History of the Coffee Break

Coffee has brought people together for centuries in homes and coffeehouses around the world, but the American ritual of a workday “Coffee Break” didn’t originate until the late 19th century or early 20th century depending on the definition of the phrase.

Stoughton, Wisconsin claims to be the birthplace of the first workday coffee break in the 1880’s when women working in a local tobacco warehouse took mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks in order to go home and check on their children and tend to their chores. Of course, this also meant they were free to have a cup of coffee from the pot that was always hot on the stove.

Two companies in Buffalo, New York were the first to explicitly offer employees coffee or breaks for coffee on company time at the start of the 1900’s. The Larkin Company, a now defunct mail-order house, provided free coffee to its employees as a benefit. The Barcolo Manufacturing Company (now known as Barcalounger) was allegedly a client of Larkin’s and began giving its employees two 15 minute breaks to drink coffee that they provided and prepared themselves.

The ritual spread thanks in part to the invention of the first coffee vending machine in 1946 which became an ever-present part of corporate break rooms across the country. The single cup coffee vending machine was later introduced in 1960 which has evolved into the present day single serve coffee machines.

By the early 1950’s most union contracts included employee coffee breaks, but the United Auto Workers nearly went on strike in 1964 if a 15-minute assembly line shutdown for a coffee break wasn’t included in the new contract.

Despite breaks for coffee becoming a routine part of the workday, the term “coffee break” wasn’t coined until 1952 when a Pan American Coffee Bureau ad campaign encouraged consumers to ”Give yourself a Coffee-Break — and Get What Coffee Gives to You.” Noted psychologist John B. Watson has also been cited for helping make coffee breaks popular while working for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency on the Maxwell House account.

Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_break#cite_note-2
http://www.stoughtonwi.com/coffee.shtml
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/coffeebreak/index.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898199,00.html
http://www.talkaboutcoffee.com/coffee_break.html