Brief history of Ahold Coffee Company

More than a century of knowledge and skill

Ahold Coffee Company dates back to 1887, when Albert Heijn took over a grocer's store in the Dutch village of Oostzaan from his father, Jan Heijn. Only a few years later, he began roasting coffee (and peanuts) in the washhouse behind the store. That was pure manual labor, very much unlike the sophisticated production methods of today's Ahold Coffee Company!

Smooth sailing

The coffee roasting company grew quickly and, with an eye to ensuring good provisioning and accessibility, Albert Heijn moved the company to Zaandam at the end of the 19th century. Here the raw coffee beans could be shipped through the Zaan river in burlap sacks. In 1911, the first coffee factory was opened on the Oostzijde in Zaandam. Albert Heijn espoused the philosophy that competent and skilled employees together with good equipment and the use of quality tools would make it possible to produce excellent quality products in-house. The first advertising campaign was successfully launched around the year 1930 with the well-known slogan "Here's Boffy, with Albert Heijn's coffee!"

Wartime coffee

World War II put a monkey wrench in the whole operation, when the Germans confiscated all raw materials and products. With a lack of coffee beans, the company was forced to use chicory, a coffee substitute. This 'wartime coffee' was called 'Smalsko', an abbreviation for 'smaakt als koffie', Dutch for 'tastes like coffee'.

Showing one's colors

New products have been tested in our laboratory by special taste panels since 1960. One such test was for the 'four flavor coffee' concept, which entails a different generic color for each blend of coffee: gold for fully aromatic, green for mildly aromatic, red for mild roast and purple for full-flavored.

New name, new factory

The AH production company was given a new name in 1977: Marvelo. In 1991, the decision was made to build a new factory for the existing Marvelo production departments, including the coffee factory. The company moved to a brand-new factory at the Westerspoor-Zuid industrial park in Zaandam in November 1993. In addition to roasting and packaging coffee, other activities carried out here included packaging tea, bottling wine, roasting peanuts and nuts and producing peanut butter, chocolate spread and chocolate sprinkles.

Product developments

Innovation is key! At the start of the new millennium, this meant a new name: Ahold Coffee Company. But this also means regularly investing in state-of-the-art equipment and responding effectively to market demands for new products and packaging. Such flexibility is a must for a manufacturer of private labels. In 2001, for example, Ahold Coffee Company began specializing in coffee pods for café crème coffee pod systems that produce delicious tasting coffee with an attractive frothy layer. A private brand coffee pod was also developed for Albert Heijn in record time. It is primarily thanks to this rapid introduction that Ahold Coffee is currently one of the leading coffee pod manufacturers.

Pushing back frontiers

The expansion has not been limited to product innovation alone. Since 2001, Ahold Coffee Company has successfully expanded its market area, thanks to contracts with international supermarket chains in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Great Britain.

Ongoing growth and innovation

Thanks to Ahold Coffee Company's role in the Utz Certified Foundation, Ahold Coffee Company and Albert Heijn were able to successfully develop a system in 2003 that enables consumers to trace the origin of their pack of Perla coffee online at www.ah.nl/perla, the only system of its kind in the coffee world!