George C. Sauer

George C. Sauer ran a grocery on Alamo Plaza in San Antonio where William R. Hoffmann clerked at the turn of the 20th century — and where Hoffmann first began roasting coffee. Per the 21 December 1932 The News “Tiny Roaster” account, Hoffmann was “a clerk in the grocery of George C. Sauer on Alamo Plaza” when he started in the coffee-roasting business, roasting in the evenings in Sauer’s grocery and delivering the next morning, using a tiny roaster “hardly larger than a 50-pound lard can.”

Sauer’s Alamo Plaza grocery is thus the pre-incorporation origin point of what became the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company — where Hoffmann learned the trade and first roasted, around 1899–1900, before the Spahn bakery site and the 1904 founding of the H&H blend.

See also

• William R. Hoffmann — clerked and first roasted here
• Spahn Family · Spahn Bakery — the next founding site
• Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company