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FeedWNY's All Time Greatest Workplace Innovation: The Coffee Break
There is a dispute about which American workplace first initiated the custom of allowing employees to take regular time-outs, but the good news is that both of the candidates were located in Buffalo. It was either the Barcolo Manufacturing Company in 1902, or the Larkin Company in 1901. Barcolo eventually became Barcalounger, and is now based in North Carolina; Larkin, the company that made the fortunes of Darwin Martin, is defunct. According to Wayne Stephens, CEO of Barcalounger, the Barcolo employees were given mid-morning and afternoon breaks of about fifteen minutes, but they had to buy their own coffee. At Larkin, according to Canisius professor Howard Stanger, employees were given free coffee, but it is unclear if they had specified free time to drink it.
Sources: “The Coffee Break,” 12/2/02, npr.org. Thanks to Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society librarian Cynthia Van Ness.
Elizabeth Licata is the editor of Buffalo Spree.
Update: In the first comment below, Howard Stanger, professor at Canisius College, contributes excellent insight regarding the history of the coffee break.
A few comments on the origins of the coffee break. The "true" origins of it are unknown. It's not a question that labor and business historians seek to answer directly. NPR interviewed me in 2001 and stated, without much evidence, that the Barcolo Company of Buffalo first offered coffee to its employees in 1902. From my extensive archival research on the Larkin Company, I replied that it offered employees free coffee in 1901. At least locally, I believe, that Larkin might be the first company to do so.
While Larkin's institution of the coffee break antedated Barcolo's, I could not declare then (or now) with any degree of certainty that Larkin "invented" the coffee break. There were other companies around the country that provided an assortment of benefits to employees before 1901. Larkin, however, did require coffee to be imbibed during breaks so not to cause any damage to work-related property.
More important, companies such as Larkin that recognized before many others (if they ever did) that fair and good treatment of employees were essential to long-term company success. This was especially important around the turn of the last century when the economy underwent dramatic changes, such as the rise of large scale corporations and factories, rapid technological change that often de-skilled employees, job and pay insecurity, and unsafe working conditions. New types of labor management and employee benefits for workers (eg., company-sponsored recreation, education, health care, pensions) were designed to mitigate some of the problems of industrialization. Sometimes companies succeeded; often they failed to address employees' more significant concerns.
Larkin Company generally succeeded in buffering its mainly female employees from industrialization, but the coffee break was only a small part of what made its form of welfare capitalism successful. That should make Buffalonians proud.
Howard Stanger
Professor
Canisius College