1929 Hoffmann-Hayman Employees at the “Fragrant…” Billboard

A sepia press photograph of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. office, salesforce, and plant employees — roughly thirty people in three rows — arranged in front of the company’s “Fragrant…” billboard. The billboard carries an illustration of an H and H Blend Coffee tin on the left, a large rose bud in the middle, and the H and H Coffee oval logo over “HOFFMANN-HAYMAN CO. EST. 1899” on the right, all anchored on the familiar “WE ROAST IT — OTHERS PRAISE IT” footer. A grease-pencil annotation in the lower-left of the print reads:

Office, Salesforce and Plant Employees Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. San Antonio, Tex. Sept. 14, 1929

This print is the left half of a two-billboard panorama — the same image as a 21×10-inch Summerville Photo group shot of about 48 employees dated Sept. 14, 1929; the full panorama carries a second sign to the right. The 1929 date is three years before the 1932 Delaware Street factory documented elsewhere in the collection — the firm’s plant was at 331 Burnett Street then, while the two billboards stood on South Crescent Street (per the Menger family’s reading of the full print). So the “Fragrant…” billboard here is an earlier pre-Delaware sign, not the planned 1932 Delaware rooftop sign (which companion 1932 art shows as a giant Crystalvac jar). The billboard still pins down the 1899 founding date.

The photographer is most likely Summerville Photo of San Antonio, the studio that made the panorama — not Jas. W. Zintgraff. The 2018 Instagram caption’s “Group photo by Jas. W. Zintgraff” conflated this print with the lot’s other photo: the Zintgraff studio stamp is on the reverse of the “In Step with N.R.A.” print — Zintgraff being San Antonio’s prolific mid-century commercial photographer, the same studio whose archive is documented in the UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures Zintgraff-collection visit from 2019.

A separate research lead says S. P. Stevens (Stanford P. Stevens) may have started by painting H and H Coffee billboards; two surviving samples of his art are here for visual comparison:

The second photo in the lot is an “In Step with N.R.A.” promotional shot from a few years later, shown below. Roughly thirty employees are assembled on the factory’s front steps under a facade painted “HOFFMANN HAYMAN COFFEE CO.” Two pairs of flanking signs make the message plain: NRA eagle emblems and a hand-lettered “‘We are Satisfied’ — Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co.” placard on the building, and bright circular “BUY NOW — H-H BRAND QUALITY PRODUCTS” display cards at the bottom of the steps. A dark-painted “IN STEP WITH N.R.A.” caption runs across the foreground, and an H and H Coffee delivery truck is just visible on the right. The National Recovery Administration ran from 1933 to 1935, dating this second photo to roughly four years after the 1929 billboard group shot.

The reverse of that N.R.A. print carries the photographer’s studio stamp — Jas. W. Zintgraff, the attribution the 2018 Instagram caption mistakenly applied to the billboard photo above:

Jas. W. Zintgraff. 131 Isabel · Kenwood 6, San Antonio, Texas

Instagram 2018-07-17: Office, Salesforce, and Plant Employees — Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co., San Antonio, Texas, Sept 14, 1934. Group photo by Jas. W. Zintgraff. Also shows “In Step with N.R.A.” photo with H&H Buy Now signs.

Correction (2026-06-25): the original Instagram caption above is quoted verbatim and reads the year as “1934” while crediting Zintgraff. Both have since been corrected — a magnified scan of the print shows the grease-pencil date as Sept. 14, 1929, the billboard photo is the left half of the Summerville Photo 1929 two-billboard panorama (Burnett Street era), and the Zintgraff studio stamp belongs to the lot’s “In Step with N.R.A.” print, not this one.