and the quality of our product. That goes back to what my father taught me 35 years ago, that your best salesman is going to be your product. But when you talk about the source of success, I'd have to say it's my wife and our three kids. My wife and I have been married for 38 years. My mother had been the bookkeeper, and when she died, my wife took over, and now she's president of the company. Our son, George, Jr. is vice president of internal operations and product integrity. Our daughter, Christina, is our vice president and general counsel. She's an attorney. Our other daughter, Michelle, lives in Dallas. She's not in coffee, strictly speaking, but she has an MBA from the University of Texas, and has stepped in as a merchandiser for us on occasion.

SK: The industry is exploding. What advice do you have for new roasters?
GV: I am not as supportive of the roasters today as I was when I first experienced it myself. What I see today is a lack of passion by people who are doing the roasting because they don't know how to be consistent when they roast. I roasted for two to three years on a one-bag roaster back in the early 1960s; there was nothing automated about the roaster. My father was a perfectionist, and wanted the coffees and the blends to be finished at a certain color. You had to train yourself to do it by eye. If I was off by any measurable degree he would be very upset. So I had a compelling force to make sure that I perfected that ability of roasting. Beyond that I learned that coffees need to be roasted at a certain temperature for a certain time to a color that will give us the maximum taste characteristic of that product. You cannot roast under any automated condition and get the same color of the finished product twice in a row.

SK: What do you do to educate your customers in how to brew your coffee?
GV: We try to guide them. Whenever we get a new account, we take a look at what the characteristics are and what they want to attain. We do a lot of training on-site [the new account's location] and here at Peerless Coffee. We bring the people in and run them through our training session here on proper brewing procedures. We have documents, and we customize these for the customer's needs.

SK: How important is origin travel for a roaster?
GV: Origin travel is essential today, but not just for beans. Our mission statement obliges us to 'conduct all business activities in a professional, socially responsible manner.' It also talks about 'uncompromising quality levels' and investing to strengthen brand. Up until 10 or 15 years ago, I used to talk about quality as it related to the product. Now Peerless has to-and can-talk about quality as it relates to every aspect of the business. This includes dealing with the farmers and knowing what wonderful beans they develop, how they process, how they fertilize. Today, we probably wouldn't be successful if we had not developed some tremendous direct ties to origin. My son gets most of the credit for that. And we probably buy maybe 60 percent, maybe more, from origin. Beyond the beans, you end up falling in love with the farmers. It's not unusual that when you go in their houses, the floor has a carpet and under the carpet is dirt. This is a tough time they're all going through now, but they're genuinely proud of their product and they're proud if you buy it and put it in your blends or sell it straight. I can appreciate what these farmers are going through, trying to make a living, while not being able to sell their product and educate their kids. So I decided to do something. I'm the recipient, two years ago, of the Manuel Vieja medal of honor from Colombia, the highest civilian award given in the coffee industry to someone who is not from Colombia. The reason is that we went to Colombia and visited a school for 18-, 19-, 20-year olds. We were so impressed with their enthusiasm and desire to succeed. Our family is fortunate enough to have a family foundation and we have awarded money to have a number of scholarships per year to enable the children of coffee-producing families to go to the school and learn how to grow and process coffee, and administer a larger coffee operation.

SK: How have you seen the industry change?
GV: We are a major proponent of organic coffees. We've actually been roasting and selling them for the last 20 years. And we're noticing that organic coffees are becoming a very exciting product. The people are leading the way, and our sales in that category are increasing every month. That's number one. Another change in the industry is that we have gone into a number of long-term contracts with farmers. Prior to dealing with origin directly, we would buy coffee or maybe go out six months through the brokers and get coffees that way. But now we've gone a number of years, [and] I think we have a couple contracts right now that [are] four years out.

SK: What does it take to maintain a business in the same place for 80 years?
GV: A lot of desire for success. I used to be a city councilman in Oakland, in the 1970s. I've seen how the community has changed. We're lucky to be right in the heart of the San Francisco Bay area. We have access to all the freeways only a few blocks from us. And we're in a fairly decent, crime-free area. But the wider Oakland community has a lot of problems when it comes to unemployment, crime and taxes. So we meet with some other local business leaders-Dreyers Ice Cream, Clorox and Kaiser-Permanente are all headquartered in Oakland-on a regular basis to talk about what we can do for the community.

SK: What does coffee mean to you?
GV: Coffee is a passion, a skill, an enjoyment and if done properly, an artistic expression.

SK: What are Peerless' major markets?
GV: We focus on those accounts who are committed to brewing the best and freshest coffee available. Those include cafés, white table cloth restaurants and hotels. In fact, our customer Restaurant Gary Danko was just awarded the top award for quality and popularity from Zagat's San Francisco Bay Area.

SK: Many coffee drinkers take the cuppa for granted. What would you like consumers to be aware of as they sip?
GV: By focusing on purchasing the highest quality coffee, they are contributing to the livelihood of roughly 20 million people worldwide who make their living with coffee. It's amazing, as routine as a cup of coffee sounds, that cup makes waves all the way down to the farmer. Not only does every vote count, but every cup counts as well!

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Steven Krolak is the editor of Fresh Cup. He can be reached at steven@freshcup.com. George Vukasin Sr. is Chairman, CEO of Peerless Coffee and Tea and a devoted family man. He resides in Alamo, Calif. with his wife Sonja.