Coffee Milk

Coffee milk is a drink similar to chocolate milk; however, instead of chocolate syrup, coffee syrup is used. It is the official state drink of Rhode Island in the United States of America.

History

A bottle of Autocrat brand coffee milk syrup

Coffee milk was introduced to Rhode Island sometime in the early 1930s. It came about from creative diner and drugstore operators trying to attract new customers with creative drinks. One of these operators, who is lost to history, sweetened leftover coffee grounds with milk and sugar. This created a molasses-like extract that became popular. Coffee milk became a favorite among Rhode Islanders and created a demand for this coffee syrup. The demand was so great, that in 1993, it beat out Del's Lemonade as the official drink of Rhode Island.

Availability

In northeastern parts of the U.S. region of New England, it can be found in the dairy case of stores right next to other flavored milks such as chocolate, strawberry and vanilla, and is often found on the beverage menus of diners throughout the state.

 The drink is difficult to find outside of the New England region, however, and travelers requesting it are often mistakenly served coffee with milk. One well-known brand of coffee syrup is "Autocrat". The Autocrat company, which also produces the Eclipse and Coffeetime brands, is based in Lincoln, Rhode Island. It is the official state drink of Rhode Island and a favorite tradition among many Rhode Islanders.

Coffee milk is on tap in the dining halls of Brown University, confounding many of the students from outside the state.

The Friendly's restaurant chain not only offers coffee milk on its menu, but provides free refills. Seeing as how this is not an inexpensive fountain drink, but rather milk and syrup, this is of notable significance.

Recently, the syrup has become available as far south as New Jersey, but under different packaging. It is branded as "Coffee Time" syrup - still made by Autocrat in Rhode Island.

Timeline

Ingredients for making coffee milk: a glass of milk, a bottle of coffee milk syrup, and a small measuring cup filled with coffee milk syrup

* 1930-coffee-milk was introduced to Rhode Iceland.

* The 1932-Silmo Packing Company of New Bedford, Massachusetts, began marketing a refined version called "coffee syrup", under the name Silmo.

* 1938 Eclipse of Warwick, began marketing a refined version of what has been done and called it "style =" font-family:;. "> Coffee syrup" fatty Their slogan was: "You'll smack your lips when they Eclipse."

* 1940-autocrats of Lincoln start their own mix of corn syrup and coffee extract. Autocrats slogan is: "One swallow will tell you."

* 1991-two companies, Autocrat and Eclipse can be used to compete for the coffee syrup company. Their rivalry ended in 1991, when Autocrat bought the Eclipse brand name and secret formula. Both labels are now supplied by Autocrat and are commercially available.

* 1993 was named after long political debate, the state legislature Rhode Iceland evaporated as the "Official Gazette of Rhode Iceland drinking" on July 29, 1993. The Providence Journal-Bulletin newspaper covered the story.

The origin of coffee milk

No one knows for sure, but coffee milk may have its origin with Rhode Island's Italian immigrants. According to Nancy Verde Barr, author of the cookbook We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking, "In Italy they often made a bitter coffee with grain. The brew was then heavily sweetened. The children drank what the parents did. The tradition of sweetening continued here…"

In Southeastern New England the concoction migrated from immigrant kitchens to the menus of diners and drugstores in the 1920s and '30s. The lure of the grown-up beverage, combined with the one-two punch of sugar and caffeine, made the stuff a sure-fire hit. Kids liked it because of its adult mystique and because it tasted good. Parents liked it because it was a way to get their kids to drink milk.

In 1932, the Silmo Packing Company of New Bedford, Massachusetts, began marketing a more refined version of the gunk, dubbed "coffee syrup," under the Silmo name. Founded by Louis Silva and Carlos Desouza Morais, the company's name was a combination of the two founders' surnames.

Eclipse Food Products of Warwick, founded in 1914 by Alphonse Fiore of Providence, began energetically wooing milk-mustached consumers in 1938 with in-store demonstrations of their syrup and liberal use of their slogan, "You smack your lips if it's Eclipse." Another company, Autocrat Coffee of Lincoln, family-run since 1895, followed with their own sugary coffee extract in the 1940s. Autocrat's slogan is "A swallow will tell you."

In 1963, Eclipse was purchased by Globe Extracts of Hauppauge, Long Island, which soon after also bought an independent New Hampshire syrup producer called Coffee Time. Both brands continued to be manufactured in Eclipse's facility on Route 2 in Warwick. By the late 1980s, Eclipse and Autocrat were running pretty much neck and neck in the race for the Rhode Island coffee syrup dollar, although each, when asked, would claim to have cornered seventy-five to ninety percent of the market.

Globe was finally excerpts from a British company, Borthwick plc acquired in 1990. Borthwick took a little over a year to decide, it does not really want to be in the coffee syrup company, however. Eclipse as the Rhode Iceland, pioneering, and may have had the catchy slogan, but that did not autocrat of the jump at the chance to devour Eclipse by buying their brand and secret formula. Coffee Time was part of the deal too, and now all three brands produced and distributed by autocrats and are readily available in southern New England.

What changes for Silmo, but also had several owners, renamed Milk Mate, in 1996. But despite all efforts to the new owners to expand the sales and brand profile (including a partnership agreement with Radio Disney) to increase the company could not compete with the autocrat Juggernaut and went out of business around 2000 .

Those who are in the know claim there is a definite difference in taste between the various brands. Some say that Eclipse is the sweeter of the two Rhode Island brands, while Autocrat has more coffee bite. Others say the opposite. Lovers of Silmo claim that brand was the coffee-est of them all. Either way, coffee milk is just the thing to wash down a hot weiner or three.

The coffee milk sphere of influence

Can a taste for coffee milk really be geographically defined? Consider these anecdotes from a 1981 Providence Journal article: At Ricotti's Sandwich Shop in Pawtucket, they actually gave up serving chocolate milk because, according to the owner's daughter, Ruth Lima, "It doesn't sell. We had to throw it out." At the same time, Ricotti's was going through two to three cases of half-pint coffee milks a week. On the other side of the coin, the Salois Sanitary Dairy, 660 Cottage Street in Pawtucket, once took part in a taste test in a Long Island school. "The chocolate milk took off like there was no tomorrow," vice president Bob Salois stated. "The coffee milk wouldn't move. We had to take it back."

 A 1988 ProJo article noted that cartons of Franklin, Massachusetts-based Garelick Farms coffee milk outsold their chocolate milk by a ratio of nine to one. Yet attempts by the various syrup manufacturers to expand into markets outside Southern New England almost always received the same sort of cold reception as at the Long Island school.

One should not make the mistake of thinking that the power of coffee milk is limited by geography, however. Maybe it's the caffeine, or maybe it's the nostalgia factor, but people who moved to other parts of the country decades ago still crave it, some after even decades away.

... This stranger-than-fiction story of a couple who like Warwick will remain nameless: Driving to Florida to visit a brother in Pensacola, they made a lazy loop through Virginia, Georgia and Alabama, with coffee syrup bottle with a daughter in Richmond and old friends in Atlanta, in passing. (They Warwick a 12-bottle with syrup had in the trunk of the left.) In a motel in Alabama, with the remaining seven bottles, the woman made a call that was heard by the motel clerk. "I can see from your accent that you are from Rhode Iceland," said the clerk, said she had lived for a time in the state. Then she said: "What I most Rhode Iceland, the ocean and coffee syrup to miss." No lie. "Well, my husband and I looked at each other and giggled," says the wife of Warwick. "We went to the car and came up with one of the bottles we had left. Was she surprised! Well, they hugged us and we all started laughing. So we went to Pensacola with a bottle less for my brother, but it was definitely worthwhile. "

"Coffee milk tastes like home sweet home," by Katherine Imbrie, Providence Journal, February 17, 1988.

Coffee milk isn't the only coffee-based product that Rhode Islanders enjoy. They also purchase an inordinate amount of other hot and cold coffee beverages, coffee ice cream, and even coffee-flavored gelatin. As of 1990, in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, coffee ice cream was second only to vanilla in popularity. While we can't say that Rhode Islanders are the largest consumers of coffee products in the nation, they're pretty close.

"We sell the equivalent of 20 million servings of coffee syrup a year in the greater Rhode Island area, in a population of 1.5 million."

-Richard M. Field, Jr., fourth-generation president of Autocrat, Providence Business News, November 2002.

By the way, in Rhode Iceland, syrup mixed into the milk known as "milkshake." Is If milk, syrup and ice together, there is a "cabinet", but that's another story.

The road to victory
Is set with the purchase of Eclipse by the autocrat in 1991 paved the way for the ultimate coffee-milk-coup. On 23 March 1993, led by Lincoln Rep. John Barr (D), the ruler of all the coffee in order, a resolution called House of Rhode Iceland coffee, milk to drink as the official religion. The representative of Middletown, Minority Whip Bruce Long (R) disagreed, and said. "I feel that if the state to have a drink ointments should be examined by a committee," The fact that a long conversation with the Delete soft drink franchise that Aquidneck Island was, he claimed, was not a factor in his defense.

Despite Long's attempts to derail Autocrat's scheme, a Senate Special Legislation Committee had already signed off on the deal by April 1. The lone dissenting committee member, East Greenwich Senator J. Michael Lenihan (D), quipped, "I'm holding out for Narragansett beer."

The resolution came back to the House on May 7. Twenty-five minutes of mostly lighthearted debate preceded the vote.

Barr argued, "Coffee milk is a part of Rhode Island history… Coffee milk is unique to Rhode Island. Is the state of Rhode Island known for coffee milk or known for lemonade?"

"Coffee milk is not alone in its stature of being a uniquely Rhode Island product," countered Long. "An awful lot of people like Del's and an awful lot of people like coffee milk."

When it came time to vote, Long, as a Del's franchisee, recused himself. When the results were counted, coffee milk was the clear favorite, 49 to 36. But the drama wasn't over yet, as Long pulled a parliamentary maneuver that would delay moving the bill to the Senate for two legislative days, allowing opponents a chance to urge reconsideration of the vote.

The delay was evidently for naught, however, for although we haven't yet dug up the details of the Senate vote, we know the ultimate outcome. The Rhode Island Legislature pronounced coffee milk the state's official drink on July 29, 1993.

A victory party was held at Autocrat's Lincoln headquarters on August 27, at which about eighty-five company employees whooped it up, modeled coffee milk t-shirts, mingled with legislators, and knocked back half-pint cartons of Autocrat coffee milk. Del's Lemonade was not invited.

So stark ist Rhode Island Verbund Heit Kaffee mit Milch, dass which Providence Journal kürzlich sprockets ash layers, dass es selbst kann der Sache who Gerechtigkeit geholfen haben. If Joseph Mollicone, who für ein Bankdirektor Auslösung des Staates Bankenkrise Anfang der 1990er Jahre verantwortlich gemacht wird, unerwartet Verbrechen Gebühren wieder auf nach einem Jahr auf der Flucht begegnen, fragte ein Schlagzeile Journal: "War es which Kaffee-Milch, Joe?"

George Brown, editor, Rhode Island, Alt Magazine, October 1993.