H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. est. 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

San Antonio coffee firm that purchased Hoffmann-Hayman in 1962. 1972 appears in internal notes as a late boundary date — but this is the year G. P. Menger sold the 601 Delaware Street real estate (not the brand operations); Continental had absorbed the brand business a decade earlier.

The 1962 acquisition date comes from the T. J. Menger obituary (San Antonio Express-News, 1 Apr 1987), which states T. J. Menger stayed with H&H until 1962, when Continental purchased the firm.

Acquisition terms (family papers — mixed reliability)

Nancy Draves, paraphrasing G. P. Menger’s notes (2015):

  • December 1962 asset sale to Continental — business sold with everything inside the plant
  • Continental agreed to lease the 601 Delaware building for 10 years
  • G. P. later estimated proceeds from a subsequent building sale to Continental (actual real-estate transfer documented August 1972 — see 601 Delaware Street)
  • Continental retained workforce, H&H trade name, and brand portfolio per Nancy Draves’s reconstruction; Albert G. Menger (“Sonny”) may have remained president into the Continental era (obituary cited by Nancy Draves, not yet located in KB)

Post-sale retail packaging (1970)

Chris M. Jasso, in a 29 June 1970 letter to G. P. Menger (paraphrased by Nancy Draves): Continental-era H&H coffee cans on grocery shelves — gold body, tall format, white plastic lid; generic stock label (white oval, red type) “not very pretty”; priced 10¢ above national brands; two Spanish words misspelled on bilingual contents panel.

Roasting equipment disposition (1971)

Four Jabez Burns Jubilee roasters — old when H&H installed them ~1940s per Jasso — were sold by Continental to Ernesto Gonzales of Monterrey and removed from 601 Delaware. Jasso and retired roaster Lupe Valdez commissioned them in Mexico. Full account: 1971 — Burns Jubilee roasters sold to Monterrey.

Continental at 601 Delaware — documented 1962–1972

Two classified employment ads place Continental Coffee Company at 601 Delaware Street (the former H&H plant) in the early 1970s:

Continental’s use of the plant ran from the 1962 acquisition to August 1972 — a ten-year operational tenancy, with H-H Warehouse Company retaining ownership throughout.

The 1972 departure (resolved 2026-07-20)

Three instruments in the deed record date Continental’s exit precisely:

  • 3 April 1967 — H-H Warehouse executed an “Agreement for Use of Industry Track by a Third Party” allowing Continental to use the rail spur, reflecting Continental’s operating tenancy while H-H Warehouse held the property.
  • 25 August 1972 — Continental transferred its spur use rights back to H-H Warehouse. Green coffee arrived by rail; a roaster does not relinquish its siding while still roasting. This is the positive marker of Continental’s departure.
  • 29 August 1972 — H-H Warehouse conveyed the property to Kenneth L. and Enid S. Wagner (Vol. 6887, Pg. 658), four days later.

Corroborating:

  • Continental sold the four Burns Jubilee roasters to Monterrey in 1971 (above). The plant’s roasting capacity was gone a year before the building changed hands.
  • The Texas corporate vehicle was renamed Continental Coffee Company of Colorado by October 1971 (below) — the entity stopped carrying a Texas name before the departure.
  • City directories: Continental’s only listing at the address is 1970. The next sampled directory, 1975, lists B&W Service Co. There is no Continental listing at 601 Delaware after 1970.

Full chain of title: 601 Delaware — Acquisition History (sibling repo).

The March 1975 step-van classified is not Continental

A San Antonio Express classified of 4 March 1975 offers used step-vans — a 1955 International ($550) and three Chevrolets ($1,000 each) — “priced for quick sale,” directing buyers to “SEE AT 601 Delaware St.”

This ad names no company. It was previously filed here as evidence of Continental operating at the plant through 1975; that attribution rested on the address alone and is withdrawn. By March 1975 the building had been Wagner’s for two and a half years, and city directories place B&W Service Co. (toys wholesale) in it from 1975 to 1992. Wagner’s World Toy House display ad ran from the same address two days later, on 6 March 1975. Four aging delivery vans are a wholesale distributor’s fleet.

The classified belongs to the Wagner/B&W era: 1975 — 601 Delaware as B&W toy warehouse. Source: San Antonio Express classified — vehicles at 601 Delaware, 4 Mar 1975.

Continental Coffee of Chicago — confirmed parent

The buyer was the Chicago-based Continental Coffee Company, confirmed by the 2 April 1987 San Antonio Express-News feature article on Theodore J. Menger (HH-CLIP-1987-0002):

“He remained there until 1962, when the company was sold to Continental Coffee of Chicago. He retired at that time.”

This settles the prior open question of whether the San Antonio “Continental” was a local firm or the Chicago Continental Coffee Company (major national foodservice coffee distributor). It was the Chicago firm. The lineage therefore runs:

Hoffmann-Hayman (San Antonio, 1912–1962) → Continental Coffee (Chicago, parent) → operations at 601 Delaware through August 1972

Texas corporate vehicle — SOS filing chain (checked 2026-06-14)

The Texas SOS corporate registry (SOSDirect, queried 2026-06-14 — see 2026-06-14-tx-sos-hoffmann-hayman-corporate-registry) shows the Texas entity through which the Chicago parent held the acquired business. Filing #18865100 was incorporated Nov 29, 1962 as Country Coffee Company, renamed:

  • The Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company — Dec 11, 1962
  • Continental Coffee Company of Texas — by Sep 24, 1965
  • Continental Coffee Company, Inc. — by Oct 2, 1967
  • Continental Coffee Company of Colorado — by Oct 26, 1971
  • Forfeited existence — 1981

Two things this corroborates:

  1. The “December 1962 asset sale” in Nancy Draves’s family-papers notes is independently confirmed by the SOS record: the name hand-off from the old 1912 charter (#2408300, renamed Menger-Holliday) to this new entity is dated December 11, 1962 — upgrading that mixed-reliability claim. See Hoffmann-Hayman § Corporate registry.
  2. The Texas vehicle was renamed “Continental Coffee Company of Colorado” by October 26, 1971 — the Texas entity stopped carrying a Texas name a year before the 601 Delaware departure, consistent with the San Antonio operation winding down while the parent continued elsewhere. Also a possible thread toward the later corporate consolidation history below.

Continental → Sysco — resolved (2026-07-21)

Confirmed via Wikipedia, “CFS Continental” (wikipedia-cfs-continental, corroborated by FundingUniverse’s Sysco corporate history): the Chicago Continental Coffee Company that acquired H&H in 1962 is the same lineage Sysco later absorbed — though the timeline is 1988, not the “1990s” the prior lore guessed:

  • 1915 — founded in Chicago by Jacob Cohn (1894–1968), a 19-year-old Lithuanian immigrant selling coffee by horse and wagon (not Joseph Eisendrath — see correction below).
  • By 1967 — led by Cohn’s sons, brothers Alvin Cohn (1921–1994) and Robert Cohn, who expanded via acquisition of regional wholesale grocery firms.
  • 1970 — went public as Continental Coffee Company.
  • 1973 — renamed CFS Continental, Inc., reflecting the shift toward foodservice distribution beyond coffee alone.
  • 1985 — CFS Continental (by then $1.6B annual sales) sold to A.E. Staley for $360M; Staley renamed itself Staley Continental.
  • 1988 — Tate & Lyle bought A.E. Staley/Staley Continental for $1.42B, and pre-sold CFS Continental to Sysco Corporation for $360M (FundingUniverse states $750M as the deal’s total value — likely including assumed facilities/debt rather than cash price; the discrepancy is unresolved but doesn’t affect the identity finding). The Sysco deal included Continental Coffee, Fresh Start Bakeries, and Interstate Foods Group.

Net: yes — the firm that bought H&H’s assets in December 1962 is the same corporate lineage that ended up inside Sysco in 1988, twenty-six years later and three ownership changes removed (Continental → CFS Continental → Staley Continental → Sysco). Whether any H&H-specific brand or distribution asset survived that many changes of hands to reach Sysco is a separate, likely unanswerable question — the 1962 sale was of the business, and by August 1972 (when Continental’s own San Antonio tenancy at 601 Delaware ended — see § The 1972 departure, below) the H&H trade name’s fate in the wider Continental product line is still undocumented.

Correction: Continental’s founder was Jacob Cohn, not Joseph Eisendrath

This page and events/1962-continental-acquisition.md previously stated Continental was “founded 1915 by Joseph Eisendrath” — an uncorroborated claim with no traceable source in this KB. The Wikipedia/FundingUniverse research pass found no record of an Eisendrath founding role; the founder was Jacob Cohn. Corrected on both pages, 2026-07-21.

Open questions

  • Did Continental keep the Hoffmann-Hayman or H&H brand names in market for any period after the 1962 acquisition?
  • Was the San Antonio Continental the same entity as the Chicago Continental Coffee Company that Sysco acquired? Resolved 2026-07-21: yes — see § Continental → Sysco — resolved above (the acquisition was 1988, not the “1990s” previously guessed).
  • When did Continental’s San Antonio operations close? Resolved 2026-07-20: August 1972. Continental returned its rail-spur rights to H-H Warehouse on 25 August 1972, four days before the building was sold to the Wagners; the roasters had already been sold to Monterrey in 1971. The 1975 step-van classified previously cited as evidence of a later wind-down is unattributed and belongs to the Wagner/B&W occupancy.
  • Did any H&H-specific brand or distribution asset survive the Continental → CFS Continental → Staley Continental → Sysco chain to actually reach Sysco, or did it lapse earlier in that 26-year, three-owner span?

See also

People

Places

Events

  • 1971 — Burns Jubilee roasters sold to Monterrey
  • Albert G. Menger elected President of Hoffmann-Hayman
  • Continental Coffee of Chicago acquires Hoffmann-Hayman
  • Newspaper ad — H & H as a Continental Coffee division
  • Continental Coffee at Hoffmann-Hayman Warehouse Co. (deed record)
  • HemisFair ‘68 opens in San Antonio

Companies

Synthesis

  • G. P. Menger Family Narrative