Sales report books from the office ceiling

These sales forms are artifacts recovered on site at the historic Hoffmann–Hayman factory building—they were not acquired through dealers or auctions; they turned up during work on the building itself.

While pulling network cable above the ground-floor office, we found three staple-bound books of sales report forms tucked between boards and the 1932 stucco ceiling shell—the original inch-thick stucco on expanded-metal lath, a few feet below the second floor’s board-formed concrete joists. The paper is toned and starting to crack along the folds, but it sat undisturbed for decades until the cable run went in.

Taken together, the interwar books confirm the factory’s product offerings as the office actually entered them. The open spread (below) shows the preprinted SHOW ITEMS SOLD section: 3 lb / 1 lb / ½ lb H and H Coffee; 3 lb / 1 lb Sam Houston; 3 lb / 1 lb Broncho; 1 lb Menger; plus tea in 10¢, ¼ lb, ½ lb, and 1 lb packages. The masthead reads HOFFMANN-HAYMAN COFFEE CO. · BOX 1536 · SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — an earlier PO Box than the 1509 used on the 1959 retail mail-in offers. Notable absences: Texas Girl is not on the form (consistent with Texas Girl’s documented entry into the H&H consumer-retail roster in the 1933–1935 window — the form may pre-date that), and the Master Chef line does not appear here either (consistent with Master Chef’s hotel-trade origin and the dual-mode framing from 1935).