Coffee Brands That Are Older Than You Realized

When that first waft of morning coffee hits your nostrils, do you ever pause and wonder how many people have taken part in this same exact ritual, with the same exact brand of coffee on their shelf and the same exact brew in their mug in years long since passed? While you sip on Folgers and watch the cars go by outside of your office window, have you ever thought about the U.S. Marines who also sipped Folgers while picking up the pieces of a destroyed San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake? What about Nescafé instant coffee — have you ever enjoyed a cup knowing that it's the same product that kept American soldiers warm in World War II bunkers? 

Truthfully, for most of us, coffee is a daily necessity first and a richly storied global commodity second. We don't tend to look at coffee as a crop that brought with it countless examples of family perseverance, corporate drama, and tons of ethical controversy. In recent years, a new wave of coffee culture heralded brands that are female-owned or Black-owned or certifiably environmentally friendly or co-oped by the farmers who grow it to ensure an equitable wage for all — or all of the above. But several brands that you recognize today as steadily unchanged from childhood commercials or the dusty cupboard shelves of your grandparents' kitchen have been around for much longer than you may realize. Here's a brief history of the oldest legacy coffee brands you can still find today.

A long history exists behind the iconic blue can of coffee grounds that's been brewed in American households since the late 1800s. Joel Cheek was working as a wholesale grocery salesman in 1873 when he was approached by a customer who wanted to know which coffee among his wares was the best. Cheek recommended the priciest option, naturally, to boost his own commission — but this salesman who knew nothing about coffee later tried his premium and budget coffees one after the other. He found that the less expensive bean was in fact tastier (and ended up selling the cheaper product to his customer).

That sparked Cheek's unexpected passion for finding, roasting, and blending the best coffees. Some years later, he partnered with another coffee guru to develop the original blend that Maxwell House is now known for. One of Cheek's first major customers was the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, where it's said that customers loved Cheek's blend so much that they complained to management after his initial free sample of coffee ran out and the hotel went back to its previous supplier. Known as being an affordable yet delicious alternative to more expensive competitors, Maxwell House exploded in popularity, with the brand even reportedly receiving the stamp of approval from former President Teddy Roosevelt. It's storied that, in 1907, Roosevelt visited the Nashville hotel and deemed its house coffee — which by that point was in fact the coffee supplied by Cheek — as "good to the last drop."

The year was 1838 when Wright Gillies, the son of Scottish parents who had recently immigrated to the relatively young United States, set out to the Big Apple to find a lifeline out of the financial distress his family was experiencing. He worked in a tea shop for two years before breaking out on his own. According to the company's official history, it was reported in All About Coffee by the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company that Gillies, who at that point was barely past 20 years old, opened his own coffee business in New York City, where he's said to have used a horse-powered roaster for his coffee beans. 

The success of Gillies' coffee mercantile flourished, and by 1863 he was supplying products to places as far away as New Orleans. He went on to hold two roasting-related patents, including one for roasting coffee using natural gas. Gillies coffee is mostly sold on a commercial level, notably to specialty wholesalers, as the private label coffee of restaurants and hotels, and for other private dining locations. 

Folgers has been the best part of waking up since the mid 19th century. Its founder, James Folger, was just 14 years old when he traveled from Nantucket, Massachusetts, to San Francisco to hopefully strike gold, literally, during the gold rush. His brothers headed into the mines, while Folger opted to work at The Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills. A few years later, Folger found himself as the sole owner of the business when it went bankrupt following some economic strife in the United States. In the late 1800s, most American coffee importers chose their crop based on the physical appearance of the beans. Folger was reportedly one of the first buyers to cup (or sample) the beans firsthand before purchasing. 

Folgers coffee was exclusively sold in California until 1900, when a salesman finally expanded the brand to grocery stores outside of the Golden State. In 1905 the brand built a new manufacturing plant that luckily survived the massive San Francisco earthquake the following year. In fact, Folgers says it is the only San Francisco-based coffee business to have made it through the disaster unscathed. With the tattered city and post-earthquake fires surrounding it, a base camp headquarters for the U.S. Marines was set up in the new Folgers factory, and the brand served free coffee to people while the city worked to rebuild itself. Folgers' popularity exploded in 1958, when it released its instant coffee. 

The rich history of Café Bustelo, a nearly 100-year-old brand with iconic yellow packaging, spans across New York, Spain, and much of Latin America. Founder Gregorio Bustelo had a passion for travel, a wanderlust that led him across the globe and eventually to Harlem, New York, in 1928. Before he arrived there, Bustelo had visited a number of Latin American cities, all of which contributed to his deep love for Latin coffee. Bustelo began selling his own secret blend of espresso-style Latin coffee beans, hand-ground, in East Harlem. He saved every penny he made until he was finally able to open a 5th Avenue shop, where he sold his product, Café Bustelo, to Latino markets and bodegas. 

Over time, the flourishing of Café Bustelo pushed its brand of coffee across the United States. Gregorio Bustelo used to just peddle cups of coffee to passersby in his New York City neighborhood, but his brand now offers instant coffee, Keurig pods, and coffee grounds in a variety of blends and styles. And that woman you see on every canary-yellow box of Café Bustelo? That's Angelina, Gregorio's wife. 

In 1862, the doors to a new coffee stand were thrown open in the historic French Quarter market of New Orleans. This shop, Café Du Monde, is still open today, and operates 24/7, save for "Christmas Day and on the day an occasional hurricane passes too close to New Orleans," according to the brand's website. The original Café Du Monde sold chicory coffee, traditional coffee, and beignets, all staples in The Big Easy.

The grocery store version of Café Du Monde is coffee combined with chicory — that's the ground-up roots of the chicory plant, a member of the dandelion family and a coffee alternative appreciated for its lack of caffeine and supposed health benefits. It's not clear when, exactly, Café Du Monde expanded to sell its ground coffee product in grocery stores, but the popularity of this product among the earliest Vietnamese American populations (due to the chicory roots' likeness to the flavor profile of robusta coffee, the main coffee varietal cultivated and consumed in Vietnam), suggests that it's been on shelves since at least the 1970s.