Belvedere's Sal Bonavita was one of the earliest owners of Peet’s Coffee

At left, Belvedere resident Sal Bonavita, a coffee importer who would purchase Peet’s Coffee from namesake owner Alfred Peet, pictured together in the 1980s, died at his apartment on July 28. He was 84. (via ‘The Coffee Visionary: The Life & Legacy of Alfred Peet’ by Jasper Houtman)

Belvedere resident Sal Bonavita, a businessman whose career as a coffee and tea importer led him to become Alfred Peet’s hand-picked successor at Peet’s Coffee, died at his home July 28 following complications related to dementia. He was 84.

Bonavita owned the coffee company through the mid-1980s after purchasing it from company namesake Alfred Peet in 1979. The New York Times called Peet the “leader of a coffee revolution” in his 2007 obituary. Peet founded the coffee shop in Berkeley in 1966 and continued to work alongside Bonavita as a consultant on maintaining his high standards for coffee and tea after selling the company.

Before acquiring Peet’s, Bonavita had built his career as an importer by the end of the 1970. He sold specialty teas and coffees, Italian espresso machines and other accessories to luxury department stores across the U.S.

After selling Peet’s to Starbucks co-founder Jerry Baldwin in 1984, Bonavita continued to consult for coffee roasters, such as Sonoma County-based Wolf Coffee Co. He also had his own coffee venture, the now-closed Bonavita Coffee and Tea Co. in Mill Valley.

Healdsburg residents and Wolf Coffee founders Richard and Jeanne Mariani said Bonavita was a mentor to them when they founded their coffee company in 1990 on both roasting and operating fronts.

“He provided just this attention to quality and attention to detail in every step of the process,” Jeanne Mariani said.

John Weaver was hired by Bonavita to work at Peet’s Coffee in 1980 and later became its master roaster. He left in 2007 to start San Rafael-based Weaver’s Coffee and Tea.

Weaver said Bonavita became “one of the best experts in the world” because Peet mentored him. Weaver includes his coffee-making heritage, featuring Peet and Bonavita, on his coffee-bean bags and roasts one blend using the same 1905 model of roaster Peet used as an homage to the two.

“I didn’t realize how special, till later, that what I was being taught was,” Weaver said, calling Bonavita a “legendary” figure.

Early life and family

Salvatore Alexander Bonavita was born Jan. 6, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York, to Anthony Bonavita and Rita Limoncelli. Raised in Brooklyn, he was the couple’s only child and the grandson of Italian immigrants.

He was married twice. First to Odette Sarkis, whom he met when he picked up her older brother and his college roommate. The couple moved to the Tiburon Peninsula in 1975, where they raised their two children, Anthony and Nicole. They were married for 25 years until her death of cancer in 1994.

In 1997, he met second wife Joan through a mutual friend. The two married in 2010 and remained together until his death.

She said her husband was easy to talk to and welcoming. She added that he was mindful and attentive of others, both in his business and personal endeavors.

“Quality was very important to him, whether it was a human being’s personal qualities or whether it was the qualities of a wonderful meal,” Joan Bonavita said, adding that he became an excellent cook as he paid attention to his mother’s cooking.

Coffee career beginnings

After college in Oklahoma, Bonavita moved to Colorado after a friend in the coffee business called him to speak about a new business venture selling coffee to offices.

“This is a time when coffee was generally made only in percolators — I mean, even big percolators for commercial stores,” Bonavita said in a 2017 interview with Fairfield, Iowa, radio station KRUU. “So, I went out and made a presentation with him, and it was like magic. People hadn’t seen a pour-over before.”

Bonavita moved to California in the 1960s. He founded a company that installed coffee machines and provided an array of related materials: pouches, cream, sugar and stir sticks.

After selling that company, Bonavita said Macy’s California President Edward Finkelstein, who later became its chairman, wanted to procure coffee and related items for the Cellar, the store’s high-end kitchenware section, in the 1970s. He imported espresso machines for Macy’s and later Bloomingdale’s, reaching about 3,000 customers, Bonavita told author Jasper Houtman for “The Coffee Visionary: The Life & Legacy of Alfred Peet,” a 2018 biography on Peet.

While reviewing sales, Bonavita told Houtman he noticed that one location in Berkeley sold more coffee supplies than some of the department stores he sold to.

That led Bonavita to Peet’s Coffee, where he introduced Peet to some of his imported coffee makers, which Peet took an interest in, Houtman wrote. Bonavita soon had the idea of buying Peet’s, then just two shops. Peet had one condition: He’d test how Bonavita assessed coffee and tea to see if he was a worthy buyer.

Peet had a high standard and approach toward coffee and tea, Bonavita said, as the Netherlands-born Peet had “this European style of operating and treating coffee — much more mature than anything in the United States.”

“Your best is good enough for me, but not for Alfred,” Bonavita told KRUU radio. “Alfred wanted the best, period.”

Bonavita said in 2017 he’d still get questions from others about how Peet, “an eccentric and complicated man,” managed to become an influence on how coffee is drunk.

“Alfred’s aim was for perfection, which was much more important to him than making money,” Bonavita said. “So, right from the get-go, I felt like I was in a Japanese Zen kind of thing with Alfred: the notion that you only do that which you can do perfectly, or whatever you do, you try to do it perfectly.”

Leadership style and mentorship

While Peet could be demanding, Weaver, the coffee roaster, said Bonavita “is much more a relationship person.” When Peet would criticize the inconsistency of Weaver’s roasts, Bonavita was always there to reassure Weaver of his abilities.

“He saw in me … that I loved roasting coffee,” Weaver said of Bonavita. “I didn’t even see it.”

The eye for detail that Bonavita learned from Peet was passed along to Richard Mariani of Wolf Coffee, saying Bonavita taught him how “it takes 100 different things … putting out a quality product.”

“It was the attention to detail, and it was the attention to detail of each one of those,” he said of Bonavita’s influence. “And if one part of that equation goes off the sidelines, you have to kind of rein it back in.”

Bonavita sold Peet’s about 1984 to Baldwin, the Starbucks co-founder, after Odette was diagnosed with cancer, Houtman wrote. Bonavita told the author that Peet was initially upset by the decision, and Weaver recalled to Houtman that Peet said “for Sal, it was nothing more than a real-estate deal.” After a strained period, Houtman wrote, Peet and Bonavita reconciled and the two remained lifelong friends until Peet’s death.

“There were bigger responsibilities at that moment, and the sale was a way to deal with that,” Bonavita told Houtman. “It was very painful; I was attached to Peet’s. But at the time, it was the right decision and looking back, I never regretted it.”

Family and personal life

Son Anthony Bonavita said he recalls his dad talking to the family about his trips to Italy with his import company before he started with Peet’s, Coffee Imports International, and later his work with Peet’s. He said he and his sister “partook in that as much as we could as little kids.”

He said his father, in addition to loving business and being an entrepreneur, “was an incredibly loyal husband and a devoted family man and wanted to spend time with his family and wife, kind of with an uncertain future ahead.”

In his personal life, Bonavita was a longtime member of the San Francisco Yacht Club and coached youth sports teams for both the Tiburon Peninsula Soccer Club and Tiburon Peninsula Little League, his son said.

Bonavita was also a passionate sailor who loved to be on the water, family and business colleagues said. Jeanne Mariani said Bonavita trusted her to sail on the water, a trust he instilled that also translated into business.

She said Bonavita wanted to instill in her that she had an equal say in running the business — as he was “very into equity and equality” long before it became common practice.

“I don’t think I’d be the person I am today in the business world without the learnings from Sal,” she said. “They were good, foundational learnings for me.”

Weaver said Bonavita was a father figure to him.

“He told me one time — the only man that told me, ‘John, you have the tools to be anything you want in life. You’re going to be very successful,’” Weaver recalls. “That blew me away.”

Wife Joan said her husband was a visionary in the coffee industry, a sentiment son Anthony agreed with, though he said his dad was “quiet about it.” Joan said his standard for excellence went beyond his work as “a person who was attracted to the finer things in life in the sense that he was one of them.”

Anthony said he appreciated that his father took the family on his global travels, explored the peninsula by sliding on cardboard down local hills and emphasized education’s importance. Anthony received a doctorate and is now a psychologist, and Nicole attended law school and is now a lawyer.

“I think that’s something he was always incredibly proud of, that he instilled the importance of education in us,” he said, “and a sense of adventure and always exploring and looking a little bit deeper and wanting to know the nuance of life — much the way he saw the nuance in the taste and smell of a coffee bean or tea.”

Bonavita is survived by wife Joan Bonavita, children Anthony Bonavita and Nicole Collins, stepson Brian Evjenth and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife and his parents.

A private ceremony to scatter Bonavita’s ashes at sea will be held in early September. Donations in his name can be made to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.