If you read the November 26, 1919
edition of the New York Times you
might have come across an article that members of the Roosevelt clan, including
the three sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., Kermit, and
Archibald, together with their brother-in-law, Dr. Richard Derby, and their
cousin, Philip Roosevelt, had launched a company to create a chain of New York
City coffee houses similar to those flourishing in Europe.
 |
| New York Times: Nov, 26, 1919 |
The concept showed amazing
foresight. The era of the chain coffee
house in America can be traced to the first Roosevelt family outlet at 108 West
44th Street (now a modern financial high rise).
Called the Brazilian Coffee House
with Philip Roosevelt as its president, the first outlet was soon followed with
another on Lexington Avenue. The can be
traced to Teddy’s son Kermit, who visited Brazil before WWI and mulled
importing coffee from Rio de Janiero to America. After the war, Kermit organized his relatives
as investors in the project.
Timing was right for a coffee house
venture as Prohibition was on the horizon and coffee would be the perfect
social drink to replace booze.
The Times in 1919 interviewed the
coffee house manager A.M. Salazar, who pointed out “we are not a restaurant;
please make that clear. The law required
that we incorporate as a restaurant, but we are a coffee house, a real coffee
house, like those in London...Paris...and cities in Brazil.”
Manager Salazar went on to say, the
New York coffee house—later called the Double R Coffee Houses—were serving
light lunch items (pastry and sandwiches) “but it is coffee in which we are
mainly interested, and we will sell it to drink or to carry home.”
The feisty Brazilian manager gave a
lecture on coffee, which the Times reporter duly noted: “American people don’t
really know how to appreciate good coffee.
They prepare it either in the percolator or by boiling...we make it like
tea, by pouring boiling water over coffee through a specially prepared
strainer...and we are willing to show anyone how to roast and prepare the
coffee in the real Brazilian manner...”
Sounds like we have—not only the
founding coffee house chain but also the start of “pour over” style coffee
houses so popular across America almost 100 years later.
The chain expanded to four locations
in Manhattan and flourished under Roosevelt ownership until 1928. By then the boys had other adventures in mind
and sold the successful Double R’s to a young couple who met at the original
coffee house in 1923.
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