If you've ever driven down East Bay Street in downtown Jacksonville, you know the smell. Rich, roasty, and unmistakable. That's the Maxwell House plant, and it has been roasting coffee in our city for about a century.
Maxwell House and a small specialty roaster like us may seem like they have nothing in common. But that plant is a big part of the reason Jacksonville is a coffee city at all, and it has quietly helped make room for local roasters like us.
A century of coffee on Bay Street
Coffee roasting on East Bay Street goes back to 1910, when the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company opened a plant there. Cheek-Neal was the company behind Maxwell House coffee, and in 1924 it moved into the building across the street, where the plant still stands today.
Back then, the plant could roast around 70,000 pounds of coffee a day. It has grown enormously since. The Jacksonville Daily Record reported in 2010 that the plant can produce up to 1 million pounds of coffee a day, running around the clock in a roughly 400,000-square-foot facility on about 10 acres.
Today it's owned by Kraft Heinz, and it's the company's only coffee plant in the United States. It's also described as the last remaining Maxwell House roasting plant in the country. That famous neon sign has been glowing over Bay Street since 1955.
How a coffee plant made a coffee port
Roasting that much coffee takes a steady stream of green (unroasted) coffee beans from around the world, and nearly all of it arrives by ship. According to Port Authority figures reported in 2007, more than 41,000 metric tons of coffee moved through Jacksonville's port in 2006, close to 5,000 shipping containers a year. Most of it was headed for Maxwell House.
The beans come from the same places coffee lovers know: Brazil, Colombia, Southeast Asia, and other growing regions.
But here's the part most people don't know: Maxwell House wasn't the only one using the port. That same year, 49 different companies imported or exported coffee through Jacksonville.
Why that matters for specialty coffee
When a city handles that much coffee, it builds up everything coffee needs to move: regular shipping routes from coffee-growing countries, and local businesses that know how to receive, clear, store, and deliver green coffee.
Those routes don't only carry beans for big commercial brands. The same ships and the same port can bring in high-grade specialty lots right alongside them. A large roaster's volume helps keep the routes busy and the expertise local, and smaller roasters benefit from all of it.
In other words, the coffee that ends up in a can of Maxwell House and the specialty coffee in a small roaster's bag can arrive in Jacksonville the same way.
Commercial coffee and specialty coffee
Maxwell House and specialty roasters make very different coffee, and that's okay. Big commercial roasters are built for consistency and scale, blending large amounts of coffee to taste the same in every can. Specialty roasters work in small batches with high-grade beans, roasting each one to bring out its own character. (Curious about the difference in grades? See Relearn Coffee.)
Both are part of Jacksonville's coffee story, and both depend on the same port that has been bringing coffee to this city for more than a hundred years.
A coffee city, then and now
Over the decades, Jacksonville has been home to many roasters, from historic family companies like Martin Coffee (founded 1957) and Condaxis (founded 1959) to the café roasters and micro-roasters you'll find around town today. See our guide to coffee roasters in Jacksonville.
We're proud to be part of that story. At Testament Coffee Roasters, we air roast specialty coffee in small batches right here in Jacksonville. Next time you smell coffee on Bay Street, remember that the port behind that plant helps bring great coffee to every roaster in town.