Blue Bottle Coffee Cashes In, Raises $20 Million For Hipster Coffee

Looks like Blue Bottle Coffee is following in the footsteps of Starbucks and other coffee success stories: the small, little-train-that-could hipster coffee shop raised a whopping $20 million in investments. 

TechCrunch was the first to report on the loads of cash; the SEC filings showed that the majority of money came from True Ventures and Index Ventures. And the bigwigs investing are pretty respectable: the co-founders of Instagram and About.com, guys from Digg and Google Ventures, and even skateboarder Tony Hawk. Plus, the company has a new president and chief executive, Bryan Meehan; although The New York Times notes that founder James Freeman will still have a major part to play in the company. 

Of course, now everyone's wondering what this means for the company and its future plans. TechCrunch speculates that it could be supermarket sales of coffee or even an expansion of its online retail sales; Wired notes that the company could go even more mainstream — take the Blue Bottle expansion into Rockefeller Center, and the branded pajama pants (which we totally want). As of now, Blue Bottle Company only has 10 storefronts and kiosks in San Francisco and New York City, but that could soon change. Still, we'll toast a Vietnamese Coffee to Blue Bottle's success.