Chock full o'Nuts

Chock full o’Nuts is a chain of lunch counters in New York City that spawned a brand of coffee.

History

The chain was founded by William Black (1903-1983), an American immigrant who sold nuts in Times Square to theater-goers. In 1926, he opened a store on Broadway and 43rd Street, and began selling coffee and sandwiches. By the 1960s, the chain had approximately 80 restaurants in the New York City area. Hygiene was a selling point, with the sandwiches advertised as "untouched by human hands". Cooks used tongs to assemble them.

Their signature "nutted cheese" sandwich, made of cream cheese and chopped nuts on dark raisin bread, cost a nickel with a cup of coffee when the company was founded. When coffee prices went up in the 1950s, Black, like other restaurateurs, held to a 5-cent cup of coffee by watering it down.^[1] But he soon broke ranks and raised the price, announcing that he refused to compromise on quality.

In 1953, the coffee brand was introduced to supermarkets. Baseball star Jackie Robinson ultimately became the company's vice president and director of personnel after retiring from the game.^{[2] [3]} In 1961, Chock full o'Nuts introduced a brand of instant coffee.

In the 1970s, the lunch counters gradually closed. About this time, with Black increasingly advanced in age, Steinfield, a major real estate operator in New York City who wanted the property that the restaurants occupied, declared war on Chock Full. He stated that when he won his actions he would close the restaurants. After Black died, the company sold its remaining 17 restaurants to the restaurant company Riese Bros. In 1988, investor Martin D. Gruss and companies he controlled purchased a 10-percent stake in the Chock Full o'Nuts Corporation, saying he might seek control of the company.^[4] In 1993, Chock Express stores were introduced.

The Sara Lee Corporation purchased Chock full o'Nuts for $238 million in 1999.^{[5] [6]} In May 2006, it was purchased from Sara Lee by Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA, along with the MJB, Hills Bros., and Chase & Sanborn coffee brands.

On September 10, 2010, the company announced it was returning to the lunch counter business by opening its first store in almost 30 years, on West 23rd Street between Broadway and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. The company said it planned to add stores and kiosks in New York City serving the "nutted cheese" sandwich and other traditional Chock Full O' Nuts menu items (plus new choices).^[7]

Jingle

The Chock full o’ Nuts advertising jingle was based on the song, "That Heavenly Feeling", written by the duo Wayne and Bruce Silbert. Frequently played over the radio airwaves in the 1950s and 1960s, the jingle was originally sung and made famous by company founder William Black’s wife, singer Page Morton Black.^[8] The original lyrics went as follows:

Chock full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee,
Heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee.
Chock full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee,
Better coffee Rockefeller’s money can’t buy.^[6]

However, the company had to alter the lyrics from “Rockefeller’s money” to “a millionaire’s money” after being sued by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, who owned coffee interests in Latin America^{[citation needed]}. Mid-2000s versions of the jingle replace “millionaire” with “billionaire.”

Trivia

In film

• The opening scene in the movie, The Seven-Ups (1973), occurs in front of an original Chock Full o'Nuts lunch counter on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 54th Street in New York City.
• A Chock Full o'Nuts store sign appears in a scene from the movie Marathon Man (1976) when Babe (Dustin Hoffman) runs across Broadway to meet Elsa (Marthe Keller) in her car after he had successfully eluded his captors.
• A scene in the movie, Escape from New York (1981), occurs in a Chock Full o'Nuts store.
• A Chock Full o'Nuts store sign appears in a scene from the movie, The King of Comedy (1983).
• It appears as a commercial in a scene in the film George of the Jungle (1997).
• In the movie The Bucket List (2007), the character played by Morgan Freeman jokes that he wishes to buried in a Chock Full o'Nuts can.

In television

• In the premiere episode of the ABC series Eli Stone, the title character carries his father's ashes in a Peanuts can, scattering them at a mountain in Chock Full o' Nuts, India.
• During a scene in the "Smoking" episode of the NBC sitcom NewsRadio, Bill McNeal drinks from a mug of coffee and quips "Chock full of nuts? They should call it chock full of flavor!" [1]
• The exteriors of Chock Full o'Nuts restaurants can be seen on several episodes of Seinfeld.
• A can of Chock Full o'Nuts appears on the kitchen-counter set of the CBS sitcom The King Of Queens, which is set in Queens, New York, and on the kitchen counter of the Uncle Junior set of the HBO television series The Sopranos, which is set in New Jersey.

Footnotes

1. ^ Pendergast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds
2. ^ Jackie Robinson was recruited by Black to ease a tensions and high absentee rates among African American employees, who accounted for about three-quarters of the staff at the time. He created a Bear Mountain resort for his employees, employees were given a holiday on their birthdays and more. National Archives & Records Administration: Jackie Robinson
3. ^ University of Massachusetts Amherst: The Jackie Robinson Educational Archives
4. ^ The New York Times, May 7, 1988: "Company News: Chock Full o'Nuts Stake Purchased"
5. ^ Food & Drink Weekly, Monday, June 14 1999: "Persistent Sara Lee to Acquire Coffee-Maker Chock Full o'Nuts for $238 Million"
6. ^ ^{a b} The New York Times, December 18, 2003: "Chock Full o'Nuts Draws on Its New York Ties", by Stuart Elliott
7. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11chock.html
8. ^ FunTrivia.com: "Who sang the "Chock full o'Nuts" coffee jingle?", citing defunct Sara Lee page

References

• Official website
• "Zanetti Coffee acquires Sara Lee coffee brands"^{[dead link]}

External links

• The American Package Museum: Chock full o'Nuts Coffee