Seattle’s Best is one of Seattle’s oldest coffee brands. According to the Seattle Times, two brothers started the business that eventually became “Seattle’s Best” in 1969. A few product changes and new owners later it became part of Starbucks, and was largely ignored. That was 2003. Now the company is about to expand the brand to over 30,000 locations — many of them fast food outlets.

The Seattle Times explains:

Early last year, Seattle’s Best had 550 stores, about 480 of them in Borders bookstores.

Then the changes began.

To squeeze higher sales from areas that once took a back seat to its breakneck U.S. store growth, Starbucks started juicing Seattle’s Best.

By the fall, the coffee will be sold in 30,000 locations, more than half of them Subway and Burger King stores and AMC Theatres. The chain is also pursuing franchisees.

The Seattle’s Best face-lift features a clean new logo that looks like an open-mouthed smiley face with a drip of coffee. It will appear on cups and napkins by this fall, on coffee packages in grocery stores and elsewhere by next spring and on store signs over the next year.

“We’re going back into the heritage of the company with its sense of fun and optimism, then bringing an element of simplicity,” said Michelle Gass, a rising star at Starbucks put in charge of Seattle’s Best last fall.

In celebration of the upcoming Seattle’s Best tsunami the company covered one side of its corporate headquarters with the new logo.

So what do you think? Do you like Seattle’s Best?

Seattle’s Best Coffee getting new logo, expanding [Seattle Times]
Starbucks plans big push for Seattle’s Best brand [AP]

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