The important part played by the coffee houses of colonial America, beginning with the establishment of the London coffee house in Boston, in 1689, the King's Arms in New York in 1696, and Ye coffee house in Philadelphia in 1700, has been related.
"Females" of ye olde Boston, staging in 1777 a "coffee party" which rivaled in a small way the famous Tea Party in 1773, personally chastised a profiteer hoarder of foodstuffs, and confiscated some of his stock, according to a letter from Abigail Adams to her distinguished husband, later second president of the United States.
Writing at Boston, under date of July 31, 1777, Abigail wrote to John, then attending the Continental Congress at Philadelphia:
There is a great scarcity of sugar and coffee, articles which the female part of the state is very loath to give up, especially whilst they consider the great scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted a large quantity. It is rumored that an eminent stingy merchant, who is a bachelor, had a hogshead of coffee in his store, which he refused to sell under 6 shillings per pound.
A number of females—some say a hundred, some say more—assembled with a cart and trunk, marched down to the warehouse, and demanded the keys.
Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys, and they then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put it into a trunk, and drove off. A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction.
In 1783–84 the Congress of the United States considered the imposition of a duty on "seven classes of goods consumed by the rich or in general use; liquors, sugars, teas, coffees, cocoa, molasses and pepper; the tax to be determined by the yearly imports."
At that time there was being imported twelve times as much Bohea tea as of all others, but tea consumption was only one-twelfth pound per capita. Total tea imports were 325,000 pounds. "Low as was the importation of tea", says John Bach McMaster, "that of coffee was lower still by a third. Indeed, it was scarcely used outside of the great cities." The average annual coffee imports at that period were 200.000 pounds.
Governor Bowdoin of Massachusetts introduced chicory into the United States in 1785.