The five big roasters—General Foods, Standard Brands, Folger’s, Hills Brothers, and A & P—now accounted for well over 40 percent of the market. Larger regional roasters gobbled up others in order to compete. The 1,000-plus wartime roasters dwindled to 850. Those who wanted to survive had to practice economies of scale and save labor through mechanization.
Size, speed, and efficiency seemed the only way to survive in the chain store business too. Ever-larger supermarkets offered ever-cheaper goods. A & P still predominated, but it failed to adjust to this new reality. In 1958, when the chain reached $5 billion in annual sales, the company went public. 87 By that time other supermarket chains were challenging the venerable leader. While A & P still accounted for a full third of the major chain sales, its smaller, older stores each sold an average $4,000 less per week than the competitors. In the mid-1950s, General Foods passed A & P to become the largest U.S. coffee importer.
By 1958 most instant coffees contained at least 50 percent robusta beans, and many of the cheaper brands used 100 percent robusta. Moreover, the manufacturers were squeezing the beans unmercifully. At first, six pounds of green coffee were used to make one pound of instant. By overextracting every soluble component, it then took only four pounds of raw beans. Through hydrolysis, insoluble starch and cellulose were converted into soluble carbohydrates.
To counteract their coffee’s ever-worsening taste, the instant manufacturers added back some aroma. When subjected to enormous pressure—50,000 pounds per square inch—roasted coffee beans exuded oil that, in tiny amounts, gave soluble coffee an illusory fresh-roasted scent. When a housewife opened a jar of instant coffee, it let off a brief burst of aroma; then it was gone. The cup of instant did not smell or taste any better.
Coffee dispensed by vending machines was equally bad. Even though the machines now could brew fresh coffee on demand, the temptation to use more robusta was overwhelming. The vendors also economized by using dry powdered cream, which lent a slightly burnt taste to the brew. To compete successfully, a bitter roaster said, a vending machine firm “talks quality, thinks acceptability, and plans somehow to cut corners.”
The Chock-Full Miracle
In the middle of this fierce competition, with its low quality standards, a New York nut vendor and restaurateur proved that a new quality brand could triumph. In 1926, after graduating with an engineering degree from Columbia University, William Black couldn’t find a job. Noticing the crowds in New York City’s theater district, Black opened a nut stand in a basement at Broadway and Forty-third Street, calling it Chock full o’ Nuts. Within six years he owned a chain of eighteen such stores, all in Manhattan. When the Depression hit, even shelled nuts seemed a luxury, so Black converted his stores to quick-order luncheonettes, offering a nut-ted cheese sandwich on whole wheat raisin bread, along with coffee, each for a nickel. Later he added soup and pie to the menu.
By the 1950s Black owned twenty-five restaurants in New York City. When coffee prices went up, Black, like other restaurant owners, held to a 5-cent cup of coffee by watering the brew. He soon broke ranks, however, raising his price and announcing that he refused to compromise on quality.
Then, in October 1953, he astonished the coffee trade by coming out with his own brand, Chock full o’ Nuts, in the midst of the price crisis brought on by the great Brazilian frost. Everyone thought it would flop, particularly with such a stupid name. Maybe Chock full o’ Beans—but nuts? In addition his cans were colored an ugly yellow and black. Furthermore, when other coffees offered several grinds for different kinds of brewing devices, Black advertised his “All Method Grind.” There was method to his madness, however—and his grind. With supermarket shelving at a premium, his one can-one grind required less space.
Black understood the power of advertising. In radio spots that blanketed the New York metropolitan airwaves, Black’s second wife, Jean Martin, sang a hummable jingle:Chock full o’ Nuts is that heavenly coffee,
Heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee.
Chock full o’ Nuts is that heavenly coffee—
Better coffee Rockefeller’s money can’t buy.
By August 1954, less than a year after its debut, Chock full o’ Nuts had grabbed third place among vacuum-packed coffees in New York City. Nelson Rockefeller, who owned a number of Latin American coffee concerns, did not appreciate his family name being used to promote someone else’s coffee. He sued. William Black simply changed the words of the jingle: “Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy.”
“Don’t spend the extra money for this coffee,” Chock full o’ Nuts ads advised, “unless you’re just plain crazy about good coffee.”88 Chock also resorted to a classic coffee advertising strategy. Ads showed a woman with an inverted cup on her head and coffee streaming down her face. “Men!” the ad proclaimed. “Don’t let it come to this! Win your fight for a decent cup of coffee without losing your temper!”
Black took pleasure in bluntness. “I’m not as proud as I should be to announce that we’re going into the instant coffee business,” he confessed at the Chock Instant launch. “The very finest instant coffee is still a far cry from our regular coffee. Yet there are a lot of people who don’t mind it.”
The brand expanded into Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. By the end of 1955 Chock full o’ Nuts had nearly captured the lead in New York City. Black soon expanded northward throughout New England, upstate New York, and into Canada, and south into Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
An advocate of racial equality, Black hired retired baseball star Jackie Robinson as his personnel director in 1957. Over half his employees were African Americans. In 1958 Black took the company public, retaining control for himself.
In 1957 when his company auditor and lifelong friend contracted Parkinson’s disease, Black created the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, funding it with an initial grant of $100,000. Three years later he gave an astounding $5 million to Columbia University for a medical research building. In doing so he challenged other wealthy men to give to worthy causes while they were still alive, thus avoiding the troubles inherited wealth caused. “My children won’t be badly off,” he said, “but I’m not going to leave them millions.”
The Coffeehouse: A Saving Grace
A few other regional roasters also produced quality coffee during this period, particularly Graffeo and Freed, Teller & Freed in San Francisco, and the M. E. Swing Company in Washington, D.C.
With perfection of the modern espresso machine just after World War II, the Italian coffee bar proliferated. In Milan in 1945, Achille Gaggia invented a spring mechanism that drove hot water at high pressure through finely ground roasted coffee. The art of espresso-making then consisted of “pulling a shot” to each customer’s satisfaction. “Its preparation,” wrote an American postwar journalist, “partakes of the bravura of a tenor solo.” Though many of the monstrous old steam-valve machines with their gargoyles and dials still graced the counters, most bars now used the modern, low-slung versions.
The machines quickly found their way to Italian restaurants in New York and elsewhere. By the mid-1950s the Italian espresso craze had sparked a small coffeehouse revival, particularly in Greenwich Village, where bohemians, poets, artists, and beatniks could sip espresso at Reggio’s, the Limelight, or the Peacock. Such coffeehouses gave birth, as one nostalgic customer put it, to “a generation that, for the price of an espresso, could imagine itself in the Europe that few of its members had ever seen.” The allure of the coffeehouse reached the North Beach area of San Francisco when window washer Giovanni Giotta opened the Caffè Trieste in 1957. In the back section, poets Allen Ginsburg and Bob Kaufman brooded over the faults of Eisenhower’s America, while the Italians in the front laughed at them, wondering aloud, “When are they gonna work?” Soon more coffeehouses appeared in San Francisco and other major cities.
A small market sprang up for home espresso, and specialty and department stores offered stovetop steam-pressure machines. N
ew York regional coffee roaster Sam Schonbrunn, who already featured the high-quality Savarin, came out with Medaglia d’Oro, a dark-roasted, pulverized blend especially made for home espresso machines. Women’s magazines offered numerous recipes for espresso-based drinks such as Caffè Borgia (equal parts espresso and hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream, sprinkled with grated orange peel), Caffè Anisette Royal (espresso with anisette, topped with whipped cream), or Café Brulot (espresso with spice and fruit peels, first flamed with brandy).
London Espresso
Espresso bars took London by storm in the early fifties. In 1952 an Italian immigrant named Pino Riservato opened the Moka Bar in a bomb-damaged laundry in Soho, renovating it with ultramodern Formica. On opening day—and every day thereafter—the Moka Bar was mobbed, serving a thousand cups of coffee a day. Continental immigrants who had fled to England after the war were delighted to find straight shots of espresso again. The British customers preferred cappuccino, with its steamed, frothed milk. Within a year other espresso bars popped up in London, and by 1956 there were four hundred London espresso bars, with two new outlets opening every week. Others appeared in the provinces.
“People in this country are becoming very coffee conscious,” one proprietor told a reporter in 1955. “Our business is 99 percent coffee individually made for each patron.” At a shilling per demitasse—twice the going rate for regular coffee—it was a profitable undertaking.
While espresso made inroads at the coffeehouses, however, it was instant coffee that found its way increasingly into the British home. Encouraged by tea rationing, which lasted over a decade beyond the war’s end, Nestlé mounted a vigorous print and billboard campaign for Nescafé, and Maxwell House wasn’t far behind. In 1956, when tea auctions finally resumed, everyone expected a British tea renaissance, but it never occurred.
The debut of English commercial television that same year had an unexpected impact. To steep a good, traditional cup of tea requires five minutes, and the commercial breaks in the TV programs weren’t that long. With telly spots touting the simplicity and goodness of Nescafé and Instant Maxwell House, British consumers began to switch to soluble coffee, which soon accounted for over 90 percent of retail coffee sales. In desperation, the tea companies abandoned the superior rolled tea, chopping it into bits for teabags that produced an inferior but quicker rust-red brew. Although tea remained the British drink, coffee was clearly on the rise.
European Coffee in the Fifties
The continental European coffee industry, which survived the war mainly by producing coffee substitutes, had revived by the late 1950s. In 1956 European imports exceeded the 12 million-bag prewar level, and by 1960 imports topped 17 million bags.
The new espresso machines were popular in cafés in Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, though they simply fit into the preexisting coffee scene. Outside Switzerland (home of Nestlé), instant coffee had yet to attract many European consumers, although Nescafé, now manufactured in nineteen countries, dominated world soluble sales outside the United States.89 Major European roasters began to dominate the picture. European home roasting practically disappeared, but whole-bean sales exceeded the ground, canned product.
As West Germany got back on its economic feet, coffee consumption—mostly in the form of arabica—increased 15 percent annually. Bremen-based Jacobs Kaffee doubled its sales every two years. In 1949 Hamburg merchants Max Herz and Carl Tchilling-Hirrian founded the Tchibo company, supplying its Mocca Gold roasted coffee by mail.90 Jacobs responded by delivering coffee in its yellow-and-black VW vans, nicknamed “Jacobs’ Bumble Bees.” In 1955 Tchibo opened specialty coffee shops selling whole beans and sample cups of coffee. An avuncular “coffee expert” helped establish the Tchibo image, while an elderly hausfrau portrayed the “nation’s grandmother” for Jacobs. The firms advertised primarily through magazines, radio, and cinemas, since television had yet to reach many consumers in Europe. The era of mass marketing clearly had arrived, with huge firms such as Jacobs, Tchibo, and Eduscho dominating the field and smaller competitors disappearing. In 1950 there had been 2,000 West German roasters. By 1960 there were only 600.
In the Netherlands, Douwe Egberts expanded its coffee, tobacco, and tea business after 1952, when coffee rationing finally ended. It bought several smaller roasters, and by the end of the 1950s the Dutch firm accounted for over 50 percent of its country’s coffee exports.
In Italy 3,000 roasters vied for local retail market share. Italians would drop into their favorite coffee bar several times a day, standing among friends for a few minutes while they downed their drink, then moving on. They ordered varieties of espresso: ristretto (short and dense), macchiato (“spotted” with a drop of milk), corretto (with a shot of brandy or grappa), and others. Most of the blends contained a great deal of robusta, though nothing compared to France, where robusta accounted for 75 percent of the beans in each cup.
Lavazza expanded from Turin, opening its first branch in Milan. The brand advertised with the lilting slogan “Lavazza paradiso in tazza,” meaning “Lavazza is paradise in a cup.” In 1956 Lavazza introduced vacuum cans, which allowed national distribution. Illycaffè, under the direction of Ernesto Illy, produced the finest-quality espresso blend. Still, the Italian industry remained primarily local, with over 2,000 roasters in business by 1960.
Japan Discovers Coffee
Coffee first came to Japan in the seventeenth century through a Dutch merchant trading at the island of Dejima, the only port opened to foreign trade. In 1888 the first kissaten (coffeehouse) opened in Tokyo, followed by many others, often frequented by artists and the literati.91 A small coffee industry developed. In 1920 Bunji Shibata founded Key Coffee in Yokohama, opening offices in cities throughout Japan over the next fifteen years, then establishing branches in Korea, China, and Manchuria. Other roasters sprang up after World War II. Tadao Ueshima, who had run a Kobe kissaten before the war, opened a Tokyo branch and incorporated Ueshima Coffee Company in 1951. Altogether there were some two hundred roasters, most of which were concentrated in Tokyo and Osaka.
After the war, Shibata moved the main Key Coffee office to Tokyo, enticed by the influx of American occupation forces, who brought with them their taste for coffee. He could not yet legally import coffee, however, and had to resort to the thriving black market. After 1950, when official coffee imports were allowed, hundreds of kissaten appeared in Japanese cities, many with a special appeal. In some, customers could watch newsreels. Chanson coffeehouses featured singers. In 1955 a six-story coffeehouse opened in Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district, featuring life-size animated female dolls, several bands, and a purple decor. Some kissaten stayed open all night and offered private nooks favored by prostitutes and petty criminals.
The Japanese wanted to mimic the affluent Western lifestyle, sometimes with odd results. “In Tokyo,” one writer observed in 1956, “waitresses do the mambo while carrying cups of Italian espresso to tables set against a Viennese décor.” The kissaten frequently used English names: Dig was named to indicate that its owner did in fact “dig” jazz and American slang; he later opened a second coffeehouse called Dug.
Googie Coffee
The artsy beverage confections popular in international bohemian coffeehouses did not appeal to most American consumers. U.S. coffee shops served a regular cuppa joe, usually diluted to the tastes of the time, along with a hamburger and fries. These brash, plastic-and-chrome, neon-and-glass outlets served the car culture and possessed distinctly un-Italian names: Ship’s, Chip’s, Googie’s, Biff’s, Bob’s Big Boy, Coffee Dan’s, Dunkin’ Donuts,92 Herbert’s, White Castle, Smorgyburger, McDonald’s, Jack-in-the-Box. The soaring, garishly colored roofs signaled a new style called Coffee Shop Modern, or sneeringly, Googie Architecture.
In Denial
During the late 1950s, the U.S. coffee industry entered a period of what pop psychologists would call “denial.” Arthur Ransohoff, the chairman of the National Coffee Association, expressed a typical atti
tude in 1956. “How’re we doing? Not too bad—I think,” he wrote. “Coffee was here, on this earth, long before any of the ‘colas.’” Ransohoff concluded that “good old coffee seems to be ‘in there pitching’ and gaining slightly if not sensationally compared to the population growth of the country.”
Coffee was gaining, by the misleading statistics issued by the Pan American Coffee Bureau. Rather than expressing U.S. per capita in actual coffee pounds per citizen (the previous practice), the PACB now reported how many cups a day the average American ten or over consumed, avoiding acknowledging that the cups consisted of weak coffee, stretched to brew sixty-four cups per pound. “Americans are drinking more coffee than ever before,” the PACB bragged, but the truth was that real coffee consumption in the United States had peaked in 1946. In addition, the unfortunate coffee-boiling percolator now accounted for 64 percent of all household brewing.93
In a 1956 address, Judy Gregg of Gilbert Youth Research advised coffee men to “focus attention on the 15-to-19-year-old group,” observing that they would increase by 45 percent in the next decade. “The soft drink companies have been aware of these trends,” she said. “By examining what they have done to attract young people, perhaps you will be able to draw parallels for the coffee industry.” She noted that Coke appealed to teens with popular singer Eddie Fisher. “The coffee manufacturer that decides to use the same personality technique and hires the services of one Elvis Presley could enjoy a strange success,” Gregg continued. “Imagine Elvis sipping just one cup on TV.”
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World Page 30
