COFFEE HISTORY

Coffee plants originated in Northeast Africa, in the area today called Ethiopia.  The coffee cherries were probably consumed as food before someone came up with using the beans in a drink. Coffee grows on a tree that can reach 35 feet in height, though on coffee farms they are grown much shorter to facilitate picking.  Coffee trees have a white flower and produce a red berry (like a cherry). The cherry has a skin and a thin layer of pulp, and 2 seeds (the beans) in a parchment coating.

Somewhere before 1,000 AD the coffee cherries were consumed as food, and eventually boiled and used as a drink.  Numerous legends surround its first use.  History records that Turkey seems to be the first place where mention is made of roasting, then boiling the beans.  Some of the properties that caffeine offers were even then understood; Turks called coffee by a name “qahwa”, which means “that which prevents sleep” and is the origin for the westernized term “coffee”.  In 1475, in present Istanbul (then called Constantinople) the first coffee shop opened.  Hundreds of coffee shops soon followed, and these shops became popular for conversation, storytelling, music, chess and contemplation.

Coffee plants were eventually smuggled out despite attempts by the Arabs who grew it to protect this valuable trade item, so it became increasing known in the west.  The Dutch were the first to plant coffee trees outside Arabs lands, bringing them to Malabar in Ceylon in 1658, and soon the Dutch had coffee estates in Java, Sumatra, Celebes, and Timor.

Italians and French were among the first Europeans to adopt coffee. Venice, a major Italian trading port and city-state of importance, saw its first coffee shop open in 1683.  In France, Café de Procope opened in Paris by an Italian immigrant of the same name.  It soon became popular, and both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, acting as initial Ambassadors for the United States to France, were among many that frequented the artist’s and musician’s gathering spot.  Voltaire was a regular.  The restaurant is still in business (I have enjoyed a meal and coffee there many times).  A couple of decades later the French invented infusion (suspending powdered coffee in a cloth bag in boiling water), and still later added milk and sweeteners.

During one of the Moslem invasions into present day Austria, a supply of coffee beans was left behind, and one Polish Army officer who had served in Turkey and knew of coffee, used this supply to open up a coffee shop in Vienna in 1683.  This man, Franz Georg Kolschitzky, served coffee after filtering, and eventually he added sweeteners and milk.  Soon after these coffee shops opened in Paris and Vienna, coffee shops spread throughout the major cities of Europe.

Coffee became popular in Germany, Holland, and even England, where it was supplanted by tea after a few decades as teas were cheaper, easier to prepare and tea trade was dominated by the British “East India Company” making tea more in the national interest.  Once Americans began to rebel from the British, initiated with the Boston Tea Party, it became patriotic to drink coffee rather than tea in the American colonies.

In 1714, the Dutch gave a coffee plant to the French Government, and this plant was carried to Martinique by a French naval officer named de Clieu.  It was replanted on the island, located near the coast of South America.  From this tree, it is thought that millions of the South and Central American coffee trees derived.  Brazil became a major producer, and coffee a world commodity.

Coffee growth increased in the United States up to the civil war, and exploded in popularity afterward due to new bulk roasting methods, and marketing of pre-roasted beans (housewives had to “pan roast” beans until this point).  John Arbuckle became the first national coffee distributor, branding his coffee “Ariosa”, throughout the 1860s, 70s and 80s.  Caleb Chase and James Sanborn were early competitors, and the Chase and Sanborn coffees were popular in the east; while James Folger opened up shop in San Francisco not long after the Civil War, followed 15 years later by the Hills Brothers.  Around the turn of the century, Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, the nation’s first grocery store chain, began to carry its own brand along with the national brands, calling it Eight O’Clock Coffee.  In 1907, Maxwell House coffee was first marketed.

In the 1950s coffee entered into a quality decline.  Robusta coffees, which are cheaper variety beans from lower elevations, were added to American coffee in ever increasing amounts.  While this kept coffee prices down for consumers, the product suffered.  “Instant” coffees were made entirely of Robusta beans.  Only in the new opened “coffee houses” springing up in late 1950s in Greenwich Village in New York, or at Café Trieste San Francisco, were really good coffees being served.  Juan Valdez was invented by Columbian growers to market their coffees in 1960.  Quickly Columbian coffee began to become considered as among the finest, and many distributors added some Columbian beans to their blends to meet the success of this marketing campaign.  Even so, even the best national brands contained at least 10% Robusta beans, whereas in decades before none would have included Robusta. 

In 1966, Alfred Peet, a Dutch immigrant who had learned of coffee roasting from his father’s shop in Holland, opened a roasting shop with six bar stools in Berkeley, California.  Customers were surprised by the coffees, which Peet had made from the best Arabica beans (Colombian initially, but soon he added the Javan, Sumatran, and other fine coffees from plantations he had visited in 1948 while working for his father).  Other “specialty roasters” followed, but this premium coffee alternative was slow to catch on.  By 1983 it still accounted for only 1% of all bean sales, but growth was picking up.  More specialty coffee shops had opened in Seattle (including Starbucks in 1971), in Portland, and by 1986 specialty coffee sales had jumped to 3% of the national market.  Specialty roasters were beginning to find shelf space along national brands in some grocery stores.  In 1983 the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) was formed.  Starbucks hired New York housewares salesman Howard Schultz in 1982 to run marketing (they had but a half dozen retail stores selling beans and equipment in the early 1980s), and two years later the company bought out Peet’s stores.  About this time Schulz visited Italy and tried espresso brewed coffees, which had been popular in Italy since the turn of the century.  When Starbuck’s opened its next retail bean store, Schulz included several seats and offered espresso drinks.  By early 1986, Schulz convinced Starbuck’s owner to try out a café based on espresso drink sales, and six months after opening they had over 1,000 customers a day.  When he learned that Starbuck’s owner had decided to sell the company the following year, Schulz found several investors and bought the business.  He lost $330,000 in his first year, twice that his second year, growing to $1.2 million in losses the third year; but in 1990 Starbucks turned a slight profit through its 55 Northwest and Chicago stores.  They expanded to Los Angeles the following year, became known as a chic coffee spot, and have enjoyed spectacular growth since (the first Atlanta location arrived in 1994; there are over 130 stores here now).

Starbucks has over 9,000 worldwide locations as of early 2006.  Starbucks focused on creating “A Third Place”, a relaxing environment to sit and enjoy coffee that was neither home nor work.  The industry has also grown, but no single competitor has more than 350 stores, and there are only a few companies with over 50 stores.  The Pacific Northwest has seen the most competition, the coffee culture started there and matured there.  In the late 1980s, a few espresso stands showed up inside Seattle malls or at busy downtown Portland locations, and by the mid 1990s a few espresso drive thru kiosks appeared.  There are now over 5,000 such drive thru kiosks in 2006, most out on the west coast, with less than 500 east of the Mississippi.   Starbucks has responded; in late 2005 they announced that 50% of all new stores would feature a drive thru window, but no standalone drive thru’s are yet envisioned.  Meanwhile, Dunkin Donuts is adding espresso units to every one of their 5,000 outlets (mostly located in the Northeast).  Soon, McDonald’s and other fast food companies will offer espresso.  For new competitors in this space, a quality, high-end option exists, but the fast food giants and gas stations will soon compete on the low quality end with push button espresso units.  Starbucks itself is going to push button espresso machines, opening the door for high end crafted alternatives