What Old Coffee Advertisements Reveal About Selling Coffee

A name, a picture and a few words can do different jobs on a coffee package. Looking closely at two original labels shows how: one makes a product recognizable, while the other also promises to make preparing it less troublesome.

Know What Is in This Small Collection

The two labels are preserved in the Library of Congress's U.S. Patent Office trademarks collection:

The dates are trademark-registration dates, printed above the labels on their sheets. They locate these particular records in time; they do not tell us when every customer first encountered the designs.

Gem: A Brand Name Is Evidence of Identity

The Gem label puts the brand name above a classically dressed figure. A dark blue panel and gold-colored border frame the figure, with “Roasted Coffee” prominent below. The adjoining panel names Coyle, Laughlin & Co., wholesale grocers in Philadelphia.

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The hierarchy is useful to notice. Gem is the identity the buyer can recognize; roasted coffee is the product; the grocer's name connects it to a seller. The picture and ornament give the package a more elaborate identity than the product words alone would provide. That is a reading of the design, rather than a finding about how buyers responded to it.

Philadelphia here identifies the grocer's business location, not where the coffee grew. Nothing in those prominent words supplies a roast-color specification or tells us how the coffee tasted. The label's strongest evidence is about how the seller presented the product.

Arbuckles': A Product Description Still Has Limits

The Arbuckles' label uses a bright yellow ground, red lettering and a winged figure. The large arched brand name sits above “Ariosa Coffee.” “One” and “Pound” occupy the upper corners, while New York and Pittsburgh appear below the product name.

Its most interesting words are “No settling required,” placed on either side of the central figure. This goes beyond naming the product: it makes a claim about preparation. It invites the buyer to see an inconvenient step as unnecessary.

For coffee brewed with loose grounds, settling means allowing grounds to fall before pouring. A later example makes that work tangible: the 1910 edition of Fannie Farmer's cook book describes using egg to clear boiled coffee and leaving the pot standing before service. Arbuckles' label promises that settling is unnecessary, but gives no complete brewing method of its own.

The package amount does a different job. “One pound” tells the buyer the stated quantity of coffee in the package, not how much brewed coffee it will yield. Reading the amount and the preparation claim separately keeps two different promises from merging into one.

The Bureau Ad: A Scene Is a Proposal, Not a Census

A later example suggests a different selling approach. The National Postal Museum's Pan American Coffee Bureau advertisement is catalogued as coming from an unidentified magazine, circa 1941. The museum describes a woman serving coffee to a bundled-up mailman, under a headline about the postman drinking twice.

That catalogue-described scene associates coffee with hospitality and an everyday encounter. Where the two labels foreground a product and seller, this ad offers an occasion for drinking coffee. These three objects give us that concrete contrast; they are not a timeline proving that the whole industry moved from one approach to the other.

Keep Observation, Interpretation and Proof in Separate Columns

The Arbuckles' example shows how to make a useful distinction without stopping at “we cannot know”:

• Observation: the label says “No settling required.” That wording is visible on the original.
• Interpretation: the claim presents preparing the coffee as less troublesome. The interpretation follows from a specific promise, not just the age or attractiveness of the design.
• Further question: did buyers actually prepare it that way, and did they find the promise convincing? Diaries, instructions, correspondence or other contemporary records could help answer that.

This gives the advertisement a clear role in a larger history. It is direct evidence of a selling message and a starting point for investigating what people did with the product.

A personal note: I find old coffee advertisements most interesting when I leave myself an unanswered question. My first question is what the object actually shows; the next is what I am adding to it. I enjoy the interpretation, especially the social world an advertiser invites a reader to imagine.

Record Rights as Carefully as Dates

The Library of Congress records for both labels carry the advisory “No known restrictions on publication.” Keep that item-specific statement, the institution and the object identifier with any reproduction. The National Postal Museum marks its Bureau object CC0.

Carry the Habit Into Today's Coffee Claims

The same close reading works on a modern bag. A place name, a seller's promise and a package amount answer different questions. The coffee buying guide helps turn present-day label details into purchasing decisions, while the coffee origins guide explains what a place name can tell you about the coffee.

Sources

• Library of Congress: Gem coffee label and registration sheet, 1878
• Library of Congress: Arbuckles' roasted-coffee label and registration sheet, 1880
• National Postal Museum: Advertisement from Pan American Coffee Bureau, circa 1941
• Fannie Merritt Farmer: The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1910 edition, “Boiled Coffee,” pages 37–38

Related Reading

• Can a Coffee Bag's Design Change What You Expect to Taste?
• How US Coffee Rationing Worked in 1942–43