In 1913 a 14-year-old boy from Serbia named John Vukasinovich arrived in this country and made his way to Nevada, where he found work in the state’s silver mines.
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After years of this grueling, dangerous work he moved to Oakland and fell in love with a girl named Natalie Ljubibractic, who soon became his wife. Somewhere along the line their name was shortened to Vukasin.
After trying a variety of occupations, they decided to go into the coffee business. He’d roast the beans, and she’d run the business side, setting a pattern that still endures in the family’s third generation.
In 1924 they opened Peerless Coffee on Washington Street (it moved to Jack London Square in the 1970s). The name might not seem familiar, but if you’ve ever had a cup at Scott’s Seafood, Scoma’s, the Hideout, the Lafayette Park Hotel or Restaurant Gary Danko, you’ve had Peerless Coffee and know how great it tastes.
That’s no accident. It comes from a hundred years (peerlesscoffee.com/our-story) of John, his son, George Sr., and his grandson, George Jr., constantly refining their craft — although I probably should call it their art — starting with the risky decision to roast expensive arabica beans, which are delicious, instead of robusta beans, which are cheaper but not as tasty.
Meanwhile, John’s wife, Natalie (aka “Mrs. V”), ran the business side of Peerless, as did George Sr.’s wife, Sonja; and as their daughter, Kristina Brouhard, a former Alameda County assistant district attorney, now runs it as its executive vice president. Another sister, Michelle, doesn’t work at Peerless but also owns a piece of the company.
“Over the last 100 years, women have played — and continue to play — vital roles across various levels here, from leadership positions to operational roles,” says Kristina. “My grandmother was the bookkeeper for 30 years, and my mother was bookkeeper, retail store manager and eventually president of the company. I am honored to be part of this legacy.”
George Sr. had mixed emotions when his father summoned him to take over the roasting because it meant giving up his lifelong dream of being an FBI agent.
“But his father asked him, and he said, ‘Yes, sir!’ ” says George Jr. “You respect your father.”
George Jr., on the other hand, had no such qualms.
“I’ve known I wanted to be a coffee man since I was a little kid,” he says. “I grew up in this building; it was like Disneyland to me. I could climb on the big burlap bags and ride my bike in our warehouse.
“But my favorite part of the day was cupping (tasting coffee) with my dad each morning in the cupping room — him sitting on one stool and me on the other with my feet dangling down. He’d cup six to eight cups of coffee, and he’d set up two cups of hot chocolate for me. I was in heaven!”
George Sr. also had a busy life outside Peerless: He was an Oakland city councilmember; vice mayor; president of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce and the Alameda County March of Dimes, head of the Oakland Port Commission; and, as president of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum board, a key player in negotiating the Raiders’ 1995 return to Oakland.
He also helped make a dent in the worldwide production of cocaine by convincing farmers in Colombia that they could make more money growing coffee plants instead of coca plants, the raw material for making cocaine. How? By switching from robusta to arabica beans, of course.
George Jr., who learned about coffee literally at his father’s knee, built on that beginning with schooling at both ends of the production chain, from down-and-dirty field work on a coffee farm in Mexico to formal culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. He says being a small craft roaster gives him a big advantage.
“We do a lot of custom or bespoke roasts and blends. If all I wanted to offer was 15 of the greatest coffees in the world according to me, I might not need to have the ability to experiment as much.
“But because I’ll sit down with a chef and they’ll have a particular vision of the flavor profile they want, having more options on how to get from point A to point Z allows me to do my job better.”
He also still roasts all the coffee himself, one batch at a time.
“I do it old-school,” he says. There’s no technology involved in how I hand-roast. That’s just where I’m from and how I learned.”
Happy 100th birthday, Peerless!
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.