New Orleans, Historic Coffee City | 25, Issue 15
New Orleans is today a thriving coffee city, with a world-class specialty coffee scene. But New Orleans also has a deep history, and its coffee legacy makes it one of the most important places for coffee culture in the world.
It’s no secret that the Crescent City—the nickname inspired by the shape of the city due to a curve in the Mississippi River—has had an outsized cultural influence on the rest of the United States and the world beyond. It’s certainly the most influential musical city in the US, having given birth to numerous musical genres. It’s a culinary city, too—considered an epicurean destination by people all over the globe. And a big part of this culinary tradition is coffee.
As a port city, New Orleans was a major point of entry for coffee when the beverage was first brought to the Americas. Since the islands of the Caribbean were the very first places coffee was cultivated in the “new world,” New Orleans became one of the most important coffee ports in the country,[1] and a coffee consumption culture came along in the late 1700s.
It was in the early 1800s that a person who can be considered the founder of New Orleans coffee culture was born. Rose Nicaud was an enslaved woman in New Orleans, held in bondage as a servant in one of the households of the city. Unlike most places, New Orleans tradition allowed enslaved people one day a week “off,” a practice she used to start a business, roasting and brewing coffee herself on Sundays at a little stand she constructed at Jackson Square, serving coffee to parishioners exiting Mass at St. Louis Cathedral.[2] Before long, Rose was able to parlay her earnings into a permanent stand in the French Market, offering seating and snacks like calas, a kind of fritter made of rice flour, a treat of African origin. In this way, Rose was able to make enough money to purchase her own freedom, and she also began a tradition of Black women starting businesses based on coffee and snacks in the markets of New Orleans. This began the city’s vibrant tradition of coffee stands, most famously the Café du Monde, which stands today just across Jackson Square from where Rose Nicaud founded her first, foundational coffee business. Beignets, an echo of Nicaud’s calas, are a famous accompaniment to coffee in this part of the city to this day. Though Rose Nicaud’s name is not as well-recognized as it should be in New Orleans, there was for many years a café on Frenchmen Street which bore her name, in honor of her role as the founder of New Orleans coffee culture.
One of the people who carried on the tradition of the New Orleans coffee house was an ex-social worker who sought a business that could be a benefit to the community. Phyllis Jordan fell in love with coffee, and envisioned a specialty coffee business especially for the Crescent City. In 1978, she founded PJ’s Coffee, dedicated to the ideas of delicious coffee and community building. The business thrived, and before long there were PJ’s locations all over the city. But this wasn’t Phyllis’ only innovation—in the late seventies, after learning about the Toddy system and falling in love with cold-brewed coffee, Phyllis introduced it as a way to brew iced coffee drinks in the notoriously torrid city. The idea of cold brew caught on, becoming a cornerstone of PJ’s offering. In this way, Phyllis Jordan became an early visionary of cold brew—a technique which has become an important and exciting segment of the specialty coffee industry.[3] But that’s only one way Phyllis changed the coffee industry. In 1992, Phyllis Jordan became one of the first presidents of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, and one of the first women to hold that role.
These stories are only two of the myriad ways New Orleans embodies the role of the “coffee city,” influencing coffee culture in places as far away as California, Europe, and Asia. So, if you have a chance to visit New Orleans during the SCA Expo this year, know that you’re experiencing a deep coffee history along with the current, exciting specialty coffee scene. ◇
PETER GIULIANO is the SCA’s Chief Research Officer and Executive Director of the Coffee Science Foundation.
This piece was inspired by Scott Reed, a lover of coffee and New Orleans, and is dedicated to his memory.
Notes & References
[1] Loyacano, Shelby (2020), “Coffee in New Orleans”, New Orleans Historical Society https: //neworleanshistorical.org/ items/show/1393
[2] Nunez, Chandra (2011), “Just like Ole’ Mammy used to Make: Reinterpreting New Orleans African-American Praline Vendors as Entrepreneurs” https: //scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&context=td
[3] Tooker, Poppy (2018),“The Mother of All Iced Coffee”, Biz New Orleans https: //www.bizneworleans.com/the-mother-of-all-iced-coffee/
We hope you are as excited as we are about the release of 25, Issue 15. Both the print edition and the availability of these features across sca.coffee/news wouldn’t have been possible without our generous underwriting sponsors for this issue: Pacific Barista Series, BWT water+more, and Breville. Thank you so much for your support! Learn more about our underwriters here.