Respectfully inform their friends and the publick, that they have for sale, at their Shop, No. 44 Cornhill, formerly the Post-Office.
A GENERAL ASSORTMENT OF GROCERIES
among which are the following articles: Teas, Spices, Coffee, Cotton, Indigo, Starch, Chocolate, Raisins, Figs, Almonds, and Olives; West India Rum, best French Brandy, excellent Cherry Wine, pure as imported, etc., etc., all which they will sell as low as any store in Boston.
Any article not liked will be taken again, and the money returned.
It appears that the first advertisement dealing with coffee alone was published in the New York Daily Advertiser for February 9, 1790; and this was primarily an advertisement of a wholesale coffee roasting factory rather than an advertisement of coffee per se.
This advertisement, and a later one published in Loudon's New York Packet for January 1, 1791, also of a coffee manufactory, are reproduced herewith.
Not until package coffee began to come into vogue in the sixties was there any change in the stereotyped business-card form followed by all dealers in coffee. And even then the monotony was varied only by inserting the brand name, such as "Osborn's Celebrated Prepared Java Coffee. Put up only by Lewis A. Osborn"; "Government coffee in tin foil pound papers put out by Taber & Place's Rubia Mills."
Evolution of Coffee Advertising
Real progress in coffee advertising, as in publicity for other lines of trade and industry, began in the United States. Here too, it has been brought to its lowest degradation and to its highest efficiency. The entire process has taken something less than fifty years.