Two brothers, a dairy family and an espresso pushcart.

Dutch Bros began as an espresso pushcart in Grants Pass, a town in southern Oregon. The Associated Press, reporting on the company’s stock-market debut on 15 September 2021, said the brothers Dane and Travis Boersma started in business in 1992, selling espresso-based drinks from that cart near the town’s railroad tracks. English Wikipedia dates the founding to 12 February 1992 and says the brothers came from a family dairy farm that had been struggling after changes in environmental regulations. In Wikipedia’s account Travis suggested a coffee cart, and Dane helped finance the idea with money he had set aside while running a Dairy Queen franchise; the first purchase was an espresso machine and a single cart, set up in downtown Grants Pass.

The name is a statement about family. Wikipedia says Dutch Bros was chosen in honour of the brothers’ immigrant grandparents, and that the name was originally written Dutch Bros., with a full stop at the end. The company’s corporate name today is Dutch Bros Inc.

From the cart, the business moved into small buildings designed around a car window. Wikipedia says the brothers soon added more carts, opened their first drive-through location by 1994, began roasting their own coffee in 1996 and started formal franchising in 1999. It also records that in 2008 the company moved to an internal franchising model that asked prospective franchisees to have worked for Dutch Bros first, and that in 2017 it stopped franchising and began opening only company-owned stores. Wikipedia describes Dutch Bros stores as walk-up or drive-thru stands, nearly all without indoor seating, and the AP described the business in 2021 as a company of drive-thru coffee shops that had spread across the West and as far east as Texas and Oklahoma.

The family story stayed part of the brand. The AP reported in 2021 that Dane Boersma died in 2009, and that the company holds an annual Drink One for Dane day, donating a portion of the proceeds from its shops to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Wikipedia lists two other annual initiatives: Dutch Luv, which benefits local food banks, and Buck for Kids, which supports local youth organisations, including chapters of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Private equity, the New York Stock Exchange and a move to Arizona.

Dutch Bros remained privately held into the 2010s. In 2018, the coffee-industry site Sprudge reported in August 2021, the private-equity firm TSG Consumer Partners bought a minority stake in the drive-thru chain — the same firm, Sprudge noted, that had first invested in the Portland roaster Stumptown in 2011. In August 2021 the company announced plans to go public, and Sprudge, citing Barron’s, said it was expected to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BROS.

The listing took place on 15 September 2021. The AP’s Andrew Selsky reported that day that executive chairman Travis Boersma rang the ceremonial first trade bell on the floor of the exchange and later presided over the closing bell, banging a gavel while wearing a baseball cap turned backwards. He told the Oregon television station KDRV that taking a coffee cart from a small town like Grants Pass to the exchange felt “surreal.” At the time, the AP said, the company’s president and chief executive was Joth Ricci, who told the outlet IPO Edge that the company was staying disciplined rather than accelerating its growth because of the listing. Dutch Bros has been a publicly traded company since that day.

Leadership and geography then shifted south. Oregon Business reported on 16 June 2025 that Dutch Bros would move its corporate headquarters from Oregon to Arizona, a move the Portland Business Journal had reported first. The magazine said chief executive Christine Barone had worked from Arizona since she was hired in 2023, and that the year before the company had announced the relocation of a large share of its operations and support staff to the state, saying it needed corporate staff close to its growing markets. English Wikipedia now gives the headquarters as Tempe, Arizona, and says the company had been based in Grants Pass from its founding until 2025, after it began moving some corporate offices to Arizona in early 2024.

Grants Pass still appears throughout the company’s history. Wikipedia says that in January 2017 Dutch Bros bought a vacant shopping centre in downtown Grants Pass, where the original pushcart had stood, and turned part of its interior into futsal courts for local youth teams and workout space for employees; that March it bought a bank building across the street to house its headquarters staff. Wikipedia also records a distribution and roasting centre opened in 2024 in Melissa, Texas, and lists Christine Barone as president and chief executive, with Travis Boersma holding the title of executive chairman.

Design and documentation.

Coffee-house and deli chains carry their identity on many surfaces at once. A name and a mark sit on the street sign and the shopfront, then repeat on paper cups, sleeves, lids, carry-out bags, sandwich wraps and loyalty cards, and again on the menu board above the counter. Each of those surfaces is printed or built by different suppliers, often in different places, so a chain’s visual system has to survive changes of material, size and colour reproduction.

The menu board is where much of the design work shows. It has to hold a name, prices and category headings at reading distance, and over the past two decades many chains have moved from printed panels to screens, which changes how type, colour and photography are used. Interiors carry the identity too: counter fronts, seating, lighting, wall graphics and the colour of the walls themselves are part of how a chain presents its name.

Each guide below looks at who started the brand, who owns it now and how its name and mark appear, separating what independent dated sources record from what the company says about itself.

A windmill, a family name and a car window.

The image attached to the brand in press coverage is a windmill. The AP described Dutch Bros shops in September 2021 as carrying windmill emblems, and Oregon Business referred in June 2025 to the chain’s distinct blue and white windmill. The emblem sits beside a name that, in Wikipedia’s account, honours the Boersma brothers’ immigrant grandparents, and a written form that has changed only slightly over time — from Dutch Bros. with a full stop to Dutch Bros without one.

The building is part of the identity too. Wikipedia describes the typical Dutch Bros store as a walk-up or drive-thru stand with no indoor seating, and says each store sells hot and cold drinks, including tea, milkshakes and sparkling sodas, together with a selection of baked goods. The AP, in its 2021 report, set Dutch Bros against the region’s coffee history — Starbucks began in 1971 in Seattle’s Pike Place Market — and described the Oregon company as a chain built around the drive-thru rather than the café.

The founders’ biography has also been written into the company’s public calendar. The Drink One for Dane day, which the AP said was held again in May 2021, ties a named fundraising day to the co-founder, and Travis Boersma’s own appearance at the New York Stock Exchange — cap backwards, gavel in hand — was reported by the AP as part of the story of the listing. In 2013, Wikipedia notes, he appeared on the American version of the television show Undercover Boss.

For a design guide, Dutch Bros shows how a brand built for the car window can rely on a single emblem and a family name, carried from one pushcart to a stock-exchange listing without a change of mark. Compare it with Scooter’s Coffee, the Nebraska drive-thru coffee chain founded in 1998, and Starbucks, the Seattle coffeehouse brand the AP used as its point of comparison. For this guide we use windmill blue, sky blue and sail white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Dutch Bros’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.