Bolner’s Fiesta Brand — a grinder from closing Hoffmann-Hayman (reported 1971)
After Hoffmann-Hayman ceased roasting in 1972, much of the company’s story on this site stops at packaging, newspaper ads, and the Delaware Street building itself — including the weathered “Old Roaster” switch box still mounted on the factory wall. A less familiar thread is where the plant’s production hardware went. Two Texas publications describe Bolner’s Fiesta Brand — the San Antonio spice company founded in 1955 — picking up industrial coffee-grinding equipment from H and H and putting it to work on spice, especially pepper.
Reporting (not primary records here). Texas Monthly, in a company history feature, quotes Tim Bolner on the family buying a “$50,000 grinder” for “$100 from the closing H and H Coffee Company” — a machine that needed rebuilding but was still in service grinding pepper. Texas Highways puts the transfer in 1971, describing an “industrial coffee grinder purchased … from San Antonio’s H and H Coffee” used for peppercorns today.
Treat the price, model, and exact calendar date as journalism until matched to invoices, auction notices, or a Bolner family oral-history deposit. Even so, the anecdote matters for this archive: it is one of the few public narratives about H and H plant assets living on inside another San Antonio food business — a coda to the roastery’s commercial grinders and mills after the coffee labels went quiet.
Further research: factory liquidation notices, 1971–1973 equipment sales, Bolner company archives, or photographs of the grinder in Fiesta’s plant would tighten the story. Leads welcome via contact.
