How Arbuckle’s Ariosa Coffee Sparked a Legal Battle

America has long been a nation of coffee drinkers. Decades before Starbucks introduced Americans to Frappuccinos, another company was dominating the coffee market: Arbuckle Brothers. Born in Pittsburgh in 1839, John Arbuckle, Jr. would revolutionize how Americans purchased and drank coffee with his signature Ariosa Coffee.

Arbuckle’s Big Innovation

In the early 1800s, most Americans bought green coffee beans and roasted them at home. Roasted coffee only lasts a few weeks before the flavor diminishes. Unless a person lived in a city with a coffee roaster, buying green beans was a way to ensure good flavor. Pittsburgh native John Arbuckle, Jr. revolutionized the way Americans purchased coffee. John and his brother Charles started selling coffee under the name “Arbuckle Brothers” in 1865. A few years later in 1868, Arbuckle patented a process for “improvements in roasting coffee.” His secret? Coating roasted coffee with a combination of Irish moss (a plant used as a thickening agent), gelatin, isinglass (a gelatin made from fish bladders), sugar and egg to preserve the flavor. Arbuckle wasn’t the first to experiment with coatings. Others had tried various coatings as preservatives, but Arbuckle was the first to sell coated coffee to consumers on a large scale.

By 1870, Arbuckle was selling his patented coffee around Pittsburgh under the brand name “Ariosa.” A few years later, advertisements for Ariosa Coffee start appearing in newspapers across the country. Arbuckle moved operations to Brooklyn in 1881.

Ariosa Coffee Trade Card Advertising

Before cookbook pamphlets became popular, companies used trading cards to advertise their products. For each new purchase, a consumer received a new card. This encouraged repeat purchases as people tried to collect the entire set of cards. Arbuckle Bros. was one of the early adopters of this form of advertising for their coffee. This is one of the older items in my collection. It is part of a set of 50 cards produced in 1889 that feature fruits and vegetables. The back of each card has information about Ariosa Coffee and recipes. Other Arbuckle sets featured U.S. states, leisure activities, and foreign countries.

Why Advertise Coffee?

Advertising helped companies establish their reputations. In the era before food and drug regulations, scams were common. Unscrupulous vendors mislabeled products, watered down milk, and cut spices with sawdust. Even grocers could be duped. Purchasing a trusted brand was one way that buyers could ensure they were buying a quality product. Many companies touted the purity and quality of their goods.

Coffee and spices were particularly susceptible to adulteration, by being cut with other substances or due to poor quality. In her 1908 household manual Living on a Little, Caroline French Benton advises young housewives, “never use cheap coffee . . . it is horrid, just as bad butter is, or bad tea, or bad eggs.” Going without is better than suffering bad coffee. Getting good coffee was imperative for many American households.

Advertising for Arbuckle Bros. Ariosa Coffee highlighted quality. One ad from 1906 cautioned buyers to “Beware of the Scoop.” As the ad explains “A grocer may recommend a loose coffee at so much a pound . . . . If he handled the coffee himself from tree to you, you might trust him implicit. But he does not!” In other words, who knows where the bulk coffee came from? Arbuckle’s coffee can be trusted because they are experts on coffee, and they guarantee that their packages are full of “genuine” coffee.

The Ohio Food Fight

Ariosa quickly became a popular and trusted brand. Despite assurances of quality, Arbuckle ran afoul of food safety laws in Ohio in 1901. The United States did not enact national food safety laws until 1906, but some states were already taking measures to protect consumers. In February, Ohio State Food Commissioner Joseph E. Blackburn asked a judge for an injunction to prevent Arbuckle’s from selling Ariosa coffee in the state. He argued that Arbuckle’s glaze made the coffee seem better than it was, a violation of Ohio’s pure food law (Fulton County Expositor, Ohio, February 28, 1901). Arbuckle’s countersued, but the U.S. circuit court upheld the injunction, stating that, “the enactment of the statute was a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state” (Marietta Daily Ledger, Ohio, March 30, 1901).

In the wake of the court’s decisions, grocers who continued to sell Ariosa were arrested. Throughout 1901 and 1902, Ohio newspapers carried warnings that the state would prosecute anyone selling Ariosa coffee. Arbuckle countered by offering to defend grocers against any charges.

Legal Battles Over Ariosa Continue

At least one grocer, James White of Toledo, faced criminal charges in the summer of 1901. One of the state witnesses, a chemist named G.A. Kirchmaier, testified that the coffee beans were glazed with a “glutinous substance” that “contained an average of 300 bacteria.” Other unglazed coffees contained no bacteria. It was damning evidence against Arbuckle’s glaze.

Arbuckle Bros. called out a big gun for their defense: Harvey W. Wiley. At the time, Wiley worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was one of the leading proponents of a national pure food act and would become well-known for his work on food safety. Wiley is perhaps best remembered for his “Poison Squad,” a group of young volunteers who served as guinea pigs to help test the safety of food additives. I highly recommend Deborah Blum’s book The Poison Squad if you want to learn more.

According to newspaper accounts, the trial was not Wiley’s finest moment. He provided testimony on the manufacturing process. He argued for the safety and utility of the glaze. In old percolators, people often added eggshells to help the coffee grounds settle out. Wiley contended that the egg coating coagulated during brewing, serving the same purpose. But on cross examination, Wiley had to admit that the egg coating coagulated during manufacturing, and that it served no purpose when brewing. He also agreed that the coating would make a good medium for bacteria (“Glazing of Coffee,” Sandusky Star-Journal, Ohio, July 22, 1901).

Pure Food or Profit Motive?

As economist Clayton Coppin writes, there is some evidence that Arbuckle’s legal trouble in Ohio was less about food purity and more about his feud with sugar king Henry Havemeyer. In 1896, Arbuckle tried to make a deal with Havemeyer, president of the American Sugar Refining Company, to supply Arbuckle Bros. with the vast quantities of sugar it needed to glaze coffee. Unable to cut a deal, Arbuckle decided to open his own sugar refinery. In retaliation, Havemeyer purchased Lion Coffee, sparking a war between the two companies that lasted for several years.

In the spring of 1902, several Ohio newspapers reported that local dealers would start selling Ariosa again, in violation of the state’s ban on the product. Grocers viewed the ban not as a food safety issue, but as part of the ongoing sugar and coffee wars between Arbuckle and Havemeyer. (“Ariosa Coffee Will Be Sold,” Marysville Journal-Tribune, Ohio, May 15, 1902). Whether or not Havemeyer was actually behind the lawsuits was beside the point. If grocers believed the lawsuit was politically motivated, that was enough for them to start carrying Ariosa again.

The Outcome

Ohio’s case against Arbuckle went all the way to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the court dismissed the case in 1903 for lack of jurisdiction (Arbuckle vs. Blackburn). Arbuckle was later cleared of all charges. He continued to promote his coffee as a pure and healthful beverage. Arbuckle died in 1912. His nephew and sisters ran the business after his death. In 1937, Arbuckle Bros. sold their remaining coffee brands, including Ariosa, to General Foods. General Foods eventually discontinued the brand. The latest ads I could find date to 1943. Today, Arbuckles’ (no relation to Arbuckle Bros.) based in Tucson, Arizona, sells their own version of Ariosa coffee that is a recreation of John Arbuckle’s original roast, though how close a recreation is hard to say. The website says nothing about John Arbuckle’s signature bean coating. 

On their website, Arbuckles’ talks about the “legend” of Ariosa and how cowboys drank it on cattle drives. Legend is an appropriate word. While cowboys certainly drank Arbuckle coffee, it has a much more complicated history that includes enslaved peoples in Brazil, Gilded Age tycoons, inventors, chemists, and the everyday Americans that fueled their days by drinking Ariosa. Arbuckle’s food fight in Ohio is one small chapter in one of American’s biggest coffee empires. 

If you’d like to know more about the history of coffee, check out Michelle Craig McDonald’s presentation on her new book Coffee Nation. She talks about the colonial history of coffee and how America became a nation of coffee drinkers.