The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf was first formed in 1963 in Los Angeles, California. It was founded by Herbert B. Hyman, who was known as the founding father of gourmet coffee in California.

Tea Leaf opening their first store in Los Angeles, California. The store was the oldest and largest brand of coffee and tea retailer in United States. The company had expanded to ten stores in California in 1970.

The business did so well in Singapore and Malaysia that the company was purchased from the Hymans by Singaporean brothers Victor Sassoon and Sunny Sassoon in 1996.

In 2019, Jollibee Foods Corporation purchased The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for $350 million.
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

Douwe Egberts – The history

A Dutch coffee roasting company, Douwe Egberts was founded in 1753 by Egbert Douwes and his wife, Akke Thysses. They began selling coffee, tea and tobacco in their small shop, De Witte Os (The White Ox), in Joure, a small village in the Netherlands.

Originally, Egbert Douwes only sold his product locally. However his son, Douwe Egberts, who entered the business around 1780, built up national reputation by supplying coffee and tea to shop owners throughout the country, spreading the fame of the Douwe Egberts brand. The shop grew onto a coffee-roasting house and a tea and tobacco-trading company.

The village of Joure was soon too small for the company’s activities and it started new production in Utrecht in 1919.

Gradually the company grew to become the Dutch market leader for coffee. By the 1950s, the company was responsible for over 50 percent of coffee exported from the Netherlands.

Douwe Egberts internationalized in 1927 opening production and distribution activities in Germany. As of 1948 Douwe Egberts expanded into Belgium, Denmark, France and Spain.

In 1978, the company was taken over by Sara Lee Corporation. In 2012, Douwe Egberts again went to the stock market under its own, slightly embellished, name as DE Master Blenders 1753.
Douwe Egberts – The history

Arbuckle coffee

In 1859 John Arbuckle, a Pittsburgh grocer entered the wholesale grocery business, McDonald and Arbuckle, begun by his brother Charles, his uncle Duncan McDonald, and his friend William Roseburg.

McDonald and Roseburg retired from the firm a few years later leaving the business on the hands of the two yourthfull John and Charles assumed charge. Under the firm name Arbuckles & OC., soon made their firm one of the important wholesale grocery houses in Pennsylvania.

In 1864, John Arbuckle, then twenty one, bought a coffee roaster. He sold his coffee in little packages that were widely mocked by competitors due to their resemblance to peanut bags.

By 1868 John Arbuckle’s formula for a tasty roasted coffee and his keen business expertise had revolutionized the coffee industry.

A good cup of coffee meant daily roasting until 1868, when Arbuckle perfected a glutinous mixture made of Irish moss, gelatin, isinglass, white sugar and eggs for preserving the freshness of roast coffee.

Early in the seventies, the great business opportunities of New York City had attracted the two brothers and a branch was established in New York in charge of john Arbuckle, the main business in Pittsburg being left in the charge of his brother Charles.

Arbuckles’ was so successful that in the 1880s the company established branches in Kansas City and Chicago as well as ports in Brazil and Mexico.

In 1937 the General Foods Corporation acquired a number of Arbuckle Brothers brand names, including Yuban.
Arbuckle coffee