Hills Bros. Coffee is a maker of packaged coffee, founded in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
.
History
The company has its origins with the sons of shipbuilder
Austin Hills (1823-1905), who was born in
Rockland, Maine
Rockland is a city in Knox County, Maine, in the United States. As of the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census, the town population was 6,936. It is the county seat of Knox County, Maine, Knox County. The city is a popular tourist destination ...
, and ran a business in California building
clipper ships. His sons were
Austin Herbert Hills (1851-1933), and
Reuben Wilmarth Hills I (1856-1934).
"When Reuben and Austin began to produce roasted coffee there were at least twenty-five other companies already engaged in some form of coffee production and distribution in San Francisco including, of course, the well-known Folger Company started by William Bovee (which began in San Francisco thirty years earlier). Most of these coffee businesses were started by family groups which contributed to the growth of San Francisco. San Francisco in the nineteenth century was ripe for the importing and roasting of coffee. The foundation for commercial production of coffee dated back to the 1820s when English planters brought coffee to Costa Rica. By the early 1840s German and Belgian planters followed with coffee plantations in Guatemala and El Salvador, two of the several Central American countries where Hills Bros. would obtain its mild coffee beans. During the Gold Rush (1849) San Francisco rapidly expanded and grew. Coffee was imported and sold, after roasting, to restaurants and hotels. Yankee gold miners and others without equipment to roast and brew their own coffee, populated "coffee houses."In 1873, two brothers, Austin Herbert and Reuben Wilmarth Hills arrived in San Francisco from their home in Rockland, Maine with their father Austin who had come to California some years earlier. Five years later in 1878 A. H. and R. W. Hills established a retail stall to sell dairy products in the Bay City Market under the name of their new partnership ''Hills Bros''. Their small business expanded in less than four years with the acquisition of a retail coffee store titled ''Arabian Coffee & Spice Mills'' on Fourth Street in San Francisco. In two more years (1884) still larger quarters were occupied at Sacramento and Sansome Streets."
"In 1898, Edward Norton, of New York, was granted a United States patent on a vacuum process for canning foods, subsequently applied to coffee. Others followed. Hills Brothers, of San Francisco, were the first to pack coffee in a vacuum, under the Norton patents, in 1900.
In 1900, Hills Bros. were the first to pack roast coffee in vacuum sealed cans. They incorporated under the Hills Bros. name in 1906. In 1926 Hills Bros. moved its operations to 2 Harrison Street in San Francisco,
a
Romanesque revival
Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...
building on the
Embarcadero designed by
George W. Kelham that is now a city landmark. The roasting operations once made the surrounding area smell like coffee, according to a
Key System "March of Progress" style public service film from 1945 In January 2012, the building had become home to ''Wharton , San Francisco'', a
satellite campus
A satellite campus or branch campus or regional campus is a campus of a university or college that is physically at a distance from the original university or college area. This branch campus may be located in a different city, state, or coun ...
of the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in ...
. A Wharton sign can be currently seen on the Embarcadero side of the building.
Google LLC
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. It ...
and the
Mozilla Corporation
The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of ope ...
also have offices on several floors of the building.
A symbol of an Arab drinking coffee called "the taster", introduced in 1898,
was designed by an artist named Briggs in 1906
but was replaced by a new, European-American, "taster" to represent the original founders in 1990. In 1976, Hills Brothers hired American singer
Sergio Franchi
Sergio Franchi (born Sergio Franci Galli; April 6, 1926 – May 1, 1990) was an Italian-American tenor and actor who enjoyed success in the United States and internationally after gaining notice in Britain in the early 1960s. In 1962, RCA Vict ...
as their TV spokesperson to introduce several lines of specialty flavors. Noted character actor
John Zaremba
John Zaremba (October 22, 1908 – December 15, 1986) was an American actor most noted for supporting roles on science fiction films and television series.
The Chicago-born Zaremba was a journalist for the ''Grand Rapids Press'' and ''Chicago T ...
was the primary commercial spokesperson for Hills Brothers in the 1970s and early 1980s, portraying a fictional coffee bean buyer.
In 1930 Hills Bros. expanded into Chicago.
On 2 November 1938, Hills Brothers Coffee Company filed a petition to rezone 37 ½ acres for industrial purposes to build a plant in
Elmhurst, Illinois
Elmhurst is a city mostly in DuPage County and overlapping into Cook County in the U.S. state of Illinois, and a western suburb of Chicago. As of 2021, the city has an estimated population of 47,260.
History
Members of the Potawatomi Native ...
, north of the North Western tracks to where Schiller Street extended beyond Geneva Avenue. Opposition caused Hills to drop its request.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, the company's metal containers were replaced with glass jars.
In 1984 they purchased the name and manufacturing facilities of the
Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company.
In 1985
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...
bought Hills Bros. and
MJB coffee companies.
Hills Bros. opened a new roasting plant in
Suffolk, Virginia in 1988. The San Francisco headquarters were closed in 1997, moving operations to
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...
's U.S. headquarters in
Glendale, California.
Nestlé sold Hills Bros. to
Sara Lee in 1999.
Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA
Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group is an Italian coffee company that owns brands such as ''Segafredo'' and ''MJB''. With turnover of around US$1.2 billion per year, it claims to be the biggest private company in the coffee industry.
The group
Today, ...
purchased the brand in 2006. Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA is headquartered at the Suffolk plant. Austin E. Hills was, formerly, chairman of the board of directors.
Thomas Carroll Wilson
*
*
*
*
See also
*
Grgich Hills Estate, winery (business partners: Mike Grgich and Austin Hills)
*
MJB (coffee)
MJB Coffee is an American brand of coffee that is owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA.
History
After the California Gold Rush, San Francisco became a center of coffee importing and roasting in the western United States, spawning such future ...
, a San Francisco-founded brand of coffee
*
Folgers
Folgers Coffee is a brand of ground, instant, and single-use pod coffee produced and sold in the United States, with additional distribution in Asia, Canada and Mexico. It forms part of the food and beverage division of The J.M. Smucker Co ...
, a San Francisco-founded brand of coffee
References
External links
Official websiteHills Bros. Arabian Coffee and Spice Mills, 400 Harrison Street, San Francisco, (1886)photo
*
{{Coffee
Coffee brands
Coffee companies of the United States
Massimo Zanetti brands
Manufacturing companies based in San Francisco
Food and drink companies based in San Francisco
Cuisine of the Western United States
1906 establishments in California
Sara Lee Corporation brands
Drink companies based in California