Starting in the early eighteenth century, importation was New Orleans’s lifeblood, as coffee and other agricultural goods moved through the city’s port and fanned out to all corners of the emerging nation. New Orleans became the United States’ top coffee importer in the nineteenth century, jockeying for position with larger port cities. As the century progressed, coffee importers and brokers built ever-stronger connections between New Orleans and the national coffee trade.
Because New Orleans was such a coffee town, coffee culture began infiltrating the city’s practices. Coffee exchanges opened, creating spaces to share new ideas and partake in important cultural conversations over coffee. For guests, coffee was prepared at home and served black or café au lait with milk. The French Market and similar venues boasted coffee stands, and enslaved women such as Rose Nicaud bought their freedom by selling coffee from carts in the market.
Heading into the twentieth century, Café du Monde and other coffee stands became integral to New Orleans traditions, and Louisiana coffee brands such as Community Coffee and PJ’s made a name for themselves on grocery shelves across the country. When someone wasn’t enjoying coffee at home, they drank coffee with chicory in the French Market—a tradition now closely associated with New Orleans, despite having its origins in Holland and France. Other cultures have also made an impact on the coffee culture of the Crescent City. The Vietnamese integrated New Orleans coffee practices into their own, using Café du Monde coffee in their traditional coffee preparation.
Modern New Orleans has become more interested in specialty coffee grown on small farms and ethically harvested. Multiple coffee roasters call New Orleans home and import their coffee from small farms in Guatemala, Brazil, and Colombia. The next generation of coffee production is creating a heightened interest in farming practices and sustainability, with coffee consumers gravitating toward brands that provide a living wage to farmers. Coffee Culture New Orleans tells the story of the Crescent City’s flourishing coffee traditions from its founding to the present.