H and H Coffee

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

601 Delaware Street Plant

The Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company’s major new facility, built in 1932. Described at opening as “the Southwest’s finest modern coffee roasting plant” and “one of the largest and finest in the entire South.”

Address

601 Delaware Street, between South Cherry Street and Hoefgen Avenue, at the Southern Pacific tracks, San Antonio, Texas.

Construction

  • Groundbreaking: July 25, 1932
  • Architects: Morris, Nooman, and Wilson (Builders Exchange building; period sources also spell “Noonan”)
  • General contractor: George W. Mitchell Construction (G. W. Mitchell, 313 Builders Exchange building)
  • Size: 16,000 square feet of floor space
  • Cost: $130,000
  • Construction type: Two-story, fireproof
  • Target occupancy: October 15, 1932 (revised to November 15; actual occupancy ~November 1932)

Features

  • Modern coffee roasting and vacuum-packing equipment (Huntley Manufacturing Company Monitor roasters were the documented H&H roaster vendor in 1923 and a plausible continuation into the 1932 plant pending direct documentation)
  • 60 or more employees
  • Showers and lounge rooms for both men and women
  • Commodious company cafeteria
  • Garage and workshop for fleet maintenance
  • Special railroad siding arrangement for simultaneous loading/unloading of several freight cars
  • A large H and H Crystalvac container placed on the roof — visible for blocks in all directions

Open House

Wednesday, December 21, 1932, 6:30–10:30 PM

75 Lions Club members attended a luncheon and tour on December 28. Open House broadcast over Station WOAI at 8 PM December 21.

The original hand roaster used by William R. Hoffmann in 1904 — “hardly larger than a 50-pound lard can” — was given a place of honor in the new plant, a tribute to the company’s founding.

Previous location

The company had been at 331 Burnett Street for approximately ten years before this move (so ~1922–1932). Earlier locations: 1223 West Commerce Street (1912), 228 East Commerce Street (Hoffmann’s original business).

Factory finds (non-coffee paper, wood, and metal)

The plant at 601 Delaware is easy to read as a coffee-only story (roaster hardware, keywind tins, newspaper ads), but on a walk-through what comes out of walls and outbuildings still advertises the full brand grid the office wrote up — tea, spices, signage, shipping collateral. These are site-recovered finds, not dealer stock, and they confirm the company’s non-coffee lines as part of the physical plant footprint.

  • Sales report books from the office ceiling — interwar sales-desk ledgers pulled from above the office ceiling during a cable run. Line-by-line entries for tea, house blends, Sam Houston, Broncho, Texas Girl, and the rest of the brand grid. Full write-up under Sales report books from the office ceiling.
  • Master Chef painted plywood sign (in situ) — rough board with large red H AND H slab-serif lettering and MASTER CHEF / COFFEE in black block type. Nail holes and weathering from real use; recovered on the factory footprint, not dealer stock. Figure: assets/images/gallery/factory-master-chef-sign.jpg.
  • H and H price sign (Master Chef, paper) — large unfolded paper counter placard, heavy red ink, never marked for the shelf; picked up in New Braunfels. Same mid-century Master Chef line as the one-pound tins but in printed-paper form, not the field-shot wooden board above. See H and H price sign.
  • Crate fragment with stenciled Delaware Street address — shipping-crate board fragment from a small outbuilding on the property (field notes use the local nickname “murder shed”). Still carries stenciled shipping identity tied to Hoffmann-Hayman and the Delaware Street works — wood-and-ink evidence of the outbound logistics that accompanied burlap, nails, and finished goods leaving the plant.
  • Paprika barrel lid — bulk-format sibling to the small H and H Spices upright tins. Paprika is listed in the published flavor range on H and H Spices; the lid documents the line at grocery scale even though a full barrel pack is not yet in hand. The site-wide Wanted list still calls out a paprika tin for the brand range.

Old Roaster door and power box

A separately documented in-situ artifact: the cream-enamel door and embossed OLD ROASTER Dymo-style label on the power box for the roasting line — alligator-cracked paint, rust streaks, label intact. Visible proof of roasting infrastructure even when the air on a walk-through reads neutral (humidity, empty shell, time, later construction). Figure: assets/images/gallery/handh-old-roaster-door-ig.jpg. Full write-up: Old Roaster switch at the H and H Coffee Factory.

Open questions

  • Why did the first-floor structure require steel I-beam repairs, and what was on the roof that required extra support? Physical observation in the building today: structural reinforcements visible on the first floor and roof loading that exceeds residual coffee-roasting needs. May be ordinary equipment loading (roaster batteries are heavy; the 1932 design notes “modern coffee roasting and vacuum-packing equipment” plus the large Crystalvac roof landmark), or may tie to a specific incident or post-original-construction retrofit. Research angles: San Antonio building permits and repair notices; engineering correspondence if held by George W. Mitchell descendants or archive; contemporary news on structural work; comparison with sibling 1930s Texas roasting plants.
  • Where are the original factory machines? The 1904 hand roaster was preserved as a 1932 Open House display piece (per the December 21, 1932 Open House copy), but the larger Monitor roaster line (Huntley Manufacturing supply, 1923 documented; plausible 1932 continuation), the vacuum-packing equipment that launched Crystalvac, and post-1932 machinery are unaccounted for after the corporate transition. Research angles: auction notices when the plant closed (post-1964 Continental acquisition; eventually 1972 closure); scrap metal dealers; other roasters’ “used equipment” ads in Tea and Coffee Trade Journal and peer trade press; museum accession files for industrial food equipment (the Witte Museum and Texas industrial-history collections); 1960s–1970s San Antonio auction-house records.
  • What did peak-operation interior photography look like? Features catalogs the 1932 plant build at occupancy; surviving in-house photographs from the 1940s–1960s peak-operation period are limited to a handful of newspaper feature shots (notably the 1959 “Top Coffee Plant” Light page on the Hoffmann-Hayman page). Research angles: San Antonio Light / Express photo morgues (Trinity University archives, UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures); Sanborn fire insurance maps showing machinery layout; private employee snapshots if any surviving worker families can be reached.

See also