Café HAG

Café HAG is a worldwide brand of decaffeinated coffee owned by U.S. multinational Kraft Foods.^[1]

The brand originated in Bremen in Germany in 1906 and took its name from the company title Kaffee Handels-Aktien-Gesellschaft, or Kaffee HAG for short.

The company was set up by Ludwig Roselius, co-developer of the first commercial decaffeination process.

In the 1920s and 1930s Kaffee HAG was known for the publication of the Coffee Hag albums of heraldic emblems.

The coffee brand Sanka was later spun off from Kaffee HAG in 1910^[2] for the French market ("Sanka" is a contraction of the French words "sans caféine") and U.S. rights to the Sanka name were sold in 1913.

General Foods purchased Roselius's American company in 1932 and the original German company in 1979. The spelling of Café HAG was standardized in the 1990s. Both Café HAG and Sanka are now owned by Kraft Foods, which merged with General Foods in 1990.

References

1. ^ Kraft:UK Coffee Brands
2. ^ Sanka. Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1989. Accessed 5 August 2008.

External links

• Café HAG
• History of Kaffee HAG (German)