Coffee brands today
40% of the coffee production all over the world is cornered by the four major giants – Nestle, Kraft Foods, Proctor & Gamble and Sara Lee. With the recent falling prices and the coffee production glut all over, these big four seem to be sitting pretty. The four are the major coffee roasters and they have coffee brands that go to all the corners of the globe. If you were to add the German giant Tchibo, that would account for more than half the world’s coffee. When you look at how high the profit margins are, it’s no small wonder that these giants make so much out of coffee.
Nestle has one of the world’s largest selling instant coffee brands - Nescafe. For many years, this brand sold in Europe and the US, then it introduced another brand into the market called Taster’s Choice. Today, it is sold as one brand known as Nescafe Taster’s Choice.
Another popular brand is Maxwell House. This is a product of Kraft Foods and is named after the Maxwell House Hotel, Nashville, Tennessee. It was America’s largest selling coffee brand until very recently when Folgers overtook it to become No.1. Folgers comes from the Proctor & Gamble stable. It was founded by the Folger family in California in the last century and grew to become huge till Proctor & Gamble took it over in the 60s.
The other big coffee brand is Dunkin' which has a distribution deal with Proctor & Gamble. Soon, there will be Dunkin’ packs sold through 40,000 retail stores all across the nation.
As far as coffee shops go, there’s nothing to come close to Starbucks. Somehow this was the one big step to bring coffee out of the home and into the streets in America. Suddenly coffee drinking became the thing to do. Today, all that and more is symbolized by the Starbucks cup. What this coffee chain did was to spread the coffee drinking habit far and wide, even bringing youngsters into their fold. Most of them stayed loyal for life. The coffee shop became their own special place, a space where they could be themselves, be with friends. The name came from the character who was the first mate in Moby Dick. Today the number of Starbucks stores number close to 14,000 all over the world. From coffee, the company has diversified into music, books and films.
Then comes New World Coffee-Manhattan Bagel Inc. which wants to establish its bagel-and-coffee shops all across the country.
There are a great many more brands spread all over the world, making the spread of coffee even more possible.