History
Originally posted on March 30, 2025 @ 10:10 pm
The Food That Built America Recap for Coffee: A Brewed Awakening
This week’s episode of The Food That Built America is titled Coffee: A Brewed Awakening.
Apparently, coffee has been around since before the Declaration of Independence….thanks to the Boston Tea Party.
At the time, coffee could only be bought in bulk and was complicated to brew. It also tasted bad, so people would add eggshells and fish skin to make it taste better.
Before long, people are trying to find other ways to make coffee taste better. At this point, people are moving west due to the Gold Rush.
A kid named Jim is too young to work in the mines, so he is working at a coffee place. His boss allows him to bring some to his brothers, unknowingly setting up Jim’s future….Jim Folger’s future….as a coffee maven.
The Folger brothers enjoy the coffee which they brew over the campfire. People love it so much that Jim opens a stand and sells cups of coffee and prepackaged grounds.
By 1865, Jim is running the business and renamed it JA Folger and Company. Despite the uncertain times of the world, people still loved and relied on their coffee.
Joel Cheek is also in the coffee business. He goes to a hotel to try and get business….at Maxwell House Hotel. The manager is initially not interested, until Joel offers it free of charge. This would set the bar for his business and change his life forever.
The Gilded Age begins and coffee is more popular than ever. Joel is determined to cash in on this business, but the Maxwell House Hotel manager is not interested, until his boss says people love it and to go catch Joel before he leaves.
The coffee is a hit and sold under the Maxwell House name.
Arbuckle’s is another coffee brand that went national, thanks to a sort of egg glaze to make it stay fresh and sweeter.
Jim and his son are now doing cup tests to make sure they come up with the perfect coffee to sell.
Maxwell House is going national and gets it’s ‘good to the last drop’ slogan from FDR. It becomes the country’s number one coffee brand.
However, coffee is causing controversy since it contains caffeine, which people think could be addicting.
CW Post wants to cash in on the coffee craze by coming up with a defamatory campaign and coming out with a healthier instant version.
Joel and Jim want to fight back with the help of other people in the coffee business. They do a three-year study at MIT to prove coffee is not bad for people. It is a win and even proven to be beneficial. CW’s instant fades into obscurity.
Joel sells the company when he and CW’s daughter Marjorie come up with a deal. She also acquires several other companies, making Post what it is today. Maxwell House would be the #1 coffee in the country.
Folgers is the second company until 1984 when they do their ‘best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup’ campaign. This gives them the top spot and they are now worth billions.
By the 1960s, coffee on the go is quite popular, thanks to the Bunn-O-Matic. People want this in their homes rather than the percolator most American homes use.
Vincent Marotta is not a fan of inconsistent coffee, so he decides to find a way to make smaller versions of the Bunn-O-Matic by ripping one apart and trying to figure it out, with the help with a friend. Over their heads, they have another friend help and invent the home coffee maker.
By 1972, Mr. Coffee is invented. Sales are rough at first, but once Vincent gets in touch with Joe DiMaggio, thanks to a bit of sleuthing and stalking, they have a spokesperson that puts Mr. Coffee on the map.
People are now LOVING making coffee at home.
Mr. Coffee is sold for 135 million dollars.
Starbucks becomes popular in the 1980s and helps America have coffee in different ways tailored to their liking.
John Sylvan is working in an office and sick of communal coffee makers since people like different kinds. This would allow him to invent something that would change the world of coffee forever.
He reaches out to his old college roommate Peter Dragone to try to make single serving coffee. After a lot of trial and error, the idea of the Keurig, or K-Cup is invented…..but John ends up with caffeine poisoning as they hit pay dirt.
Despite the fact that he cannot drink coffee anymore, John wants to go forward with his idea. Running out of time to get the product out, the guys take out a Dutch-English dictionary and find the word Keurig….for excellence.
Green Mountain Coffee is the first to use these K-Cups, which will make them go national. They come up with a partnership, but John isn’t happy with it. so he takes a $50,000 buyout from Green Mountain. Little does he know that the partnership would one day be worth billions.
Keurig would expand and have different brands of coffee and become one of the most popular single serve coffee makers in the world.
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