H and H Coffee

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

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American Can Company 1934 trade advertisement — black and white halftone of a suited technician and plant worker examining a Canco can-closing machine with open cans in the foreground, headline reads 'Getting things off on the right foot...and Keeping them that way,' American Can Company, 516 Park Avenue New York City

A 1934 American Can Company trade advertisement entered the collection from Maryland seller adman365 — a full-page black-and-white halftone showing a Canco closing machine on an active factory floor. The central image is a tightly composed photograph of two men — one in a business suit, one in work clothes — bent over the machine together, with a row of open metal cans filling the foreground. The headline above and below the image reads: “GETTING things off on the right foot . . . and KEEPING them that way.” The body copy markets American Can’s technical service infrastructure: “Back of every Canco closing machine is a service as advanced as the closing machines themselves. At carefully chosen centers we have over 200 men on call.” The ad closes with the American Can Company imprint, 516 Park Avenue, New York City.

The 1934 date makes this a precise three-year predecessor to a documented H and H milestone. In June 1937, H and H became the first Southwest Texas coffee packer to install a vacuum-can closing machine at the 601 Delaware Street plant — the same class of equipment this ad depicts and promotes. American Can Company is already a registered company in the H and H knowledge base as a documented metal container supplier; this ad is the first piece of American Can advertising to enter the physical collection. The factory scene — a company representative working alongside a plant operator at the machine — mirrors the sales-and-service model H and H engaged with from its equipment suppliers, including the Huntley Manufacturing Company for Monitor roasters and Jabez Burns & Sons for later equipment. As a piece of trade advertising it also shows the visual language American Can used to sell closing-machine service contracts to food manufacturers — the same pitch H and H would have received when specifying its vacuum-can line in the mid-1930s.

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