il coffee
merchandising.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: LUHRS, OF POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., FEATURES FRESHLY ROASTED
COFFEE IN HIS WINDOW

Smoke from the roasters is blown into street through the coffee pot
hanging over the door]

[Illustration: JOHNSON, OF RED OAK, IOWA, ROASTS BEFORE THE CUSTOMER

Showing a Royal roasting and grinding equipment]

[Illustration: FRESH ROASTED-COFFEE IDEA IN RETAIL MERCHANDISING]

CHAPTER XXVII

RETAIL MERCHANDISING OF ROASTED COFFEE

_How coffees are sold at retail--The place of the grocer, the tea
and coffee dealer, the chain store, and the wagon-route distributer
in the scheme of distribution--Starting in the retail coffee
business--Small roasters for retail dealers--Model coffee
departments--Creating a coffee trade--Meeting
competition--Splitting nickels--Figuring costs and profits--A
credit policy for retailers--Premiums_

Coffee is sold at retail in the United States through seven distinct
channels of trade; the independent retail grocers (about 350,000)
handling about forty percent of the 1,300,000,000 pounds sold annually;
and the other sixty percent being sold by chain stores, mail-order
houses, house-to-house wagon-route distributers, specialty tea and
coffee stores, department stores, and drug stores. Since the beginning
of the twentieth century, the independent grocers' monopoly in retail
coffee-merchandising has been dwindling at a rate that has seriously
alarmed those interests and their friends.

B.C. Casanas of New Orleans, addressing a convention of the National
Association of Retail Grocers in the United States, in 1916, said that
the wholesale coffee roasters of the country had invested in their
business $60,000,000; and that $135,000,000 worth of roasted coffee was
sold by them every year.

Considering the methods of merchandising, the seven retail distributing
agencies may be grouped into three distinct classes. The first class
would comprise the independent grocer, the chain store, the department
store, the drug store, and the specialty store, all of which maintain
stores where the consumer comes to buy. The second class takes in the
mail-order house, which solicits orders and delivers its coffee by mail,
and sometimes by freight or express. The third class covers the
wagon-route dealer, who goes from house to house seeking trade, and
delivers his coffee on order at regular periods direct to the consumer
in the