Vincent Marotta Sr., Who Signed Joe DiMaggio To Mr. Coffee, Dies At 91

Vincent Marotta Sr., a Cleveland-area real estate developer who, with his business partner, two engineers and the smooth-talking Joe DiMaggio, showed America a better way to wake up smelling the coffee, died Saturday in Pepper Pike, Ohio. The force behind Mr. Coffee coffeemakers was 91.

Millennials have no idea of the deprivation their forebears went though before Marotta and his partners paved the way for the democratization of coffee brewing. In the Washington Post, Sarah Kaplan takes us back to 1972 when, unlike now, the options for brewing coffee were limited at best. 

“America was ready for a caffeine revolution. For years, we’d been drinking coffee the same way we had since the early 1800s: from a percolator, which worked by repeatedly forcing boiling water through a chamber full of grounds.” Kaplan writes. “The process was slow, and sometimes resulted in a bitter, burnt-tasting brew, but it was preferable to the only alternative — the bland, granular swill that was instant coffee.”

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No wonder the youth of the day were turning to herbal tea.

“Marotta and his business partner and high school friend Samuel Glazer turned Mr. Coffee into a household name after asking two engineers to create a drip brewing system like those found in restaurants,” reports the AP’s Mark Gillispie. “Marotta came up with the idea after his and Glazer’s construction and shopping center development business were hurt by a slowdown in the real estate market.”

Glazer, who was Marotta’s partner for more than 60 years, died in 2012 at 89.

“Tacit credit also goes to Mr. Marotta’s wife, Ann. For had Mr. Marotta liked her coffee better,” his daughter, Susan Parente, told the New York Times' Margalit Fox Monday, “Mr. Coffee very likely would not have come to be.” 

“By 1979, Forbes reported, the company was generating $150 million in annual sales and held a market share of at least 50% versus rivals like Norelco, General Electric and Proctor-Silex,” Fox writes.

“Much of the brand’s success owed to its ubiquitous television ads featuring Joe DiMaggio. Mr. Marotta, a former pro football player who had also signed with Major League Baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals, personally recruited Mr. DiMaggio; as a result of the campaign, ‘millions of kids grew up thinking Joe DiMaggio was a famous appliance salesman,’ the Columbus Dispatch wrote in 2007.”

“He was a gentleman in every respect and had the mystique from his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. I thought that would give our product a lot of oomph,” Marotta told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2004, Steve Chawkins recounts in the Los Angeles Times.

But DiMaggio, who actually drank Sanka decaffeinated instant coffee because of stomach ulcers, according to several reports, was a reluctant spokesman at first. Marotta refused to accept DiMaggio’s initial refusal over the phone to be the face of the product and flew out to San Francisco with Ann, unbidden, to invite the former Yankee slugger to lunch. DiMaggio met them at the Fairmont.

“A thousand things went through my mind, like a drowning guy. At the end of it, he shook my hand and said, ‘Vince, I believe in you. I'll do it,’” Marotta recalled.

Not that he was as naturally graceful pitching as he was patrolling center field. 

“Having Joe DiMaggio as the pitchman was incredible. They were instructional commercials,’” Glazer's widow, Jeanne, told the Naples News,reports Ed Mazza in The Huffington Post. “Joe showed everyone how to make a cup of coffee. What no one ever knew is that it took Joe 30 takes to make one commercial.”

“Marotta and Glazer sold North American Systems Inc., the company they created in 1972 to manufacture and market Mr. Coffee machines, for $182 million in 1987,” according to the AP. Mr. Coffee is now made and marketed by Sunbeam Products, Inc., doing business as Jarden Consumer Solutions

Marotta is survived by Ann, six children and 11 grandchildren.

“The product-line was rich,” writes Jim Park for the Great Workplace. “The Mr. Coffee ‘Coffee Saver’ was introduced to cut costs at a time when coffee prices had skyrocketed in the economy. Then came the first Thermal Carafe Coffee Maker. Then in 1979, Mr. Coffee started adding the timers. Oh the timers … quite possibly the most wizardry add-on of all add-ons. Then came the four-cup pot in 1985. Wow.”

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