Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company (H&H Coffee)

The best-documented single customer relationship in the collection, with a named executive (Gus J. Menger), a specific product (Crystalvac), and surviving collector-catalogued jars. A San Antonio coffee roaster, one of the oldest in the South, run by the Menger family (also owners of the Menger Hotel).

Ordered a quarter-million Crystalvac vacuum-packed jars in 1932, expanding its own workforce by 12 to handle the new packing line [ev-0040]. H&H Coffee jars (clear and amber glass) are separately catalogued in this collection’s bottle/jar artifact list, with amber examples especially prized by collectors [ev-0006].

H&H did not source Crystalvac jars from Three Rivers alone. Surviving jars in H&H’s own collection carry the Owens-Illinois “Diamond-Oval-I” mark (plant code 7 = Alton, Illinois) date-coded 1936–1939, alongside the Three Rivers “star” jars — evidence H&H dual-sourced from Three Rivers and Owens-Illinois concurrently through the 1930s rather than switching cleanly after Three Rivers’ 1937 shutdown [ev-0005]. One 3-lb jar has a contested 1932 O-I date code (bench read not yet fully resolved).

The dual-sourcing reading gained documentary support from the first Owens-Illinois catalog (1930–1935): its “Coffee & Pantry Jars” pages list square grid-embossed, label-panel jars in the Crystalvac idiom with the G-450 finish, and its Closure Division offers “Knife-Opening Vacuum Caps” — “VACUUM PACKED — Keeps Contents Fresh” — in the same GCA 450 thread. O-I was thus selling vacuum-packed coffee packaging as a complete jar-plus-cap system throughout the window in which H&H launched Crystalvac, which makes O-I supply from 1932 onward plausible on the documentary record [ev-0016].

See Also

• Gus J. Menger — H&H president who placed the 1932 Crystalvac order
• Gebhardt Chili Powder Company — another major San Antonio food-industry TRG customer