by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
It’s a 74-year head start.
That’s how long coffee was imported, roasted, ground, packaged and shipped out of a factory on East Bay Street before the first Starbucks sign ever popped up in front of a coffee shop on a street corner in Seattle – much less here in Jacksonville.
Joe Waryold is the plant manager at Maxwell House and he knows probably all there is to know about roasting and grinding and quite a bit about local coffee history.
“The Cheek-Neal coffee plant opened in 1910 and was originally across Bay Street from where it is now. That made it easy to unload the beans from the ships that brought them here,” he said.
In 1924, the plant moved across the street and a steady expansion process began. The demand for Maxwell House coffee increased over the years to the point the brand and the plant was eventually purchased by Kraft Foods.
Today, the 400,000 square-foot factory sits on about 10 acres of Downtown real estate and employs more than 300 people. Green coffee beans arrive at the loading dock to be roasted, ground and packed into the familiar blue packages 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Waryold.
He added the Jacksonville plant makes Maxwell House Master Blend coffee and packages it into one- and three-pound vacuum bags that are shipped to wholesalers and retailers all over the country east of the Rocky Mountains.
Another plant in California meets the west coast’s demand for the Maxwell House “Good to the last Drop” flavor and a plant in Houston that Kraft sold last year roasts and grinds coffee through a private-label contract.
The Jacksonville factory also makes and packages General Foods International Coffees powdered beverage.
Waryold said none of the raw beans or finished product is stored at the plant. When the beans arrive in Jacksonville they are taken to what he called a “silo facility” on Edgewood Avenue where they are sorted, washed and even blended before being trucked to Bay Street.
The roasting, grinding, packaging and preparation for shipment takes only six to eight hours from green beans to blue packages on pallets. The final products are sent to another warehouse where orders are consolidated and then shipped to their ultimate destinations.
“We’re all about manufacturing. We don’t store a lot of finished goods on site,” said Waryold.
Kraft Foods guards information about how much coffee is produced at the plant, but the Jacksonville Port Authority keeps a very close watch on how much coffee moves through the port each year.
According to figures provided by the Port Authority, 41,463 metric tons of coffee beans and coffee products moved through the port last year. More than 30,000 metric tons of the total were imported by Kraft Foods and Maxwell House. All told, 49 firms either imported or exported coffee through the port in 2006, including the U.S. Army, the Defense Commissary Agency and even Starbucks.
“Coffee isn’t the largest business we have, but it’s a piece of business we like because it opens trade lanes we’d like to develop,” said Doug Menefee, director of the Port Authority’s Talleyrand Marine Terminal.
In addition to beans that come to Jacksonville from the traditional coffee-producing countries, Menefee said the product is also being shipped here from the Far East.
“Years ago, Vietnam wasn’t even on the table,” said Bill Quinn, logistics manager for the Maxwell House Group at Kraft Foods headquarters in Tarrytown, N.Y. He buys coffee beans from many sources that are blended to create the brand’s signature flavor and aroma. Quinn said while Brazil remains the world’s top coffee producer, Southeast Asia has taken over the second-place spot with Colombia ranked third.
Menefee estimated that close to 5,000 shipping containers of coffee beans pass through the port each year and most are on the way to Maxwell House. He also said the way the product is handled has changed over the years with improvements in technology.
“It’s not as picturesque as it was in the old days when the bags of beans were carried off the sailing ships by dockworkers. Now coffee beans are shipped from South America in containers that are sealed until they are unloaded here in Jacksonville. The modern process is much more efficient, so we are able to handle a lot more product.”
Having containers full of Brazilian coffee beans destined for Jacksonville has led to more types of imported products coming through the port. Freight consolidators are shipping granite quarried in South America for tile and countertops. Manufactured steel products and small electronics like televisions and CD players also hit the docks and cargo goes both ways on the route.
“We like Brazil because it’s two-way trade. A lot of American auto parts are being exported to South America through JAXPORT,” said Menefee.
In addition to its place in Jacksonville’s coffee-making and international trade stories, the Maxwell House plant is also an important part of Jacksonville’s business story, said Lad Daniels of Daniels and Associates. The company has a contract to manage the First Coast Manufacturers Association and Daniels credits something that happened about 20 years ago with creating public awareness concerning the role the manufacturing sector plays in North Florida’s economic growth – and the association.
“Maxwell House was going to shut down one of their coffee plants and the company was deliberating whether it would be the one in Hoboken, N.J. or the one here in Jacksonville. First, the Chamber of Commerce got involved but pretty soon the entire community got on board. There were ‘Keep Max in Jax’ billboards and rallies all over town,” he said.
Daniels recalled that soon after the campaign to keep the plant in operation was successful, the FCMA was founded.
“Keeping the coffee plant here led the manufacturing community to understand they needed to pull together to make the public aware of how important manufacturing is to the local economy,” he said.
Daniels pointed out that Maxwell House is one of the largest of the 1,500 manufacturing firms in the area in terms of employment as well as capital investment. He said the plant is currently installing “a couple of million dollars worth” of upgrades including improvements for its processes as well as environmental management and that means jobs that go beyond the people who clock in every day at the facility.
“Look behind that plant and you’ll see site trailers owned by mechanical contractors and electrical contractors. It’s a great multiplier effect because the salaries paid by those secondary jobs are comparable to the salaries paid by the primary jobs in manufacturing,” said Daniels.
While no one at Kraft Foods would comment on the salaries of plant workers, Waryold pointed out there is very little worker turnover and many of the company’s local employees have been there for years.
Waryold started with Maxwell House at the plant in 1981 and worked there as a supervisor until 1985 when he accepted another job with Kraft that took him away from Jacksonville. He returned as the plant’s manager seven years ago and said he hopes that will be the last time he’ll have to move.
“Like a lot of the people who work here, I hope I can be here until I retire,” said Waryold.