SF's Tartine Bakery Coming to LA Following Blue Bottle Merger

Get ready to wait in line, Los Angeles: Tartine bakery is coming. According to the New York Times, the iconic San Francisco bakery known for its sourdough breads and long wait times, has inked a deal with the ever-expanding Blue Bottle, which means where the coffee roaster goes, so too will Tartine.

First, that means a few quick roll-outs into (or nearby) existing Blue Bottle Coffee locations, like New York City, Los Angeles, and even Tokyo, all of which have plans to go live within a year. On its surface, the deal sounds similar to the one that brought Starbucks acquisition La Boulange to Los Angeles last year — big-name SF bakery partners with cash-heavy coffee company for beautiful expansions into multiple cities. And Blue Bottle certainly is flush with money right now, especially following their VC-backed funding rounds of $19.6 million in 2012 and $25.75 in 2014.

But in truth, Blue Bottle has done very well in maintaining their core principles even as they rapidly grow; Tartine baker/owner Chad Robertson cites it as one of the reasons he agreed to the sale in the first place. It will be interested, however, to watch the slow and deliberate  Tartine bread process interact with the high-volume, quick-success world of tech funding.

With Tartine now L.A.-bound officially, expect a likely landing spot downtown, though so far nothing is set in stone.