Sanka
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sanka was one of the world's first brands of decaffeinated coffee.
Decaffeinated coffee was invented in 1903 by a team of researchers led by Ludwig Roselius in Bremen, Germany. It was first sold in Germany in 1905–06 under the name "Kaffee HAG" and then came to the United States in 1909–10 where it was first marketed under the name "Dekafa" or "Dekofa" by an American sales agent.
In 1914, Roselius founded his own company called Kaffee Hag Corporation in New York, which marketed its decaffeinated coffee under the brand name "Kaffee HAG" that was well proven from the European business.
When the company was confiscated by the Alien Property Custodian during World War I and was sold to an American businessman, Roselius lost not only his firm, but also the U.S. trademark rights in the name "Kaffee HAG". To re-establish his product, he had to use a different brand name and chose Sanka, from the French words sans caféine ("without caffeine").
Sanka was first marketed in the United States in 1923. At the beginning, it was sold in two "Sanka Coffee Houses" in New York, but soon it also came into retail. With its bright orange label, the package was easily identifiable, and due to intensive advertising campaigns and the General Foods Corporation taking over its distribution in 1928, Sanka became a nationwide sales success in the late 1920s.
An odd fact about Sanka is that the bright orange label that made it easily identifiable to consumers found its way into coffee shops around the country in the form of the decaf coffee pot. Coffee pots with a bright orange handle are a direct result of the American public's association with the color orange with the Sanka brand and therefore all decaffeinated coffee. (However, those that serve rival Folgers coffee usually have green handled pots for decaffeinated.)
Kraft's corporate archivists, however, have no record of a definitive link between Sanka and orange-handled carafes, which could just be a result of lost records over the years.[citation needed]
The product was known in the 1970s for a series of television ads featuring actor Robert Young (who was also playing the television series character Dr. Marcus Welby at the time), in which he encouraged various individuals to switch to Sanka, and thus bring down their blood pressure and become less anxious and irritable.
