Peet’s Coffee seeks first Chief Playlist Officer for new half-caff blend

Peet’s Coffee is betting that the afternoon slump can become a branded summer ritual, and its new gimmick has a title built for the scroll: Chief Playlist Officer. The Emeryville-based chain launched the contest June 3 to promote Middle Ground, a new half-caff blend, and to tie coffee, music, and a lower-caffeine afternoon reset into one campaign.

The winner will be named Peet’s official Middle Ground music curator and will shape the company’s nationwide 3 p.m. in-café soundtrack. To enter, people must submit a 15-song Middle Ground Mix, a short essay on why they deserve the title, and can optionally add a 15-second video. The prize package centers on a four-day music festival weekend in Chicago and includes roundtrip airfare for the winner and a guest, a four-night hotel stay, two festival passes, a VIP party experience, a merchandise pack, and a $600 travel stipend.

That entertainment angle is doing more than dressing up a product launch. Peet’s is positioning Middle Ground around a familiar coffee problem, the late-afternoon energy dip, and framing the blend as a gentler answer than a standard espresso hit. The company says the idea pairs music with coffee as another science-backed way to fight fatigue, turning the 3 p.m. window into a lifestyle moment rather than just another clock-watch between meetings.

Middle Ground itself is built around a blend of regular beans and water-processed decaf beans. Peet’s says it spent years perfecting the formula using water-process decaf Colombian beans alongside regular Brazil and Ethiopian beans, and describes the flavor as carrying notes of brown sugar, stone fruit and Dutch cocoa. The blend is part of a wider summer lineup that also includes Sparkling Strawberry Energy and Sparkling Watermelon Energy, plus Protein Oat Lattes. Peet’s says the sparkling drinks have about 80 mg of caffeine, while the Protein Oat Lattes deliver about 30 grams of protein per serving.

The summer drinks are available June 3 through August 18 at participating coffeebars, giving Peet’s a limited-run window to test whether music-led positioning can make half-caff feel culturally current. For a company founded in Berkeley in 1966, the move shows how far the brand has stretched from classic craft coffee into energy drinks, protein lattes and a playlist contest built to own the afternoon.