Coffee and Technology Have Come a Long Way Together
Through the hard times and the good, I have to praise them as I should. *
Do you ever wonder when someone invented something cool to solve those niggling every day needs? Think, for a moment, about coffee and its transformation from Camp chicory essence and Nescafe instant coffee granules.
What happened to coffee also happened to all the paraphernalia that accompanies the ritual of making and drinking that perfect cup of joe.
Although coffee shops have existed for centuries, they didn’t really catch on for all social classes until Starbucks opened theirs and they spread from the USA to the UK and Europe.
In 1998, most of us were still boiling the kettle and pouring the water over soluble granules of coffee extracted from beans.
Now compare those to a scrumptious roasted, freshly ground, and brewed shot of java. Espresso, cappuccino, latte, Americano. The list goes on. And mocha, my favourite. Before real coffee caught on, I made do with an instant coffee and hot chocolate combination.
The quality and variety of manual and digital coffee makers is incredible. Our demands for coffee have changed astronomically over the last twenty-two years!
A brief history
In the 1920s, Brazilian bankers asked Nestle for a solution to their surplus coffee bean problem.
Brazilian bankers asked Nestlé to help find a way to increase coffee consumption and decrease the enormous surplus of coffee production in Brazil.
Nestle invented freeze-dried coffee in 1938. But it didn’t see popularity in the US until 1956 when commercial television hit viewers' homes. Folks in the UK were still brewing a pot of tea before and after public service TV programmes in 1936, but they beat the US to commercial TV with ITV in September 1955.
Instant coffee took off in the US when commercials appeared. The breaks were too short to brew a cuppa, so they switched to instant coffee. Nestle and General Foods took full advantage of this and advertised their instant coffee during the commercial breaks!
In 1946, Achilles Gaggia introduced his first espresso machine. This gorgeous model found at a bar in a small village in Eritrea, Italy.
Britain benefitted from Gaggia’s revolutionary machine in the 1950s when he opened a mocha bar in London.
Starbucks first appeared in the UK in 1998. But really took off in the naughties. The British, in true competitive spirit, came up with their version. Costa Coffee.
Much like Starbucks, Costa Coffee started as a wholesaler of beans and branched out into coffee shops all over Europe.
Today’s Big Coffee
Big coffee corporations also create, manufacture, and sell their own branded accessories. I own two Starbucks flasks and a winter colour-change cup. How about you?
Let’s look at how far Nescafe and technology have come together. They realised in the late 90s that coffee was very much in the public eye. People walking down the street carrying their Starbucks or Costa Coffee cup advertising their and their favourite coffee shop’s ingenuity.
By 2006 Nescafe had their own marriage with technology in the form of the Dulce Gusto coffee machine with its accompanying space age pods. For home use.
And catering for office kitchens.
So now you know when instant coffee was invented. How it became so popular. And what technology we used in the past and use now to make delicious coffee of all types in cafes and in our homes.
Technology and coffee have indeed come a long way together. We should praise this amazing marriage. I know I do.
*Subtitle lyrics from Praise You by Fatboy Slim.
© 2021 Karen Madej. All rights reserved.
Karen Madej is a freelance writer. She writes for NewsBreak, Medium, and Vocal. Her weekly editorial reviews of new writers and star reads for ILLUMINATION’S-MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters and Technology Hits are regularly chosen for further distribution.