Tully’s Chairman Steps Down

Tom O’Keefe, the chairman and founder of Tully’s Coffee Corp., announced his retirement today. He’ll step down by June 30, and the company’s board will in that time select a replacement.

The company will continue to be led by President and CEO Carl Pennington.

O’Keefe started the company with a single store in Kent in 1992, and grew the company to where it is now with 183 stores in most of the Western U.S. But times haven’t always been smoothStarbucks gave them a serious run for their money, and Tully’s never went public (although flirted with it) and thus never tapped into that potential source of capital which turned Starbucks into a global brand. Meanwhile, at home Tully’s faced increasing competition from independently-owned shops and micro-roasters (such as The Woods Coffee and Dilianos Coffee Roasters, which we profiled in our February 2010 issue here and here.)

In 2008, the company sold the Tully’s brand and wholesale operation to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters of Waterbury, Vt., for $40.3 million in a deal that allowed Tully’s wholesale operations to continue to manage itself more or less independently. Tully’s Coffee Corp. still owns the retail and international divisions and operates under a licensing and supply agreement with Green Mountain.