Only the bigger roasters with broader vision and an ambition to achieve national distribution actually mounted effective ad campaigns. These roasters and their brands—Hills Brothers, MJB, Folger’s, Cheek-Neal’s Maxwell House, Chase & Sanborn, Arbuckle—were destined to dominate the U.S. coffee trade.
Hills Brothers Fills a Vacuum
With Arbuckle controlling cowboy country and most of the East, three brands, all located in San Francisco, sparred for control of the Pacific Coast’s coffee business. While James Folger had secured a head start in 1849, Hills Brothers and MJB were challenging the older roaster by the turn of the twentieth century.
Like the Folgers, the Hills brothers came from New England. Their father, Austin Hills Sr., born in Rockland, Maine, in 1823, built clipper ships. In 1863 he joined several other Maine friends in search of the fabled California gold. Failing to strike it rich, he settled for a job as foreman of a San Francisco shipbuilding company. He left his wife and two sons back in Maine, fetching them only in 1873, when his older son and namesake, Austin Herbert Hills, was twenty-two, and Reuben Wilmarth Hills was seventeen.
Three years later the siblings went into partnership as Hills Brothers in a stall at San Francisco’s Bay City Market, selling butter, eggs, and cheese. In 1881 they bought a retail coffee store, the Arabian Coffee & Spice Mills. They roasted coffee in front of the store, knowing that the drama and smell would lure customers. A handbill the next year proclaimed their product “THE FINEST COFFEE in the WORLD!” adding, “Our Coffee is Roasted on the Premises Every Day, in Full View of the Customer.” In addition to coffee, they sold tea, spices, and flavoring extracts. Reuben took charge of the coffee side of the business, while his older brother Austin continued to sell dairy products.
The 1880s brought high coffee prices, and by 1884 A. H. and R.W. (as the budding businessmen preferred to be called) had abandoned retail sales in favor of the wholesale business. Around 1886 R.W. adopted cup testing, which had been pioneered on the Pacific Coast by fellow San Francisco coffee man Clarence Bickford. Like a wine taster, the coffee cupper slurped in an explosive burst, swirled the beverage thoughtfully in his mouth, then spit it into a nearby spittoon. This cupping ceremony survives to this day as one of the more serious—and humorous to observe—rituals in the trade.
In 1897 an itinerant artist stopped by the Hills Brothers store. R.W. suggested that he draw a figure to represent their Arabian Roast Coffee, as it was known then. The resulting figure, a turbaned, bearded Arab in a flowing robe, has sipped Hills Brothers Coffee ever since, even though Mocha as a preferred brand had begun to fade by the turn of the twentieth century, and most of the Hills Brothers beans arrived from Central America and Brazil.
During the Spanish-American War, Hills Brothers sold huge amounts of butter to the U.S. Army for use in the Philippines. Preserved in brine, its taste left a good deal to be desired. In 1899 R.W. stopped in Chicago during a transcontinental trip to ask Norton Brothers, who made their retail dispensers for bulk coffee beans, if they could suggest a better method for packing butter. It happened that Norton Brothers had just perfected a vacuum-packing process. It worked, preserving butter without having to pickle it.
R.W. knew that once roasted, coffee staled quickly due to exposure to air. Would vacuum packing work for coffee too? It did. Hills Brothers quickly negotiated a contract for exclusive rights to the Norton process on the Pacific Coast for a year. It would be thirteen more years, however, before another San Francisco firm adopted the vacuum pack, and the rest of the country took much longer.
The original Hills Brothers vacuum pack, marketed in July 1900, bore the exaggerated claim that its Highest Grade Java and Mocha Coffee would “KEEP FRESH FOREVER IF SEAL IS UNBROKEN.” Though this claim wasn’t true, vacuum packing did distinctly improve the quality and freshness of the product.
The vacuum pack allowed Hills Brothers coffee to spread far more quickly throughout the Pacific Coast area, arriving just in time to service another gold rush generation in the Klondike. Soon Hills Brothers Coffee had reached virtually everywhere west of the Rocky Mountains.
The Hills brothers recognized early the importance of promotion and advertising. At an 1898 “pure food” show in San Francisco, for instance, R.W. had a sample Burns roaster installed, instructing the staff to “roast it full up” for the aroma. R.W. and Mr. Snell, the firm’s first advertising director, wrote alliterative copy for a 1910 poster, enticing customers with the “peculiar, penetrating, persistent flavor of skillfully blended, rare, old coffee.” R.W. chose the color red as the most attractive and attention grabbing, naming it Red Can Brand, his top-of-the-line ground coffee. By 1912 the firm also packed brands named Caravan (Mocha), Santola (Mocha substitute), Timingo (East Indian), and Saxon (peaberry).32 At the 1915 Universal Exposition, Hills Brothers mounted an impressive exhibition in which visitors could see coffee roasted, poured into packages, and vacuum packed, all through a glass port.
An unassuming, taciturn man, R.W. Hills believed in delegating responsibility and encouraging his employees to invent better machinery and packing methods. He trusted his motivated employees to work hard. But R.W. also suffered from periodic bouts of depression. “It is wonderful the way the business is growing,” a happy employee once commented. “Yes, but it means we must watch our step,” the boss replied. “We can lose it easier than we can get it.” Nor did Hills boast unduly of his accomplishments. “I believe that success in business is fifty per cent judgment and fifty per cent propitious circumstances.”
MJB: Why?
A third San Francisco coffee firm soon battled for supremacy with Hills Brothers and Folger’s. In 1850 seventeen-year-old Joseph Brandenstein fled Germany, avoiding military conscription while seeking his fortune in California’s gold fields. Instead he was robbed in the mining country and wound up in San Francisco with a partner selling leaf tobacco and cigars. He had eleven children (by his wife, that is—he also had a mistress). His three oldest sons, Max, Mannie, and Eddie, joined forces in 1899 to form a tea, coffee, and spice firm, with younger brother Charlie joining later. M. J. Brandenstein & Company (named for Max) was truncated to MJB. The firm quickly shot to prominence in the California coffee world under Mannie’s astute leadership.
His daughter, Ruth, described Mannie Brandenstein as a “super-salesman, raconteur, and would-be actor.” A short, slight, prematurely bald man, Mannie appeared to be the exact opposite of R.W. Hills in many ways. While Hills traced his American roots to the Pilgrims, Brandenstein was a loud, brash, second-generation immigrant whose toupee had a tendency to slip sideways when he became excited. Both men, however, knew their coffee. In 1913 Mannie was the first to adopt the vacuum can pioneered by Hills Brothers.
Brandenstein christened his first brand Climax Coffee. A large four-color poster featured a sultry young woman reclining in bed, holding her morning cup of coffee, with a contented, satisfied smile on her rosebud lips. Below her was printed the single, bold word CLIMAX. During the raunchy mining era, such a racy approach might have been appropriate, but Brandenstein soon toned it down. He had to come up with something else to grab the public’s attention. Taking his cue from C.W. Post, whose mysterious “There’s a Reason” sold Postum, Brandenstein made MJB famous with the simple word “WHY? ” that ended every advertisement. “Why the WHY?” asked his daughter. “What’s the difference, as long as people ask?” her father answered. “That makes sales.”33
Brandenstein used electricity to highlight his shop window displays in 1906, the letters MJB pulsing with light and messages such as “Most Juvenating Blend” and “Most Joyous Breakfast.” By 1909 Brandenstein was placing ads in national coffee trade journals emphasizing the firm’s “special pride in importing and handling the best cupping coffees procurable.”
Brandenstein chose a force of effective salesmen. On July 3, 1910, he took one such eighteen-year-old salesman, Sandy Swann, to Reno, Nevada, where a much-publicized prizefight attracted huge crowds lusting to see the “Great
White Hope,” Jim Jeffries, beat the upstart black fighter James Johnson. The night before the Fourth of July bout, Brandenstein and Swann painted “MJB COFFEE WHY?” in white lettering on hundreds of Japanese fans. Then, late at night, they painted giant green footprints leading from the railroad station to the arena. Between the steps were big white question marks and the mysterious letters MJB. The fight proved anticlimactic. Johnson easily defeated the out-of-shape Jeffries. Fortunately for Brandenstein, it was a very hot day, so a sea of fans waved in the audience asking, “MJB COFFEE WHY?”
Using reverse psychology, Brandenstein often would bring in three grades of coffee beans on trays for a prospective customer. He would put the most expensive grade on a simple tray on a shelf in the corner of his office. He put the cheaper beans on a fancy tray. “I put the cheapest on my desk practically under his nose,” Brandenstein explained to his daughter. “Then I point to the fancy tray on my desk and tell him here are beans that will suit his price.” Immediately, the customer’s eyes would wander to the other trays. “How about those beans?” he would ask. “Oh, those are top quality beans, way beyond your price.” And of course those were the beans the customer bought.
With enterprise, energy, and showmanship, along with a quality product, Mannie Brandenstein thus earned MJB Coffee a firm place in the West Coast coffee world.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake
The San Francisco firm pioneered by Jim Folger in the 1850s continued to thrive, despite the increasing competition. In 1889 Folger had died at fifty-one of a coronary occlusion. His son, James A. Folger II, twenty-six, who had been working for the firm for seven years when his father died, took over. Under his direction Folger’s specialized in bulk roasted coffee, delivered to grocery stores in sacks or drums.
In 1898 Folger hired Frank P. Atha, who soon became the company’s top salesman. In 1901 Atha suggested a Folger’s coffee outlet in Texas, where he faced the difficult task of introducing an unknown, relatively expensive product. Freight charges from the west to the east were higher than the other way around, and Arbuckles’ Ariosa already held a dominant position in Texas. Atha decided to push his highest-quality Golden Gate Coffee, offering an exclusive dealership to a grocer in each area. He made a virtue of the fact that he could not afford to compete with the Arbuckle premiums, coining the slogan, “No prizes—no coupons—no crockery—nothing but satisfaction goes with Folger’s Golden Gate Coffee.” Frank Atha perched on the high seat of the grocer’s delivery wagon, chatting with housewives and giving away free coffee samples. He also designed and installed window displays for stores. By his third year he had hired two additional salesmen.
In San Francisco James Folger II built a five-story factory near the piers. Completed in 1905, it was held in place by pilings driven deep into the muddy Bay floor, since it rested on newly created land, once part of Yerba Buena Cove. The next year, in the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, the Folger building was the only coffee structure to survive the famous earthquake and fire. While the rest of San Francisco burned, U.S. Marines set up headquarters in the Folger building and pumped water from the Bay. Folger’s maintained “a rushing business during and just after the great conflagration,” according to a contemporary account. To his credit, James Folger maintained his old prices.
Hills Brothers and MJB were not so fortunate. Both of their factories burned to the ground, though they quickly rebuilt and commenced roasting again. MJB received an advance payment of nearly $15,000 for an order from Kamikowa Brothers, a local Japanese-owned firm that showed its faith in the coffee company. “Japanese understand earthquakes,” their telegram read.
Chase & Sanborn: Tally-Ho
On the East Coast, Chase & Sanborn continued aggressively marketing its Seal Brand. Caleb Chase and James Sanborn, then in their sixties, retired in 1899, passing the reins to partner Charles Sias. The “Barnum of Coffee,” Sias loved a spectacle. A tall man, he wore a long purple coat that flowed behind him in the wind as he drove to work in his tandem horse-drawn buggy, known as a tally-ho. When automobiles later took over, Sias bought a fleet of foreign cars, including a Renault manned by a footman and chauffeur.
In 1900 Sias issued a little booklet, After Dinner Tricks and Puzzles With Your Seal Brand Coffee, an ingenious collection of thirty-six brainteasers. How many hard-boiled eggs can a hungry man eat on an empty stomach? Answer: One only, for after eating one, his stomach would no longer be empty. The same booklet featured a racist illustration of a black man with huge lips and one eye closed in an exaggerated wink, holding a scroll advertising Chase & Sanborn, “the aristocratic coffee of America, surpassing all others in its richness and delicacy of flavor.” An even worse caricature from 1898 showed an old black man with gaping mouth and various missing teeth saying, “My missus says dar’s no good coffee in these yer parts. Specs she’ll change ’er mine when she drinks SEAL BRAND.”
Sias also appealed to the sexism of the era—an approach to selling coffee that would set a tone for the century. He praised the housewife as “the chiefest charm and ornament” of the dinner table, because “a meal is always a feast with a lovely woman at the head of the table.” And what better way to guarantee the crowning success of the meal than with Chase & Sanborn coffee—“delicious, aromatic, the odor of which is as of some rare incense from unseen censers swinging through the room.” Following this religious reference, the copywriter waxed even more biblical: “Verily, the woman who can make a happy table for her husband is not only a housekeeper—she is a husband-keeper as well.”
Chase & Sanborn, which already had roasting plants in Boston, Montreal, and Chicago, thrived in the first decades of the twentieth century without having to resort to giveaways. Over half of the firm’s sales derived from its cheaper brands. In 1906 Chase & Sanborn’s Western trade expanded, in part owing to the influx of coffee-loving Scandinavians. The following year Chase & Sanborn erected a new Montreal factory, to be run entirely by electricity. Business was expected to triple.
Joel Cheek Creates Maxwell House
After attending college, Joel Owsley Cheek went to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1873 to seek his fortune. Hired as a traveling salesman, or drummer, for a wholesale grocery firm there, he moved back to his home state of Kentucky to open new territory, generally riding on horseback from one general store to another.
Young Cheek made his first sale to a grocer—a relative—who asked him which coffee was best. In this rural area people still bought their coffee beans green for home roasting. The salesman naturally recommended his most expensive brand, though he didn’t really know anything about the relative merits of the beans he sold. That night, his conscience bothering him, Joel Cheek roasted samples of each type on his mother’s kitchen stove and decided that one of the cheaper brands yielded a more flavorful brew. The next day he went back to the grocer and explained why he would send the less expensive variety instead.
Experimenting with coffee samples, Cheek discovered that some origins offered superior body, others flavor, and still others “kick” (acidity). By mixing them he sought to find an optimal blend. The years slipped by, with the drummer a welcome visitor in the isolated Kentucky valleys. Married in 1874, Cheek sired eight sons and one daughter.
In 1884 the family moved to Nashville, where the successful salesman became a partner in the firm, now called Cheek, Webb & Company. There he met and befriended Roger Nolley Smith, a British coffee broker who had operated a plantation in Brazil and could reputedly distinguish between Colombian, Mexican, or Brazilian coffee simply by sniffing the unroasted beans. Together, Cheek and Smith worked on a three-country blend, with the cheaper Santos providing a base and two milds lending more flavor and acidity.
By 1892 Cheek believed he had found the perfect blend. He approached a Mr. Bledwell, the food buyer for the Maxwell House, a prestigious Nashville hotel. Cheek persuaded him to take twenty pounds free on a trial basis. After several days the coffee was gone, and the hotel went back to its former brand. When
Bledwell heard complaints, he asked the chef whether there had been any change in brewing methods. No, the chef said, Cheek’s blend was just better coffee. From then on, the Maxwell House bought Cheek’s beans, granting his request to name the blend after the hotel following a six-month trial.
Forty-year-old Joel Cheek quit his job in 1893, going into partnership with John Norton to begin a wholesale grocery firm specializing in coffee. In 1900 they were joined by John Neal, a fellow Kentuckian who had once sold for Cheek. The following year Norton departed. Cheek and Neal formed the Nashville Coffee and Manufacturing Company, specializing in Maxwell House Coffee. They eventually changed their corporate name to the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company and established a highly successful business throughout the Nashville area. In 1905 they opened a roasting facility in Houston, Texas. Five years later they built a new plant in Jacksonville, Florida, followed by another in Richmond, Virginia, in 1916. One by one, six of the eight Cheek sons joined the firm.
The elder Cheek proved to be a promotional and advertising genius, as his push to associate his coffee with a socially prominent landmark indicated. Beginning in 1907, his ads used plenty of white space with tasteful illustrations. One spot featured a coffee cup at the top with steam wafting out of it, labeled “The Cup of Quality.” The main copy read: “EVERY HOUSEWIFE who has a knowledge of coffee value will appreciate the rare quality of Maxwell House Blend. It is marketed strictly on its merits and is backed by one of the most complete coffee establishments in the world.” The snob appeal of a high-quality brew worked particularly well to differentiate Maxwell House in the South, where cheaper blends cut with Rio and cereal traditionally predominated.
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World Page 16