Coffee Corner - The Early Era of OCS

We’ve come a long way in our industry.  For those of us who are getting long in the tooth, witnessing the evolution of Office Coffee Service has been impressive, not only from an offerings point of view, but also technologically.  While doing some cleanup in my office recently, I came across a brochure from an old OCS provider in Montreal known at the time as Executive Coffee.  The brochure dated back to the 70s when OCS was still in its formative years and extolled the virtues of maintaining a happy, productive work force (some things do not change!).  Beyond the 1970s styling, they worked hard on educating their prospective customers on what an OCS was with emphasis on free equipment, delivery and quality coffee.  Today’s OCS customers are savvier, having the benefit of being exposed to our industry for almost 60 years.  They come to expect what we have built as table stakes and some, even beyond.  For those of us who were not part of the industry “back in the day” here is a partial exposé of what the world was like during the early era of OCS.

The brewing equipment used in OCS was dominated by a few companies that aggressively competed against each other for dominance.  Bloomfield, Bunn, Corey & Diplomat; all had equipment designed for the office which typically were 120V pour-over machines.  Compared to contemporary equipment, these were easy to install, easy to fix (no boards!) and were relatively inexpensive.  It was not uncommon for sales reps to have a few brewers in the trunks of their cars, along with cases of coffee so that they could make the sales pitch, sign the customer up, install and deliver the first order all in the same visit.  Of the various types of equipment used in the early days, Diplomat pioneered the 310 filter, a response to the cost of coffee going up to over $3.40/lb. green in the mid-70s (in 1970s dollars – this would be the equivalent of about $16.00/lb. USD on the ICE today!).  As coffee prices reached these astronomical peaks, the weights per bag dropped, some as low as 0.9 oz for a 64 oz. pot.  The solution was to make the brew basket narrower so that the coffee bed in the bottom of the basket would not be so shallow with an eye to get a better tasting cup than a 450 filter basket (the typical brew basket filter used today).  While the attempt was valiant the results fell flat; silk purses could not be coaxed out of 0.9 oz sow ears.

The idea of thermal servers had not caught on yet with OCS operators, thus all services operated with glass bowls.  Inexpensive, but highly fragile, the glass bowl was the mainstay of all services and often were printed with the OCS’s name.  Those that remain have become collectors’ items as most rarely survived more than 6 months before breaking.

The coffee itself was sold in a kit, designed to provide all the necessities for the office employees.  Typically, the kits were packed in cases of 42 bags with a creamer canister, sugar shaker, filters, and stir sticks all in the same box (some services provided these items separately to cut down on waste, but they were still “free”).  The idea of a 42-count box was promoted two ways; a typical month represents 21 working days so each case would provide for 2 pots of coffee per day for the month.  The second was that coffee cups were a lot smaller than what we are currently used to, with a 64 oz bowl producing 12 cups of coffee.  This would mean that a kit of coffee would yield about 500 cups making it easier for the sales rep to point out that a case costing $50.00 would represent only 10 cents per cup; a bargain compared what you’d pay in a restaurant, even in the 70s.

While we have come a long way (bean-to-cup, micro markets, etc.) the essence of our industry remains the same; we are Service based (perhaps we should write it as ocS).  There will be more evolution, more technological gains and our offerings will change to reflect demand, whatever that may be.