East Coast Versus West Coast: Two Coffee Chains Are Growing in Opposite Directions

Dutch Bros and 7 Brew sell nearly the same thing out of nearly the same building. Each one has a large part of the country it has never entered, and the other chain is already there.

Dutch Bros has no store anywhere in the Northeast. Not in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine. 7 Brew has none in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada or Idaho, where Dutch Bros has nearly half of its stores.

That is the map as it stands today. The more useful question for anyone holding land is which way each chain is moving, and that shows up in permit filings months before a store opens. Obedio tracks those filings across local government meetings, and right now they point in opposite directions.

The Lead Changed Hands This Year

In the six months to August 23, 7 Brew went before 67 local governments with a filing of the kind that comes before a store opens. Dutch Bros went before 25. Not every filing becomes a store, and both counts are floors, but the gap between 67 and 25 is wide enough that the direction is not in doubt.

It is also new. In the six months before that, Dutch Bros was the busier of the two, 18 towns to 13. A year ago they were level at seven each. 7 Brew has gone from 13 towns to 67 in half a year while Dutch Bros moved from 18 to 25.

Where Those Filings Land

Split the same six months by region and the two chains barely touch. Of 7 Brew's 67 towns, 25 are Midwestern and 22 Northeastern. Dutch Bros filed in no Northeastern town at all, and most of its 25 sit in the Midwest and the West. 7 Brew filed in 22 states over those six months. Dutch Bros filed in six.

This is the part that does not simply copy the store map. Most 7 Brew stores standing today are in the South, where the chain grew up. Its filings have moved north and east. Dutch Bros is doing the opposite, filing where it already is.

Two maps. The left one shows stores open today. The right one shows filings from the last six months for stores that have not opened. In both, each state is split down the middle: the left half is Dutch Bros, the right half is 7 Brew. Green means that chain has a store open, amber and yellow mean it has filed, and grey means it has nothing on record in that state.

One Grew Up in Oregon, the Other in the South

Dutch Bros started in 1992 as a pushcart in Grants Pass, Oregon, run by brothers Dane and Travis Boersma. It is now a public company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with its investor office in Tempe, Arizona. It calls itself an operator and franchisor, and roughly two thirds of its stores are Western.

7 Brew is private and publishes no founding date, headquarters or store total. What its own directory shows is a Southern chain: Texas is its largest state by a wide margin, and its biggest region is the South rather than the East. Calling it an East Coast chain would be wrong. The Northeast is simply where it is growing, and where Dutch Bros is not.

They are not strangers everywhere. Both chains operate in 22 of the same states, and in those 22 they are almost evenly matched. Texas is the biggest contested market. The clean separation is only at the two coasts.

Who Signs the Application

The two chains send different people to the podium, and that changes who a landowner negotiates with.

Dutch Bros often files under its own name. Tempe, Arizona and Santa Fe Springs, California both list the applicant as Dutch Bros, LLC. Where a local company does file, it is usually a landowner or a builder rather than a franchisee.

7 Brew comes in through partner companies. Who Brew PA III, LLC filed in Hampton Township, Pennsylvania. Who Brew IL I, LLC filed in Tinley Park, Illinois, and Who Brew II, LLC in Franklin Park. Other sites arrived through Olio Group in Michigan and Anchor Point Management Group in Ohio. Illinois alone shows three different naming conventions, and what the numbers stand for is not stated in these records.

The Buildings Are Not the Same Size

7 Brew leans on one small building. Fairborn, Ohio and West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania each reviewed the same 510 square foot drink shop with a separate 280 square foot cooler, two months apart and two states apart. There is no indoor seating and no walk-up window. In Fairborn there is not even an ordering speaker: workers walk out to each car in line with the order.

Dutch Bros builds about twice that, and its most common build in these records is 950 square feet. Its Rancho Cucamonga plan has two drive-thru lanes and a walk-up window for people on foot. Dutch Bros builds for cars and for people. 7 Brew builds only for cars, and at the Fairborn hearing its planner said the company puts pedestrians at under one percent of customers.

The bigger difference for a landowner is the car queue. 7 Brew filings ask for room to stack 23 to 40 cars. Its director of real estate told West Goshen the lanes there hold 40 when full, and its director of operations told College Township, Pennsylvania that a site at the old Nittany Mall would hold 38. Dutch Bros filings ask for less, though not always much less, ranging from 16 to about 31. A shallow lot rules out a 7 Brew before anything else is discussed.

Both Build on Land Other Retail Left Behind

Neither chain is mostly buying raw ground. Darien, Illinois took up an ordinance splitting the old TGI Friday's lot in two, one half for Dutch Bros and one for Andy's Frozen Custard. The Fairborn site had been approved for a Sonic restaurant in 2008 and then sat empty. Rancho Cucamonga's Dutch Bros site is a leftover corner inside an existing shopping center.

7 Brew does the same. In Hampton Township, Pennsylvania, its partner proposed tearing down a building holding a sandwich shop. In Concord, California, one of its two filings in that state converts an existing drive-thru restaurant into a drive-thru-only coffee stand.

Where Towns Have Pushed Back

Residents turned out against the Fairborn store. Residents came to the May 12 hearing to object over traffic, opening hours, noise from cars waiting in line, and noise from the music the store plays outside. One said the store opens at 5 a.m. and closes at 10 p.m., and that both times fall while neighbors are asleep. The planning board turned it down. The city council approved it anyway through Resolution 32-26.

Dutch Bros filings more often turn on zoning relief than on resident objections. In Fairlawn, Ohio, a store needed three waivers at once: one to sit on a lot smaller than the code allows, one to put parking at the lot line, and one to skip the electric vehicle charging station the code requires.

Why It Matters for Site Selectors and Developers

Only one of them will call you. In the Northeast that is 7 Brew, and on the West Coast it is Dutch Bros. In the 22 shared states you can run them against each other.

7 Brew is the more active buyer right now. It filed in nearly three times as many towns as Dutch Bros in the last six months, and most of that activity is Northeastern and Midwestern.

Depth beats size. Both chains fit on half an acre, but 7 Brew needs room to stack up to 40 cars. A short lot fails that test no matter how large it is.

The applicant name tells you who to call. Dutch Bros often handles a site itself. A 7 Brew site usually comes in through a local partner company, which is a different negotiation.

Old drive-thru sites are where both chains are looking. Both are reusing old restaurant buildings and leftover corners rather than buying raw ground.

What to Watch

• Whether Dutch Bros files anything in the Northeast. It has not yet, and that would be the first sign the two chains start competing at the edges rather than only in the middle.
• Whether 7 Brew adds to its two California filings, or leaves the West Coast alone.
• Whether 7 Brew holds this filing rate through the autumn, or whether the last six months were a one-off push.
• New Who Brew entity names. When a Who Brew name appears in a state that has not had one, 7 Brew is preparing to file there.
• Whether more towns follow Fairlawn and make Dutch Bros ask to skip the electric vehicle charging requirement.

This article is factual background and is not legal, financial, or investment advice.