The Rise of Modern Iced Coffee
At the age of 17, William Rosenberg of Boston got his first job selling ice cream. He moved on to work in the Hingham Shipyards as an electrician and eventually a cafeteria worker. Seeing an opportunity in food, he opened his own shop in1950, Open Kettle. His two best sellers? Coffee and donuts. Rosenberg doubled down on the items and changed the shop’s name to Dunkin’ Donuts.
The chain began to spread across the Greater Boston Area. 19 years after its founding, the company went public. In 1989, Dunkin’ Donuts was acquired by Allied-Lyons who happened to own Baskin Robbins–coffee and ice cream once again married, this time corporately.
Not too long after the merger, a second major coffee entrepreneur in Boston, George Howell founder of the Coffee Connection, invented the Frappuccino. This coffee milk-shake (In Boston, a frappe) catapulted cold and creamy coffee beverages into the spotlight. Starbucks would buy out his company in 1994, but the Bostonian origins of the drink are undeniable.
Shortly after, Dunkin’ responded with the Coolatta. These cool drinks would mark the beginning of iced coffee’s modern resurgence. At first, milky, sweet, and even fruity, the iced drink craze soon included black coffee.
By 2010, Dunkin’ was the self-proclaimed number one retailer of iced coffee in America. In 2011, the same year Dunkin’ introduced the oxymoronic frozen hot chocolate, their Chef Global Marketing & Innovation Officer noted the importance of the frozen drink market, “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a significant increase in the popularity of our frozen beverages, not just in warm-weather months but all throughout the year.”
A 2018 Vending International report indicated the consumers had collectively downed 20% more iced coffee since 2013. The report estimated that we would be guzzling some 6.6 billion liters of the cool infusion by 2022.
Boston, we are living in the Florence of the current moment’s iced coffee renaissance. In the 1700s, our city’s Founding Fathers chose the drink as more American than tea. In the 1800s, our own Ice King lent the brew a couple of ice cubes. In the 1900s, our beloved local brand rekindled the taste for iced coffee. But today, it is us, Boston, the drinkers of iced coffee, to whom the gargantuan 32 ounce Dunkin’ cup is passed. Take this baton and hurry forth into the next era of our city’s coffee legacy.
Did Boston invent iced coffee? At the very least, we like it more than anybody else.