Mr. Coffee is a registered trademark of

Newell Brands Newell Brands is an American manufacturer, marketer and distributor of consumer and commercial products. The company's brands and products include Rubbermaid storage and trash containers; home organization and reusable container products; Contig ...

. The Mr. Coffee brand manufactures automatic-drip kitchen

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. S ...

machines, as well as other products. The brand was founded in the early 1970s. Mr. Coffee has often been referenced in popular culture and has been promoted by celebrities such as

Joe DiMaggio Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "The Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yank ...

and Dave Kovack.

History

Vincent Marotta Vincent George Marotta Sr. (February 22, 1924 – August 1, 2015) was an American businessman, investor and philanthropist. He is best known for being the co-creator of Mr. Coffee, one of the first automatic drip coffee makers to be introduced ...

and Samuel Glazer founded a company in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

About Mr. Coffee
at MrCoffee.com focused on coffee delivery called North American Systems (NAS) in the early 1970s. At this time, Marotta had an idea to create an automatic

drip Drip or DRIP may refer to: * Mesomycetozoea, a class of eukaryotes also known as the DRIP clade * Drip gas, natural gas condensate * Drip irrigation, in agriculture and gardening * Dripping liquid * Drip email (campaign), the process of automati ...

coffeemaker. Marotta and Glazer hired two former Westinghouse engineers, Edmund Abel and Edwin Schulze, to engineer the idea.NAS hires engineers
at TheGreatWorkPlace.com In 1972, the Mr. Coffee brand drip coffeemaker was made available for home use.Mr. Coffee History
at MrCoffee.com Prior to this machine, coffee was primarily made in a

percolator A coffee percolator is a type of pot used for the brewing of coffee by continually cycling the boiling or nearly boiling brew through the Coffee preparation#Grinding, grounds using gravity until the required strength is reached. Coffee percolat ...

which often gave it a bitter and burned flavor. The new Mr. Coffee machine produced a much more uniform

brewing Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and #Fermenting, fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with Yeast#Beer, yeast. It may be done in a brewery ...

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied o ...

which resulted in a much better flavor. Unlike later models, this original offering, with its distinctive yellow and white gingham decal, used gravity to immediately pull water through a heating section and allowed to drip freely into carafe below. Later units used

thermosyphon Thermosiphon (or thermosyphon) is a method of passive heat exchange, based on natural convection, which circulates a fluid without the necessity of a mechanical pump. Thermosiphoning is used for circulation of liquids and volatile gases in heat ...

s (similar to the principle operating

geysers A geyser (, ) is a spring characterized by an intermittent discharge of water ejected turbulently and accompanied by steam. As a fairly rare phenomenon, the formation of geysers is due to particular hydrogeological conditions that exist only in ...

) to carry water up from a reservoir as it reached boiling point in the lift tube, identical to the percolator principle but without the endless recirculation and reheating of the coffee. In 1973, Marotta convinced former professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

player

to become an advertising spokesman for the brand. This coffee maker sold more than one million units by April 1974. A succession of products from 1992 to 1995 — the Potato Perfect, the Mr. Coffee Juicer, Food Dehydrator by Mr. Coffee, Breadmaker by Mr. Coffee, and Mrs. Tea Hot Tea Maker — contributed about one-third of Mr. Coffee's total annual sales of $174 million by 1995. The device variation for

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northe ...

called Mrs. Tea differed from the Mr. Coffee branded appliance only in detail as the company claims the drip process works equally well for tea as for coffee,Mrs. Tea Introduction
at MrCoffee.com although the result is often a darker,

samovar A samovar (russian: самовар, , literally "self-brewer") is a metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water. Although originating in Russia, the samovar is well known outside of Russia and has spread through Russian culture t ...

type of tea. In the 1980s, Mr. Coffee endured a

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loan ...

and two significant changes in ownership before being acquired by Health O Meter Products, Inc. (eventually known as Signature Brands USA) in 1994.Detailed Company History
at answers.com In 1998 Sunbeam Corporation (eventually known as American Household, Inc.) purchased Signature Brands. In January 2005, Jarden acquired American Household, Inc.Jarden acquisitions
at JardenCS.com

Since 2009

Recently, the Mr. Coffee product development team altered how their drip coffee maker works with a method dubbed "Optimal Brew". The coffee maker does not use the previously mentioned traditional method of routing the water over a heating coil under the warming plate. Instead, a small flash boiling chamber flash heats the water to deliver the water to the beans within a temperature range of 195–200 °F. Heating the water this way allows 10 cups to be brewed in generally less than eight minutes, depending on the barometric pressure.Blogger reviews Optimal Brew
/ref> Once brewed the coffee stays warm in a

thermal A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...

carafe without requiring a heating plate which could potentially burn the coffee. This coffee maker, engineered and designed by TEAMS Design USA and the Jarden team, won a Red Star Award in 2010 and an Appliance Magazine EID Award in 2011. Bunn-O-Matic brand paved the way for the proliferation of brands seen today, from Mr. Coffee, Cuisinart, OXO, Hamilton Beach, Black and Decker (all of which are now made in China).

2012 recall

In 2012, more than 600,000 Mr. Coffee Single Cup Brewing System models were voluntarily recalled in the United States and Canada. A malfunction caused the machines to build up steam and potentially spew water and grounds out of the brewing chamber. There was a 164 reports of the malfunction made, among which there were 61 injuries including facial and hand burns.

Popular culture

The Mr. Coffee name is mentioned in

The Bloodhound Gang The Bloodhound Gang was an American rap rock band from Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1988 by rappers Jimmy Pop and Daddy Long Legs (now in Wolfpac) as a hip hop music, hip-hop group, before branching out into other genres as thei ...

's song "

The Bad Touch "The Bad Touch" is a song by American alternative rock band Bloodhound Gang. It was released in September 1999 as the second single from their third studio album, ''Hooray for Boobies'', which was released the following year in the United States ...

", in the full version of the ''

Cheers ''Cheers'' is an American sitcom television series that ran on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993, with a total of 275 half-hour episodes across 11 seasons. The show was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions in association w ...

'' theme song, the Marah song "Christian St." and in the title of

Raymond Carver Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s. Early life Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mi ...

's short story "Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit." Mr. Coffee is mentioned in the American TV sitcom ''

Seinfeld ''Seinfeld'' ( ) is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, over nine seasons and List of Seinfeld episodes, 180 episodes. It stars Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld ( ...

'' () In ''Hoyle Card Games 2011'', Rhett said "That's worse than Mr. Coffee".Download Hoyle Card Games 2011
A Mr. Coffee branded appliance appears in a scene in the 1995 feature film ''

Apollo 13 Apollo 13 (April 1117, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted aft ...

''; a number of critics pointed out that this was inaccurate as the film's story occurred in 1970 and the Mr. Coffee appliance was not introduced until 1972. It also featured in a nostalgic discussion between the two main characters of the 2017 novel ''Entertaining Welsey Shaw''. There have been several parodies in popular media, such as in the ''Back to the Future'' trilogy as

Mr. Fusion In the ''Back to the Future'' franchise, the DeLorean time machine is a time travel device made by retrofitting a DMC DeLorean vehicle with a flux capacitor. The car requires 1.21 gigawatts ("jigawatts/jigowatts") of power and needs to travel 8 ...

(which was actually made for the movie from a

Krups Krups is a German kitchen appliance manufacturer. It is part of the Groupe SEB. It is named after its founder, Robert Krups. Wednesday, 02 December 2020 The company produces a large variety of household appliances such as coffee makers, toa ...

coffee grinder), and in ''

Spaceballs ''Spaceballs'' is a 1987 American space opera parody film co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks. It is primarily a parody of the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy, but also parodies other sci-fi films and popular franchises including ...

'' as Mr. Radar, Mr. Rental, and Mr. Coffee itself. In the ''

Futurama ''Futurama'' is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of the professional slacker Philip J. Fry, who is cryogenically preserved for 1000 years a ...

'' movie ''

The Beast with a Billion Backs ''Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs'' is a 2008 American direct-to-video adult animated science-fiction comedy- adventure film based on the animated series '' Futurama'', and the second of four straight-to-DVD films that make up the show's ...

'', one character can be seen using a Mr. Wino machine to make

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

directly from grapes.

References

External links