Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

Type	Private
Industry	Restaurants Retail coffee and tea
Founded	Los Angeles (1963)
Founder	Herbert B. Hyman Mona Hyman
Headquarters	Los Angeles, USA
Number of locations	1,000+
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Sunny Sassoon (executive chairman) Victor Sassoon (CEO Asia Pacific) John Fuller (President & CEO)
Products	Coffee, tea, food
Revenue	$500 million+ USD (January 2013)
Number of employees	12,000 (May 2013)
Parent	International Coffee & Tea, LLC
Website	www.coffeebean.com

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (sometimes shortened to simply "Coffee Bean" or "The Coffee Bean") is an American coffee chain founded in 1963. It is owned and operated by International Coffee & Tea, LLC, which has its corporate headquarters in Los Angeles, California. As of 2016, the chain has over 1,000 self-owned and franchised stores in the United States and 29 other countries.

The company was founded by Herbert Hyman in September 1963, as a coffee service for offices. He and his wife Mona, whom he married in 1966, honeymooned in Sweden, where they discovered quality coffee. This sparked the decision to import, roast and sell gourmet coffee in Los Angeles, opening the first Coffee Bean store in 1968 in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood. Innovations included selling whole beans and touting their country of origin, and allowing customers to observe the beans being roasted and sample varieties before making a purchase. Hyman is considered to be instrumental in the creation of the gourmet coffee industry in the US. He died on April 28, 2014, at the age of 82.

By the 1970s, Coffee Bean had expanded to 10 stores in Southern California, and added exotic teas to the menu. In the summer of 1987, an employee brought a blender to a Westwood store, mixing together ice, coffee extract and chocolate powder, paving the way for the company's signature Ice Blended drinks. With the invention of the Ice Blended, the Coffee Bean saw a surge in popularity. The drink was a predecessor to the Starbucks Frappuccino. In 1991, when it was first planning to expand into Los Angeles, Starbucks tried to purchase Coffee Bean, but Hyman turned them down. The opening of Starbucks stores in Los Angeles unexpectedly helped Coffee Bean's business, by driving curious customers to the area.

In 1996, the Hymans sold the Asian franchise rights to Singaporean brothers Victor Sassoon and Sunny Sassoon. The Sassoons quickly expanded the company in the US and internationally, opening the first outlet in Singapore in 1996, and in Malaysia the following year. Within two years, they had opened 29 stores in Singapore and Malaysia, almost as many stores as the Hymans had opened in their 35 years of ownership. In 1998, the Sassoons, along with longtime friend Severin Wunderman, purchased the parent company, International Coffee & Tea LLC, from the Hymans, and took it global. Victor Sassoon works out of Singapore, Sunny Sassoon works in Los Angeles, and Wunderman is a silent partner with no role in management. International Coffee & Tea, LLC remains the name of the holding company.