Ground to Perfection

 

QUESTION: I love a good cup of coffee and grind my own beans. Today’s coffee grinders are sleek and efficient, but antique coffee grinders had character. Who were the major manufacturers of antique coffee grinders? And when did coffee grinders first appear?

ANSWER: Unlike today, grocery stores in the 19th and early 20th centuries sold coffee only as beans that could be, freshly ground in the store. Originally, all general stores had some sort of coffee grinder sitting on the counter. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, always sold its coffee as beans which could be custom ground according to the customer’s preference.

The Enterprise Manufacturing Company, founded by John Gulick Baker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1864 near Independence Hall, was one of the leading makers of both large and small coffee grinders. The company quickly grew to a huge operation producing everything from barn-door bolts to seven-foot-high, motorized coffee mills weighing almost 500 pounds. The firm also manufactured juicers, tobacco cutters, and Mrs. Potts sad irons, as well as cast iron banks. In 1876, the company received the Centennial Medal for their outstanding contributions to the American public.

General store owners used the Enterprise Model No. 12-1/2 coffee mill for grinding larger amounts of coffee. Manufactured between 1886 and 1898, it stood 42 inches high, had 25-inch diameter wheels and weighed about 140 pounds. It’s main components were of cast iron. Such mills became status symbols for those general store owners who could afford them.

While many of these larger coffee mills sported bright red or green paint, some had other decorations in the form of decals. True to Victorian style, many had gold painted details added to dress them up and give them a more deluxe appearance. Some of these mills also had elaborate flower motifs adorning the wheels to make them attractive for women shoppers.

In the 19th century, coffee grinders made to be used in the home ranged from box-type grinders designed to grind coffee from one-to-four servings to wall-mounted grinders, some of which could hold a pound or more of beans at a time.

Box grinders usually had brass bowls mounted on top of a hardwood or cast-iron box. The crank perforated the bottom of the bowl and would be turned to grind the beans into a drawer below. Not all box grinders were square, but finding a round one, especially in cast iron, can be a challenge for a collector.

In England, Kenrick & Sons was a major maker of box coffee grinders—the oval brass nameplate on the front of Kenrick box grinders makes them easy to identify. Imperial, Favorite, and None-Such were important U.S. brands. And in France, Peugeot Frères made metal and cast-iron box grinders with wooden handles.

The most collectible type of coffee grinder is the wall mounted variety made of cast iron. Some were brass, with clear glass hopper for beans on top, a big crank handle on the side, and a wooden drawer at the base to collect the ground coffee. The Arcade Manufacturing Company of Illinois made a wall-mounted grinder called The Crystal, named for its glass beans hopper and glass grounds cup.

But the Enterprise Manufacturing of Philadelphia made heavy-duty grinders for grocers, retailers, and wholesalers. While many of these wall or table-mounted machines had side crank handles, its largest grinders had handles that attached to flywheels. Some grinders had one wheel, others two.

The most ornate examples of Enterprise grinders from the late 19th and early 20th centuries had eagle finials atop urn-shaped hoppers and a pair of flywheels, all of which would be mounted on a waist-high, decorative cast-iron stand.

Mounting a coffee grinder firmly in place was important enough that even small box grinders had tabs on their bases so the grinder could be secured to a surface. People held Turkish style coffee grinders in their hands. Usually made of brass or enameled metal, these slender, cylindrical grinders often featured detailed engraved designs on their sides. Unlike box or grocery grinders, Turkish mills produced a fine grind, producing a dense, full-bodied coffee, today known as espresso, suited to what many considered an after-dinner beverage.

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An American Grocery Tradition

QUESTION: I live in a small apartment and don’t have the room or means to collect a lot of antiques, especially furniture. But recently I became fascinated with the little tins that contained spices and other things that used to be sold in supermarkets. I’ve acquired some, like those from A&P and National. While I’ve heard of some of these brands, I’ve never seen or heard of the National brand. Can you tell me anything about it?

ANSWER: The use of little tins to hold spices goes back to the late 19th century. McCormick spices are widely known as a national brand, but each market and eventually supermarket had its own store brands, as just about all do today. So first let’s look at how these store brands got started.

It all began back in 1859 when John Huntingdon Hartford founded the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, commonly known as A&P. He peddled coffees and teas out of gold and vermillion horse-drawn wagons and tiny, yet opulent, Oriental-themed retail shops before gradually adding a few kitchen staples like flour, sugar, baking powder and spices to its product mix. He packaged the items he sold with the name of his company, A&P.

Clarence Saunder started the modern self-service supermarket concept in 1916 with his Memphis-based Piggly Wiggly brand. One of the earliest tea companies to break from tradition and cash in on this concept was Danish immigrant George S. Rasmussen's National Tea Company, founded in 1899. Others like Jewel Tea followed. In the beginning, each sold their own brand of goods, but as the small stores grew into supermarkets, each needed to fill their shelves, so they began selling private brands as well.

Early in its history, Chicago-based National built itself into an upper Midwest chain supermarket powerhouse across Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota by hitching its future on adopting Saunder's novel supermarket concept. By the end of World War II, National had grown into America's sixth largest grocery chain, comprising 880 small, neighborhood supermarkets sprinkled across Iowa, the Dakotas, Michigan and Indiana, but primarily concentrated around principal strongholds in Chicago, Rockford, Illinois, Milwaukee and Minneapolis/St. Paul.

But following founder Rasmussen's [936 death during the Great Depression, National lost its direction and floundered. Chicago millionaire printer John F. Cunco, who controlled a 26 percent block of stock in what he publicly noted was the worst chain-store property in the country, forced a March 1945 reorganization of the company's management to shake up the laggard, star-crossed chain. Cunco installed fifth-grade dropout-turned-grocery-whiz Harley V. McNamara as National's executive vice-president and Robert V. Rasmussen, son of the founder, as president. In 1947 McNamara was promoted to president, with Rasmussen becoming chairman.

Within a decade of his 1945 appointment at National, McNamara built the industry also-ran into the nation's fifth largest supermarket chain and 10th largest retailer, boosting sales from $107 million to $520 million and profits from $913,000 to $6.5 million by increasing per-store volume some 500 percent. He did this by closing its low-volume, low-profit traditional city neighborhood stores  in favor of the postwar shift to larger, modern stand-alone and shopping center supermarkets surrounded by acres of free parking.

But by far the biggest single reason for National's explosive growth during the postwar boom was McNamara's strategy of buying instant market saturation in new geographic areas though the acquisition of local chains in major markets. Still the chain continued to sell its National store brand and placed its items in these acquired stores. Sound familiar?

Eventually, the economy and over-expansion caught up to National while other, newer chains created competition it just couldn’t match. Today, even the trendiest supermarkets offer their own brand of many of the products they sell. And as supermarket chains get bought and sold, the store brands of the survivors endure. It’s an American tradition.