Fonts and coffee beans Kate McDonnell 7/31 '26

When I was a kid, we lived in a neighbourhood where the closest grocery store was an A&P.

It had a feature no other grocery chains had at the time – in fact, one that was unusual here till decades later: a coffee grinder. It was up front by the doors, so you were greeted by a rich aroma of fresh-ground coffee and a slight drift of coffee grounds around it on the floor.

The coffee was sold, I've since discovered, in three levels of quality. The best stuff was packaged in a black tin with the name BOKAR in a striking Art Deco typeface. I found this fascinating and mysterious – my parents never bought BOKAR, not having any method of brewing any coffee besides instant, and instant coffee smells like a wet dog to me.

We left that area just after I turned 9, and never went to an A&P anywhere else, but I've since realized I was deeply imprinted by both the coffee and the lettering. I didn't start drinking coffee till my late teens when I discovered espresso with some of my more bohemian friends, around the same time I started work as a typesetter.

My life has been spelled out in decorative letters and coffee beans.






MORE
7/31 4 Comments
My life has little to do with coffee, but I'm all about fun-fact rabbit-holes. The lowest tier was "Eight O'Clock Coffee", which doesn't specify morning or evening, but leads me to wonder whether higher-quality coffees would be served to guests earlier, as at the wedding at Cana. The middle tier was "Red Circle", which in French would be "Le Cercle Rouge", a 1970 crime film by Jean-Pierre Melville, who fabricated a red-circle quotation by Siddhartha Gautama for the movie's epigraph.
nerdsholmferret
There's also a Sherlock Holmes story called The Red Circle. I've just been relistening to Stephen Fry reading the entire Holmes opus and he's hilarious doing the long speech by a tempestuous Italian woman in that story.
Kate McDonnell
Love every bit of this.
Matt Lichtenwalner
I remember this feature of A&Ps from my childhood, as well. My folks never drank instant, but they also never got anything freshly ground. It was always whatever came pre-ground in metal cans and was on sale. Home it would go, for use in the stovetop glass percolator. Hills Brothers was their preferred brand, the one with an Arab drinking coffee on the label. After that, Chock full o'Nuts, maybe.

I'm trying to remember which chain was the first to introduce their own in-house bakery, but I can't recall. That was also a smell bonanza, walking in the door.
Anne Mollo