Andrew F. Smith

Coffee: Overview: Twentieth-Century Developments

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About
As coffee consumption swelled around the turn of the twentieth century, health faddists such as John Harvey Kellogg preached that caffeine was harmful. C. W. Post, a former patient at Kellogg’s Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, manufactured Postum, a grain-based coffee substitute, in 1895, claiming that “coffee is an alkaloid poison and a certain disintegrator of brain tissues” (Pendergrast, 2010, p. 96). In response, coffee firms offered defensive ads that frequently made matters worse.

The coffee firms also had to contend with two new competitors: price-cutting chain stores and door-to-door peddlers. Under the direction of John Hartford, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, otherwise known as the A&P, cut out wholesalers and in 1913 began to offer coffee in its “economy stores,” which sold high-quality foods at low prices. A&P owned the American Coffee Corporation, with buyers in Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere, purchasing for Eight O’Clock Coffee and its other brands. Meanwhile, the premium peddlers at Jewel Tea Company hooked coffee consumers on their home-delivered beans and the premiums they gave out before the required coffee. That way, customers were committed to purchasing coffee to earn the gift.