The Oregon-based coffee company sets up near USC

Their little windmills have been popping up at the edge of town, lighting up the Dutch Bros coffee outlets as they approached Southern California. The Oregon-based coffee empire has finally arrived in Los Angeles, opening their first local store in the USC neighborhood this week near Exposition and Figueroa, and there’s already a line out the door.

L.A.’s first Dutch Bros on Figueroa StreetCredit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Brothers Dane and Travis Boersma were dairy farmers in Grants Pass, Oregon when they made the switch to coffee in 1992. Their first day in business, the siblings took home $65, last year the chain grossed a reported $1.3 billion. The company now stretches from Oregon to Texas.

The fast-growing operation features lattes, nitrogen-infused cold brews, smoothies, freezes, teas, lemonades, and sodas and its own Rebel energy drink, all prepared by what the company calls “Broistas.”

Credit: Courtesy Dutch Bros

Santa Monica architects Armet Davis Newlove have designed more than 170 locations of the Dutch-themed coffee outlets, with another 100 in the works. They also created the new store in Exposition Park, which had once housed a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. “The brand went from 300 locations in 2019 to over 1000 locations earlier this year,” the firm’s Paul Deppe explains. “And they are looking to get to 2029 by 2029!”

Dutch Bros co-founder Travis Boersma at the New York Stock ExchangeCredit: Courtesy Dutch Bros

Going public in 2021 supercharged the outfit and made surviving company president Travis Boersma (brother Dane died of ALS in 2009) a billionaire and the second-richest person in Oregon.

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“I came up with the idea. I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we open a coffee cart? We can serve espresso,’” Travis Boersma told the Eugene Register-Guard about the inspiration for the bros to go into business together. “He said, ‘What’s espresso?’ Dane immediately went out and tried the bitter drink for the first time. “He took one sip of that and said, ‘Hey, my brother’s nuts,’ Boersma recalled. “But the next day I got him a vanilla latte, and he thought that was pretty good.”