Historically, coffee was a low cost mass market beverage. This began to change in the 1960s when coffee stores began selling premium coffee beans as well as roasters and other related equipment.
One such retail store was Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Berkeley California. It was founded in 1966 by Alfred Peet, who sold coffee beans and equipment to many students from the nearby University of California.
They inspiring a new generation of small grassroots, batch roasters (as opposed to mass continuous roasting) and sparking the modern ‘specialty coffee’ movement exemplified by Starbucks Coffee founded in 1971 in Seattle.
Customers can purchase fresh roasted beans from a local coffee roster or buy coffee in one-way valve bags, which allow beans to de-gas without admitting oxygen.
Coffee consumption increased steadily between 1925 and 1945. Entering the 1960s, coffee was the most popular beverage consumed in the United States.
But coffee consumption fell by 26% between 1965 and 1987, a trend that continued through the late 1990s, when per capita consumption of both sweetened soft drinks and alcoholic beverages surpassed coffee.
As of 2010, 29 percent of Americans got their coffee at home, 25 percent at Starbucks, 16 percent at MacDonald’s, 11 percent at Dunkin’ Donuts, and 19 percent elsewhere (which includes everything from white tablecloth restaurants to gas stations).
Coffee in United States in twentieth century
