Competition, quality coffee fuel Diedrich

Martin Diedrich opens a new coffee house within walking distance of a shop he used to run.NEWPORT BEACH -- Costa Mesa coffee purveyor Martin Diedrich is now in competition with the chain of coffee houses he started in the 1980s.

Diedrich opened Kéan Coffee on Westcliff Drive on Dec. 26. The new coffee house, just over the Newport Beach side of that city’s border with Costa Mesa, is a short walk away from both the coffee business where Diedrich worked with his father and the Diedrich Coffee house on 17th Street.

“I look out the window and I look over to where I started,” Diedrich said.

Martin Diedrich left Diedrich Coffee in 2004. He said he started planning for Kéan Coffee as soon as he left his old job.

Kéan Coffee is a family venture. Diedrich and his wife Karen own the shop together, and the store is named after their 7-year-old son. Coffee has been a part of Martin Diedrich’s life since childhood. He grew up in Antigua, Guatemala, on a coffee farm owned by his father, Carl.

In 1982, “Thugs in Guatemala took my father’s farm away from him,” Martin Diedrich recalled.

Deciding to help his family, Martin Diedrich chose to sacrifice his study of archeology and started working at his father’s local coffee business. From that point, Diedrich’s career continued along a caffeinated path, and he said he opened his first “full-blown” Diedrich Coffee house in 1986.

The Diedrich family lives in Eastside Costa Mesa, a short distance from Kéan Coffee. Karen Dietrich said it’s important for her and Martin to be close to the store and able to spend time at the business.

“It’s not a send-a-bunch-of-employees-and-let-’em-run-it kind of thing,” she said.

Diedrich Coffee is currently headquartered in Irvine, and the company has more than 200 stores in the United States. However, Martin Diedrich said he does not want to be a part of a big chain along the lines of Diedrich Coffee or the Starbucks Coffee empire. Now, he doesn’t foresee opening more than a handful of Kéan Coffee houses.

“They’re just rolling out unit numbers, while I intend deliberately to keep things small,” Martin Diedrich said. “Maybe another three or four [stores] in the next five years and that’s it. I want to keep it limited because you can’t mass produce quality.”

The store’s general manager, Mary Johnson, previously worked with Martin Diedrich when he was still with Diedrich Coffee. Johnson said Kéan Coffee’s beans have a four-day shelf life after roasting. If coffee is kept longer, Johnson said it can taste bitter and oily.

“When a coffee is old, a lot of those oils start to come out of the bean,” she said.

Martin Diedrich said he loves the flavors and culture of coffee and seeks hard-to-find varieties from countries including Panama, Bolivia and Peru.

“There are such great coffees in the world. They have great taste characteristics when they’re done really well,” he said.

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at [email protected].

20060107isp6g2ncDON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)Kéan Coffee founder Martin Deidrich is happy to be back where he started, running a family-owned coffee shop.