The Starting point

Innovation from the start

In 1929, Louis Dapples, the Nestlé Chairman at the time, was presented with an interesting task by his former employer, the Banque Française et Italienne pour l’Amérique du Sud.Following the Wall Street Crash and the collapse of coffee prices, the bank had a lot of coffee sitting unsold in warehouses in Brazil. Nestlé was asked whether these stocks could be turned into a ‘soluble coffee cube’ to be sold to consumers. A chemist Dr Max Morgenthaler joined the company to help its researchers find a solution. After three years of research they discovered that coffee mixed with milk and sugar – converted into powder kept its flavor for longer. But this powder was not easily soluble, and the milk and sugar caused production challenges.

Nescafé is born

Dr Morgenthaler concluded that the secret of preserving the coffee aroma lay in creating a soluble coffee with enough carbohydrates.  After a year he used a specific technique that produced a powder that did this, and presented it to the Nestlé Executive Board and technical directors as drinkable soluble coffee samples. On April 1, 1938, the soluble coffee product, named Nescafé, was launched in Switzerland. The brand was rolled out in the United Kingdom two months later and the United States in 1939. By April 1940 Nescafé was available in 30 countries worldwide.

Today more than 5,500 cups of Nescafé instant coffee are consumed every second with different varieties catering to different tastes and preferences around the globe!