Eight O'Clock Coffee

Eight O'Clock Coffee is an American brand of coffee products currently manufactured by the Eight O'Clock Coffee Company, a subsidiary of Tata Consumer Products, which is headquartered in Mumbai, India; its coffee production plant is in Landover, Maryland. Tata Global Beverages has owned Eight O'Clock Coffee since 2006.

Eight O'Clock Coffee was created by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (later A&P) in 1859, in the latter company's founding year. Despite selling off the brand in 2003, A&P continued to sell Eight O'Clock Coffee in its family of stores until the supermarkets closed in late 2015. Eight O'Clock is also sold in other supermarkets across the country.

History

A&P was established as "Gilman & Company" in 1859, and began selling bags of whole bean coffee on their own. Their coffee, however, was not given a true official name at that time, being sometimes called "Eight O'Clock Breakfast Coffee" at the start.

In 1919, in contrast with the introduction of two other coffee lines, Bokar and Red Circle, the coffee was finally given its official name; A&P supposedly conducted a survey asking people what time of day they drank coffee most. The majority of those surveyed reported that they typically drank coffee at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. A&P then went ahead and took out the word "Breakfast" from the name, rebranding its signature coffee as simply "Eight O'Clock".

8 O’clock (as the name was nearly universally referred to by A&P in its newspaper advertising and on the product packaging until the late 1920s) was positioned as the lowest priced of A&P’s “Coffee Trio”, with Red Circle positioned as the mid-tier offering and Bokar as the premium A&P coffee. In 1926 at the Sesquicentennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Eight O’Clock coffee received a Gold Medal, distinguishing it from many other competing offerings at the time. This resulted in a shift in advertising emphasis (but not price point relative to Red Circle or Bokar) from Red Circle and Bokar to Eight O’Clock and the first major redesign in packaging. The new 1927-1933 packaging spelt out the numeral ‘Eight’ and prominently displayed a reproduction of the Sesquicentennial Award Medal on the package front.

In the 1930s, Eight O'Clock coffee had gained over a quarter of the U.S. market share. By 1930, it was the most popular brand of coffee in the United States. In the Autumn of 1933, A&P redesigned the product packaging to reflect more Art Deco style in vogue at the time. These changes included the introduction of the distinctive font used on the packaging for nearly 70 years as well as the simultaneous deployment in stores of similarly styled coffee mills (the Hobart 3240 as shown on the counter in the 1933 interior photo ) to support the repackaging effort.

A&P, however, began to decline in the late 1950s. The death of George L. and John A. Hartford, the last two surviving children of George H. Hartford who shepherded the A&P to prominence, marked a major change in direction for A&P and its captive coffee brands. With no capable successor, the next two decades were marked by contraction including closing stores and leaving some mass U.S. markets in the process.

In 1979, the company licensed its branding division, Compass Foods, Inc., to sell Eight O'Clock Coffee to other retailers including competing supermarket chains; among them is Pathmark, a supermarket that broke away from the ShopRite retailers' cooperative in 1960s, which A&P acquired in 2007.

In 2003, A&P spun off the Eight O'Clock Coffee brand to Gryphon Investors, a private equity firm based in San Francisco, California, which used the brand to create the Eight O'Clock Coffee Company. A few weeks later, Eight O'Clock's ground coffee line was introduced. Gryphon Investors would soon sell Eight O'Clock Coffee Company to Tata Global Beverages in 2006.

In 2009, Consumer Reports rated Eight O'Clock Coffee's 100 percent Colombian brew as the "best buy" for ground brews, beating well-known brands, such as Folgers, Maxwell House and Starbucks.

On August 8, 2013, the entire Eight O'Clock Coffee line was revamped with new packaging and new flavors.

Also, the Eight o Clock coffee brand produced an instant coffee, though this seems to have been only sold at A&P family stores and thus has been retired with the closing of the chain in 2015.

Coffee products

Until 2003, Eight O'Clock Coffee only came in original whole bean. Packaged in an all-red bag, the coffee could be completely custom ground to the customer's order but only at A&P-owned stores (before they closed), or some competing supermarkets.

The 2003 Lineup

From 2003 until August 8, 2013, Eight O'Clock Coffee line included eleven variants, including decaffeinated and flavored, all in bags, both whole bean and ground. Originally in all-color bags, the packaging was changed in 2010 to white bags with color coding.

The 2003 coffee line, which was refreshed in 2010, was as follows:

* Original
* Decaf Original
* 100% Colombian
* Decaf 100% Colombian
* Bokar (Discontinued in 2012)
* French Roast
* Dark Italian Roast
* 50% Decaf
* Hazelnut
* French Vanilla
* Mocha

The 2013 Lineup

The current flavor line up, which was introduced on August 8, 2013, and split up into three "categories", is as follows:

Beginnings

* The Original – Whole Bean, Ground and K-Cup
* Dark Italian Espresso – Ground
* Dark Italian Roast – Whole Bean and K-Cup
* French Roast – Whole Bean and Ground
* The Original Decaf – Whole Bean, Ground and K-Cup
* 50% Decaf – Whole Bean and Ground

Explorations

* Colombian Peaks – Whole Bean, Ground and K-Cup
* Central Highlands – Whole Bean
* African Plains – Ground

Expressions

* Hazelnut – Whole Bean, Ground and K-Cup
* French Vanilla – Whole Bean and Ground
* Caramel Macchiato – Ground
* Chocolate Mint – Ground
* Dark Chocolate Cherry (Seasonal) – Ground
* Cinnamon Bun (Seasonal) – Ground

All 2013 flavors are packaged in identical red bags, which made a throwback to Eight O'Clock's pre-2003 years.

References

External links

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{{The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company

Drink companies of the United States
Coffee brands
Products introduced in 1919
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company
Food and drink companies based in Maryland
Food and drink companies based in New Jersey
Tata Consumer Products