Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The American history of coffee

Dutch and French smugglers did introduce coffee beans in great quantity, and coffeehouses opened in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

In 1723, a coffee plant was introduced in the Americas for cultivation. Gabriel de Clieu, a French naval officer transport a seedling to Martinique.

The Boston Tea Party makes drinking coffee a patriotic duty in America in 1773. The American share of world coffee production rose from 61 percent in 1889 to 91 percent in 1913, where it remained until 1930. 

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, coffee was the leading export of nearly half the countries of Latin America and important in a number of others.

In 1914 Brazil provided the United States with three-fourths of its coffee imports. In the early 1920s, Brazil was responsible for 60% of the world’s coffee export.

In United States, coffee mostly drunk at home, it was housewife who made decision what coffee to purchase. Hence, retailers have been oriented much more toward women consumers than men.

With the grocery store, not café, as a site for choosing the product, large roasters and brand names first appeared in the United States.

In 1865, a Pittsburgh grocer named John Arbuckle took advantage of an exciting new technology – the paper bag - to develop the nation’s first popular coffee brand. It was sold under a colorful new label touting the brand, Arbuckle’s Ariosa Coffee.

Before Ariosa, consumers had to buy green coffee beans in bulk form their local grocer, then roasts the beans themselves at home.

The packaged brand coffee spread after a major technical breakthrough came in 1898 when Edwin Norton invented vacuum packing, which allowed roasted, ground coffee to retain its flavor. In 1903, Hill Brothers was the first coffee company to commercially adopt vacuum packaging.
The American history of coffee

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