Thursday Open Line


Through the centuries of coffee’s popularity, if someone ordered the beverage, there was no question about what kind. Today, many Americans prefer their coffee decaffeinated. That option dates to early in the last century, when Ludwig Roselius, a coffee merchant in Bremen, Germany, succeeded in removing caffeine from coffee beans. He moved to the U.S. before World War I, and his decaffeinated coffee became available in stores in 1923. Roselius sold his process and trade name to General Mills in the 1930s, which made “Sanka” a household name. Today, regular and decaf coffee is a big business in the U.S. Aside from home consumption, Americans spend over $10 billion annually in the nation’s more than 19,000 coffee shops. Profile America is in its17th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.