H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Coffee-and-tea-industry trade periodical and book publisher, founded 1901 as the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal magazine; still publishing today (as Tea & Coffee Trade Journal). The publishing entity behind it was historically the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, New York. For H&H research, the Trade Journal is the primary contemporaneous trade-press source for the company’s operating decades — both as the publisher of foundational reference books cited across the KB and as a regular venue for H&H trademark filings and trade-press coverage.

Publisher of foundational H&H research references

The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company published the two William H. Ukers volumes that anchor the KB’s coffee-trade-reference shelf:

  • All About Coffee (first ed. 1922, second ed. 1935) — encyclopedic single-volume coffee survey; the held library copy is the 1935 second edition (HH-LIB-2014-0005). The 1922 first edition is on the library purchase list as a P1 acquisition target for the edition-comparison threads.
  • Coffee Merchandising (1924 first edition) — Ukers’s trade-focused companion; the held copy is the 1924 first edition (HH-LIB-2014-0004).

Ukers (1873–1945) was both the long-serving editor of the Trade Journal and the principal author of its book imprint; the publishing house was essentially the institutional home of his work. This makes the Trade Journal not just a trade-press source but the trade-press source for the early 20th-century American coffee industry.

Documented H&H references in the Trade Journal

  • May 1928 issue — Tea & Coffee Trade Journal p. 725 publishes the H&H trademark filings for O.S.T. (Old Spanish Trail) and San Jose (both filed week ending April 3 and April 10, 1928 respectively). See brands/old-spanish-trail-coffee.md and brands/san-jose-coffee.md. The OST listing reads: Serial No. 261,672 / Class 46 / Goods: Coffee. The San Jose listing similarly documents the compound-of-coffee-cereal-and-chicory mark.
  • 1924 Index of Trade-Marks (companion publication) also lists H&H filings from the period and is the standard cross-reference for Trade Journal trademark-section content.

Acquisition status

The KB does not currently hold bound runs or facsimiles of the Trade Journal itself — only the two Ukers monographs the journal company published. Acquisition of period bound runs is on the library purchase list as a P1 target with the caveat that institutional access (NYPL, Hagley, Library of Congress) is acceptable in lieu of purchase since bound runs are scarce and expensive.

Open questions

  • Other 1910s-1960s H&H mentions. Beyond the May 1928 trademark listings, what other Trade Journal coverage names H&H? A subject-index search for “Hoffmann-Hayman” across the journal’s full run would catalog corporate-news mentions, advertising buys, equipment-purchase notices, etc.
  • The 1922 first edition of All About Coffee — different chapters on roasting equipment. Confirmed via library/purchase-list.md as P1 target; resolving this would close the most-frequently-cited research gap in the trade-reference thread.
  • Institutional repository. NYPL (New York Public Library, Schwarzman building) is the most likely full-run repository; Hagley Museum and the Library of Congress are confirmed alternatives. Identifying the most accessible institutional copy is a research-logistics question.

See also

  • All About Coffee (Ukers, 1935 2nd ed) — HH-LIB-2014-0005
  • Coffee Merchandising (Ukers, 1924 1st ed) — HH-LIB-2014-0004
  • Old Spanish Trail Coffee — 1928 trademark via Trade Journal
  • San Jose Coffee — 1928 trademark via Trade Journal
  • Library purchase list — bound runs as P1 acquisition target