Mr. Coffee

Mr. Coffee is a registered trademark of Newell Brands. The Mr. Coffee brand manufactures automatic-drip kitchen coffee 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.

Mr. Coffee
Subsidiary
Founded1970 (1970) in Cleveland, Ohio U.S. [1]
FounderSamuel Glazer
Vincent Marotta
Headquarters
Cleveland, Ohio
,
United States
Productscoffee makers, espresso makers, iced tea makers
ParentNewell Brands
Websitemrcoffee.com

History

Vincent Marotta and Samuel Glazer founded a company in Cleveland, Ohio[2] focused on coffee delivery called North American Systems (NAS) in the early 1970s.[3] At this time, Marotta had an idea to create an automatic drip coffeemaker. Marotta and Glazer hired two former Westinghouse engineers, Edmund Abel and Edwin Schulze, to engineer the idea.[4][5] In 1972, the Mr. Coffee brand drip coffeemaker was made available for home use.[6] Prior to this machine, coffee was primarily made in a percolator which often gave it a bitter and burned flavor. The new Mr. Coffee machine produced a much more uniform brewing temperature 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 thermosyphons (similar to the principle operating geysers) 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 player Joe DiMaggio[7] 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 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,[8] although the result is often a darker, samovar type of tea.

In the 1980s, Mr. Coffee endured a leveraged buyout and two significant changes in ownership before being acquired by Health O Meter Products, Inc. (eventually known as Signature Brands USA) in 1994.[9] In 1998 Sunbeam Corporation (eventually known as American Household, Inc.) purchased Signature Brands. In January 2005, Jarden acquired American Household, Inc.[10]

Mr. Coffee today

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 invented by Marotta, Abel, and Schulze. 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.[11] Heating the water this way allows 10 cups to be brewed in generally less than eight minutes, depending on the barometric pressure.[12] Once brewed the coffee stays warm in a thermal 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[13] in 2010 and an Appliance Magazine EID Award[14] in 2011.

More recently, Mr. Coffee has licensed the Keurig K-cup technology[15] to introduce a line of single serve hot beverage machines. Also recently introduced, the Mr. Coffee Cafe Latte brews coffee as well as whips in steamed milk in one step.[16]

Recall

In 2012, more than 600,000 coffeemakers, Chinese-made Mr. Coffee Single Cup Brewing System models, were voluntarily recalled in the United States and Canada. A brewing malfunction could release steaming water and grounds. More than 61 injuries, including facial and hand burns, were reported.[17]

The Mr. Coffee name is well known in American popular culture. It is mentioned in The Bloodhound Gang's song "The Bad Touch", in the full version of the Cheers theme song, the Marah song "Christian St." and in the title of Raymond Carver's short story "Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit." Mr. Coffee is mentioned in the American TV sitcom Seinfeld ("The Maestro". Seinfeld. Season 7. Episode 3. 5 October 1995. NBC.) In Hoyle Card Games 2011, Rhett said "That's worse than Mr. Coffee".[18]

A Mr. Coffee branded appliance appears in a scene in the 1995 feature film Apollo 13; 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.[19] 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 which demonstrates how well known the brand name (and its product) is. It has been parodied in the Back to the Future trilogy as Mr. Fusion (which was actually made for the movie from a Krups coffee grinder), and in Spaceballs as Mr. Radar, Mr. Rental and Mr. Coffee itself. In the Futurama movie The Beast with a Billion Backs, one character can be seen using a Mr. Wino machine to make wine directly from grapes.

References
  1. "Here’s to Mr. Coffee, Known to Some as Sam", The New York Times, March 21, 2012
  2. About Mr. Coffee Archived 2011-09-24 at the Wayback Machine at MrCoffee.com
  3. "Replacement Carafe Net: History of Mr. Coffee Coffeemakers". replacementcarafe.net.
  4. NAS hires engineers at TheGreatWorkPlace.com
  5. "North American Systems, Inc". The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Case Western Reserve University. 20 June 1997. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  6. Mr. Coffee History Archived 2011-10-17 at the Wayback Machine at MrCoffee.com
  7. "Mr. Coffee and Joltin' Joe DiMaggio". NPR.org. 29 October 2005. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
  8. Mrs. Tea Introduction Archived 2011-10-17 at the Wayback Machine at MrCoffee.com
  9. Detailed Company History at answers.com
  10. Jarden acquisitions at JardenCS.com
  11. "How to Brew Coffee". www.ncausa.org.
  12. Blogger reviews Optimal Brew
  13. "2010 Red Star Design Award". Archived from the original on 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2011-09-06.
  14. "Assembly Magazine | Manufacturing automation and design". www.assemblymag.com.
  15. "Mr. Coffee licenses Keurig K-Cup technology". Archived from the original on September 24, 2011.
  16. Introducing Mr. Coffee Cafe Latte Archived 2011-10-10 at the Wayback Machine
  17. Barnett, Jim. "Voluntary recall of 600,000 coffeemakers due to burn risk". CNN. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  18. Download Hoyle Card Games 2011 Archived 2011-09-01 at the Wayback Machine
  19. "Goofs for Apollo 13". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 15 August 2015.

Further reading
  • Shrum, Rebecca K. (2012). "Selling Mr. Coffee: Design, Gender, and the Branding of a Kitchen Appliance". Winterthur Portfolio. University of Chicago Press. 46 (4): 271–298. JSTOR 10.1086/669669.
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