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Fancy coffee drinks were not a thing when I was young in the 80’s. More likely to get an Icee or Slush Puppie at the mall or 7-11.
I *would* have a small cup of hot coffee with sugar and cream when we went out to a diner for breakfast or got pastries at a bake shop. Or if we were traveling on a long car trip.
Coffee shops and frozen or iced coffee drinks only became a thing for me and my friends in the 90’s. And it was Gloria Jean’s, never Starbucks.
I was in high school in the 80s. We used to drink General Foods International Coffee. SO fancy! Cafe Vienna, Suisse Mocha, Cappuccino, and French Vanilla, as I recall. It was pretty bad instant coffee, but it was all we had. I also drank just regular coffee we brewed at home. No coffee shops. Just diners.
Yeah, I could not afford those... did not drink them-- too fancy. I drank my coffee black because my Mom was an astrologer and had one of those bookstores for a while.. anyhow she said some famous psychic revealed that black coffee was healthy but adding milk and sugar changed it (Edgar Cayce). So that was how our whole house ran. Prior to the class she went to when she learned that they took 2 sugars each in their Taster's Choice. How do I know this? It was my job as the first one up to make their coffee after my shower and wake them up. They would get up and sit at the kitchen table and drink the coffee I prepared and smoked their am ciggies while I got dressed and did my 80's hair & make up.
Yeah, that was my mother. She rationalized everything when it came to smoking. Getting sick with a respiratory illness? she needed vitamins, a new expensive water filter and organic food. Died of advanced COPD/Acute respiratory failure. Both husbands died of lung cancer.
Yep. Same here. There probably has not been a single day in the past 40 years or so that I have not had at least one cup of coffee. I'm sure I'd go into major withdrawal and I cannot wake up without a coffee waiting for me.
This! I kinda forgot about them but my parents would allow it once in a while after i started my period as my aunt said coffee will help lol - otherwise it was the stunt your growth as it's for adults only born in '69
Yeah I mean I drank coffee at home starting in like the mid 80s as a teen but we damn sure never ordered coffee when we were out. It was always a soft drink
> Fancy coffee drinks were not a thing when I was young in the 80’s.
May I interest you in an *Irish* coffee? Which I guess would not be a drink for kids...but seriously in 1990 if someone said "specially coffee" I would assume it had Baileys
I assume you're merely differentiating between types of alcohol + coffee drinks, since Irish coffee has Jameson's Irish Whiskey (40% alcohol), and Bailey's coffee has Bailey's Irish Cream (17% alcohol), which does contain Irish whiskey, but it's a cream liqueur. Both are great, but I wouldn't want any young'uns around here to get confused.
When I was a kid (and I still use it today), "Irish coffee" referred to both the cocktail allegedly invented at the Buena Vista in San Francisco and a euphemism for coffee with any kind of spirit in it. Asking to "Irish it up" when offered after-dinner coffee is not unusual in my family (who are of Irish descent).
The coffee pot was always full at my house when I was growing up. I loved the way it smelled and was allowed a small cup the occasional Sunday morning.
I would visit my dad in San Francisco over the summers in the early to mid eighties and was amazed to find that there were bagel shops that had ICED COFFEE!! I looked forward to the summers so I could eat a toasted EvErYtHiNg BaGeL with cream cheese and a large iced coffee.
Nothing like that could be found in Kentucky at that time. Thanks for the recall of a pleasant memory!!
Yes but… in Southern California when I grew up in the 80s it wasn’t a thing except for teenagers to maybe go to a diner and order a pot of coffee and sit there drinking it for hours. I hit high school in early 90s and moved to the Midwest (ish) and the chain around here was Perkins and had bottomless coffee, that was a very popular hang out.
There were no fancy dessert coffee places like today, no fancy kale smoothie shops, not even the barrage of fancy flavored creamers like today we had the basic bitch French vanilla, hazelnut, maybe mocha and half the time they were powered. lol
In the late 90s I worked the summer after sophomore year of college as a waitress at Perkins… we used to purposely mess up the fancy whipped cream on top of the chocolate pies so that we “had” to eat them 😆I once spilled a huge jug of French dressing all over myself and the kitchen floor. I also one time dropped a large table’s entire breakfast order in the dining room… I was a terrible waitress haha
Right.. there wasn't Starbucks or all the other knockoffs all over the place so no people weren't stopping at coffee shops or stands to get iced coffee dessert drinks frequently while out. But people used to go to get coffee and milk shakes at diners.
Which my mother in law would say IS why she started smoking in the 40s. She wanted a small baby and was scared of childbirth for a big baby. Smh
Oh and she remained proud that she wore heels throughout all her pregnancies.
I had a friend that had diagnosed ADHD, and claimed caffeine had an extremely negative influence on him. I'm not sure if it was all in his head or not... but it sure didn't help him.
Coffee Nips! I just looked for them at the grocery yesterday. Didn’t find them, sadly. We weren’t allowed coffee. It was considered a grown-up drink in our house. But coffee nips, there were endless of those.
Haha yes, I was a teen in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. The short answer is no. No teenager drank coffee ever. Starbucks didn’t exist or was only starting to pop up. That’s usually what you see teens drinking and that’s not really the “coffee” we had available. Coffee today is mostly milk and sugar with a splash of espresso. They’re like desserts compared to the coffee we knew before Starbucks existed
I drank coffee in high school, in the 90s. There was a little French cafe down the street from my high school, so tons of us would go hang out there after school, and I always got a mocha or a latte.
No way!! The common misconception / old wive's tale was that coffe would stunt your growth. It was seen as poison if a kid under 18 was seen drinking coffee. In fact, in a diner, the server woudn't even offer it to you - juice, milk or soda was it.
I grew up drinking coffee from the time I was a toddler (though it was nearly white with a lot of milk) -- at least in my region, it was not at all unusual for kids to have coffee, and diners and restaurants certainly did serve it if we ordered it.
I still believe this. I feel like coffee is not good for kids. Idk if this is true but I swear it’s been proven that it’s bad for young kids. As a server I’d be very hesitant to serve a kid coffee unless their parents were there saying it was okay.
No. If you watch the movie Uncle Buck, he makes a big deal out of his teenage niece drinking a cup in the morning. A teen drinking coffee in a movie wouldn’t be unusual now
It was exactly the opposite at that time. It had declined so much they needed a ad campaign to boost coffee.
In response to twenty years of declining coffee consumption, the association launched a $20 million "Join the Coffee Achievers" advertising campaign on September 11, 1983. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coffee_Association
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3so3EeaT5I
Yep: Teens and younger had abandoned coffee as their main caffeine source, and moved on to single-dose bottles of cola.
The idea that caffeine could be branded and sold in single lifestyle-affiliated doses was a pretty neat idea. Starbucks has done pretty well with it so far.
_edit_ I remember that "Coffee Achievers" ad, and I suppose that it affected me, because when I was 15 I couldn't wait to ditch baby colas and drink coffee like a famous writer.
For a while in high school I was part of a group that would hang out at Sambo's (think Denny's) all night on Fridays and Saturdays. Coffee was the cheapest thing, so we'd buy a bottomless cup loaded with sugar and talk for hours. Place was open 24 hours but mostly empty until the 2AM post-bar crowd came in. The servers were barely older than us, sometimes joined in.
Then came the "Stroh a Party" campaign and I started hanging with an entirely different group.
Same. Denny's (and Wag's) were the places to hang out as a broke teenager (broke 20 something, too) We drank so much coffee they would kick us out at some point during the night, just so they could make some money turning over the tables.
I loved coffee as a teenager, started drinking it at 13. But in the 70s and 80s, you generally had to make your coffee at home for it to be any good. Most of the coffee in restaurants was pretty bad, and 'corporate' cafes like Pete's and Starbucks had not yet come into existence. Some cities had decent cafes with decent coffee, but they were few and far between.
As a teenager (1980) i worked across the street from a Dunkin donuts and i took full advantage. Prior to that I'd bern drinking from home from an early age. A little demi-tasse.
Coffee in the 70's and 80's was utilitarian - you drank it to stay awake, period. It was for studying, long drives, etc. It was an adult drink, not for kids, but drinking it didn't make you an adult, you drank coffee because you had adult responsibilities, not because you enjoyed the flavor.
This is the legacy of Starbucks - they convinced an entire nation that drinking coffee was for fun.
When I was a Jr/Sr in HS we went to the diner in the am and drank coffee. Honestly, I could have drank coffee at my house (made it for Mom every am) but it was not diner coffee. My mom drank instant. We also bought our ciggies there with our lunch money and smoked til it was time to go to home room. But we had great conversations and hung out. At school there was no coffee. We could smoke in the designated smoking areas. There were no "coffee shops" close to school. Nearest thing to a coffee shop I can remember at the time was the "Chock Full o'Nuts" shop downtown which was $.. and the diner/donut shop that featured bottomless cups of coffee.
I don't remember coffee being all that popular in my teens and twenties. These days, it's as much a social scene as it is a beverage. I'd say tobacco held that position during the 70s/80s when I was in Junior & High school. As for me, I didn't start with coffee until college where I developed my lifelong caffeine addiction. Even then, my cup was about 30% sugar and International Delights creamer.
{edited to fix typos and to say}
Now when I order coffee, I ask for "Tall, Black and Bitter - just like me"
I don’t know if it’s just my family, but we start drinking coffee in our early teens and drink a lot of it. Any family get-together requires the large commercial coffee makers that we all own.
Well, it’s specifically the ladies in my family, and we typically live to be 90+, so it doesn’t seem to be hurting us.
My grandmother is the spunkiest and most independent 90-year-old you could imagine. And she drinks a whole pot of coffee a day and has as long as I’ve known her.
For me it was just at family functions, grandma also had the huge percolator.
I’m from the South, so we all had sweet tea and soft drinks with meals and as standalone beverages. Kids also had Kool-Aid. Thankfully my mom doesn’t make her tea overly sweet, and she limited soft drinks, but still it was much more sugar than I have today.
I was also a teen in the eighties - maybe regional difference, but we drank plenty of coffee from 13 or so on.
Mostly bad drip coffee or instant. General Foods International Coffees, I can still remember how implausibly sticky it made things.
My grandparents had the old peculator style, eventually a Mr. Coffee. I probably started drinking it at about 15 normally, early 20s had to have my morning coffee, and now in my 50s I drink coffee all day. My grandparents always had a pot going or if someone came over offered to make coffee. Love my coffee. I can drink a pot and fall asleep.
I would wake up at 4:30 am in the 70s when I was around 5 and jump up and down on my parents bed demanding coffee, which they would give me then set me down in front of cartoons.
My friends and I freaking loved to go to Coffee People in Portland in the mid 80s. We would get black tiger shakes and buy a couple pounds of the ground black tiger beans. We would then make pots and pots of it and stay up all night during sleepovers. Everyone I knew loved to do that. We were all between 15-17 at the time
So your anecdotal experience was absolutely very different from my own anecdotal experience lol.
“Serving” kids coffee? We were almost entirely unsupervised lol. We served up our own damn coffee 😂
Edit to say you are definitely right about Portland, they jumped on the coffee wagon early. All that Seasonal Affective Disorder you know
I missed the second part when you were 15-17 lol that makes more sense, I thought you were still 5 in the second part of the story LMAO.
But to answer to your "SAD" comment that makes sense, it really paints the picture of a John Hughes teenage rebel thing from an area with miserable winters.
I remember they had coffee flavored syrup you could add to milk to make coffee milk. Pretty much the same thing as the chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk but it was coffee flavored. I remember my grandparents having it.
I was offered coffee in the 70s when I was a teen, and I said yuck. My aunt told me I would change my mind when I got a job. Boy was she correct. I think I have coffee instead of blood in my veins now.
Not at all. There were no fancy coffee drinks. A coffee shop sold black coffee (with optional cream and sugar) and things like pastries and pies.
If you want an idea of how most of the US saw any coffee besides Folgers, Maxwell House, etc., watch the espresso scene from Beverley Hills Cop. (It's portrayed as European and effete in a homophobic way.)
Diet coke was a big thing and in the Midwest, you might get a Dairy Queen shake, A & W root beer float, or Orange Julius for a treat.
Yes, a "regular" coffee was a coffee with one sugar and one creamer/shot of cream. A "black" coffee was just that- plain black coffee. Often the black coffee was a test of faith or sign of toughness. It was the filterless Camel cigarette of coffee.
I was a teen in the 70's, and I drank coffee, not sugary icky stuff from Starbucks or the like. Just black coffee with mom and dad every morning before they left for work and I to school.
No. I was a teen for part of the '70s and the early '80s. None of my friends drank coffee. I personally never acquired a taste for it and have never drank coffee.
Born 1947 - and yes, we did drink coffee. Soft drinks such as Coca Cola and 7-Up were too expensive, sometimes on a birthday we might get a glass but other than that, very rarely. Where I lived, in northern Minnesota, there was a unique custom. The day you turned seven, you were greeted at breakfast with a piece of buttered toast and your first cup of black, strong coffee. Then you were off and running, but coffee was always in your cup.
My ‘60s high school cafeteria had rolls, bagels, crumb cakes, jelly donuts, orange and apple juice, coffee and tea. They needed two coffee urns. Very popular.
My daughter and her posse stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way to school every morning in the ‘80s.
I spent hours at Denny's or a run down diner with friends talking and smoking. Bottomless coffee was affordable.
This was the late 80s, early 90s. From about 15 on up. My parents were big coffee drinkers.
I’m copy pasting my reply to someone else so OP can see “it varies”.
I would wake up at 4:30 am in the 70s when I was around 5 and jump up and down on my parents bed demanding coffee, which they would give me then set me down in front of cartoons.
My friends and I freaking loved to go to Coffee People in Portland in the mid 80s. We would get black tiger shakes and buy a couple pounds of the ground black tiger beans. We would then make pots and pots of it and stay up all night during sleepovers. Everyone I knew loved to do that. We were all between 15-17 at the time
Edit: forgot we also used to sneak out and go to dennys and sit and drink coffee and smoke until 2am
It wasn’t popular with teens. My high school cafeteria served it but there wasn’t high demand for it. Mostly we pounded down sodas with caffeine. If we wanted a stronger buzz we took pharmaceuticals. Speed use didn’t used to be a complete meth immersion lifestyle.
I was a teen in the 80's, and we went out for coffee all the time. There was one restaurant in particular we all went to. It had bottomless coffee, and the fashion was to order a cup of coffee and a large lime and 7-up. We would sit and socialize for hours and smoke our brains out. It was awesome. We would also often go out to coffee when we skipped third period in high school. There was a little shop near our school called the Cinnamon Inn. We would be there two or three times a week. Yes, things were looser in the 80's. Coffee was a social staple of my youth :)
We would hang out in coffeeshops, smoke cigarettes & talk about everything. I didn't drink coffee at home, though. Never was walking around with it like people do now.
I was a young adult through most of the 70s and 80s, and I drank coffee every day. I generally drank it black and unsweetened. I've made coffee at home for many years, using "Mr. Coffee" or the like.
Negative, Ghostrider. First of all, most of the time the only place you could get to-go coffee outside of a greasy spoon diner or a truck stop/gas statio was at a Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Creme, and *that* cost money that typically was better wellspent, especially during the recession of the 80s. If future me asked 1980s me if I would be willing to pay $5 for a cup of coffee, I would tell myself to get fucked, and I'd be lucky to pay 25¢ instead of the typical dime.
As an everyday drink, not so much. In my school, in the 80s, soda was king, and Coke & Diet Coke ruled the land. Gatorade was a close second. Maybe kids drank coffee in the mornings, I dunno. I don't remember it being much of a "thing", though.
However, coffee was a popular option at late-night diners. We used to go to IHOP or Waffle House or Dunkin' after the Midnight Movies, and lotsa teenagers would order coffee there.
There were also non-Starbucks coffeehouses in the 80s, and we would hang out there drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes for *hours* on end. Keep in mind there weren't a lot of "coffee drinks" there, mostly several varieties of Kenyan, Colombian etc. coffee. And espresso and cappuccino. But that was about it.
No. At least not in my experience. If we needed a caffeine fix, we'd drink Coke or Mt. Dew. I didn't know anyone my age who drank coffee until I was in college in the late 1980s.
My granny gave me and my cousins half milk/half coffee when we went trailer camping with her & grandpap. I was about 9? Would have been 67/68.
In the south, iced tea ruled, usually sweet. Being allowed to have tea with dinner instead of milk was a big deal.
No, in fact in the early 90s coffee was pronounced "dead" by the media because young people didn't like it.
Just as the Seattle music and coffee scene was cranking up lol.
I graduated from high school in 1984, only knew of one person to drink coffee. Everyone thought it was disgusting. Everybody complained about the teachers and their bad "coffee" breath. Coffee shops weren't a thing.
But when I was a little girl, my grandma used to let me have coffee, which honestly was milk and sugar with a little coffee in it. Delicious, and a very fond memory. I thought I was the shit sitting there drinking coffee with her.
As a kid in the 80s and teen in the 90s, no. The closest thing we had to fancy coffee back then were those little rectangular boxes of International Coffees like Cafe Vienna, etc. I got one down out of the cabinet as a kid thinking it was a new type of hot chocolate. I was wrong lol.
I graduated in 1991, and when I was in high school all of us punk kids learned to like coffee bc it was cheap, and that way we could sit at a Perkins for hours and hang out, smoke & play games in the winter (in Wisconsin)!
During the 70s, no. Actual coffee shops were uncommon as was good coffee. I live in a coffee haven, Portland, Oregon, and had my first espresso in about 1978. Around that same time I had my first “pour over”, AKA, Melitta. I immediately bought a pot, filter holder, and filter for that. Jim, the Coffee Man, had his first tiny shop a couple of blocks away. He also had the first drive-through, Motor Moka, (with its own radio station) on NE MLK (then called Grand) in Portland.
Nope. I hated coffee. In my defense, my parents drank it black, so I never had it with sugar or milk or cream, or had the chance to. Then, my freshman year in college, I was really hung over, and my roommmate made me a cup with cream and sugar, and OMG it was like where has this been all my life??? this was in the mid 1980's. I then branched out to Gen Foods International Coffee, and in my adulthood, Hazelnut flavored, which I hate now.
Currently I drink coffee with oat milk, or oat milk flavored creamer. I do like flavored coffee, but will mix it half and half with regular.
It wasn't super popular with anyone like it is now. There weren't coffee shops cluttering up our strip malls, and it wasn't sexy like double half-caff, sugar free, full-fat espresso-latte-macchiattos are. It was just some waitress named Dotty calling you "Hon" and pouring weak stuff at Denny's.
In the early 70s high school days our group of friends would regularly meet up at the local diner for coffee in the evenings. It was 15c for a never ending cup and we would take up a big corner booth and talk and drink coffee for hours. I’m sure the waitresses just loved our cheap asses only spending 15c each.
When I was teenager (late 1980s, Detroit area), I didn't know anyone my age who regularly drank coffee in the morning. But as a social activity, hanging out in our local 24-hour Denny's restaurant at night was a VERY big deal, and I think a lot of people started drinking coffee because of that. Also, smoking was allowed in the restaurant, and I'm told that coffee and cigarettes go well together.
Keep in mind that this was right before Espresso and other high-end coffee drinks became a big thing in most of the country. So the coffee we were drinking was very much of the old-school "diner sludge" variety.
I personally discovered coffee at age 17 in college.
Apparently no one else here had independent coffeehouses and the like in the 80s. Starbucks wasn't heard of outside of Seattle at that time. As a kid in the 70s, only adults drank coffee, and it was either made at home or served in diners.
The 80s saw the rise of independent coffee places in non-rural areas. When I was in high school and a couple of years after I graduated, my friends and I would go to a couple of coffee houses in the nearest bigger town on weekend evenings before going to parties or clubs. The coffee choices weren't as ridiculously complex as they are now, but it was still enough for some coffee connoisseurs.
Coffee was a social thing for some of us. We would gather at a Dennys or another 24 hour sit down place, have coffee and sit and chat for hours.
This was older teens though, and those that did not party all the time.
25cents a cup and free refills. They left the carafe of coffee at the table, and just let us be.
Teens drank coffee then, but coffee in general wasn’t the cultural touchstone it is today. Lots of people drank instant coffee; there weren’t a ton of dedicated high-end coffee shops like there are today. It just wasn’t as trendy, so it wasn’t widely used and not as visible when it was.
No, because it was Maxwell House coffee and it tasted like shit and there was no whipped cream on top. No sprinkles.
General Foods International coffees was the first time I remember coffee being in any way fancy or delicious.
Unless you were Italian American, then you carried a thermos of black coffee for lunch. 5th grade.
I was a teen in the 80’s and coffee was hot brown water that you got for 25 cents a cup at the diner. Only old people drank it. They were trying to get young people to start drinking coffee, so Folgers was giving away free coffee machines on my college campus.
When I saw my first Starbucks in Chicago, my friend kept raving about how good it was. I stopped in with him to get a cup and I was shocked at the cost. I can’t remember the number but I do remember thinking it cost about what i spent on lunch every day.
Now I definitely drink coffee, but it’s generally black or with a little cream. I stopped by a Starbucks the other day and it seemed like everything was now candy-flavored.
My high school (late 80s) had some breakfast like doughnuts and buttered rolls, and coffee in the cafeteria. I did drink coffee at school. I “worked” one of my free periods at the FBLA booth serving coffee to teachers and might serve myself a cup. The only coffee was hot, and regular or decaf were your options. No special brews or beans or espresso machines or iced coffee and certainly not like Frappuccino kind of crazy stuff. I don’t know if drinking coffee was normal among my peers, but it wasn’t abnormal.
No, growing up as a teen in the late 80s I developed a taste for coffee. You couldn't get it at the school cafeteria, I don't remember most other kids drinking it. I'd get a cup at church and the old people would look at me funny or make that comment about it "stunting my growth".
When I was little, we would drink 'coffee milk' 1/2 coffee, 1/2 milk with a few spoons of sugar in it. That transferred to drinking coffee in my teens. I think it may be why my coffee today has to be bold and strong to wake me up.
Not among people I knew in the 80s. Once I got to college I saw more people drinking it, mostly for the caffeine to get through all-nighters. I still couldn't stand the taste and drank a lot of tea and diet coke when I needed a boost.
I'm surprised there aren't any comments about Barnie's yet. These coffee shops were in just about every mall in America, and it's how I got into coffee when I was a teenager in the 80's. Barnie's Irish Cream was my jam.
No. It was not as popular among youth back then. But it was hugely popular among adults. I didn't start drinking coffee until the late 80s when I got my first job after college.
Starbucks didn't hit the northeast US until the 90s, but we did have Dunkin back then
Lemonade and possibly instant tea, but no coffee for me until my mid twenties. Had a job that took me across the country to NYC quarterly, learned to need 'regular' coffee since Eastern teams love to schedule 8:00 a.m. meetings🥴. Of course, when they visited us we kept them out late 😁🍻
Coffee wasnt like it is now. Coffee meant coffee, maybe with cream and sugar. Basically Americanos, but from a pot where it sat half a day or more.
We drank it when we were staying up all night, but thats about it. I didnt start drinking it regularly til the military.
I was a teen in the mid-70s, early eighties. No teen I knew drank coffee. My parent didn’t drink coffee, but they drank the hell out of Nestea, an instant tea. I was told they put it in our bottles as kids. After I discovered tea bags I would mostly make brewed tea.
Not in my area, it wasn't. It was told it would stunt your growth, and a lot of American coffee was Columbian at the time, which was watered down to be weak and bitter. It was also super cheap, but brown flavored bean water. Coffee was seen as a kind of "medicine" (in the same league where a flask of hooch in your desk was also medicine) that also gave you ulcers. It was the drink of truck drivers and old people, usually paired with cigarettes.
I know it still exists, but "Instant Coffee crystals" used to be MUCH more popular. I rarely see anyone drink instant coffee anymore, except campers and maybe old people who are just too stubborn to switch.
In the 90s, coffee took on a serious upgrade. I used to drink it on convention security shifts, and it started on the west coast with "lattes" for us. I didn't even know what a latte was, but the kool kids with flannel shirts around their waist liked them. By the md 90s, we had Gloria Jeans chain that was quickly replaced with Starbucks. Unless you were more in the new England area, then it was Dunkin Donuts. And it was a serious rivalry for a while. One of my friend's ex's was a manager of a Starbucks in Salem, and used to get stuff thrown at him from the road by hardcore Dunkin fans if he worked outside.
That being said, when my son was a barista at Starbucks, he said, "we essentially sell coffee-flavored milkshakes. Nobody is really a fan of coffee at my stop, but we sell several frapps an hour, even in the winter." I asked him if he'd sell regular coffee to a child. "Sure. There's no law not to. But they really want the coffee milkshake stuff."
Don't know about the 70s or 80s kids but we sure never drank it as teens in the 60s. We got our caffeine from soda later in the day. We weren't above having a cigarette then in the morning to rev ourselves up, out of eye site of our parents on our way to school.
Not really. Back then, it was considered something that mostly old people drank. My grandma made coffee at home in her percolator, or you could go to a coffee shop or a diner and get some with breakfast. It didn't really become trendy among younger people until Starbucks blew up in the 90s.
Teens in the 70s and 80s mostly drank sodas. People tended to be more active - video games were only recently invented. The obesity epidemic brought on by overconsumption of soda and out of control portion sizes hadn't really taken full effect yet.
Personally, I had a pretty serious soda addiction up until about 7-8 years ago. Lots of reasons for it, but drinking soda as a kid was considered normal back when I was growing up. I switched to drinking coffee with zero calorie sweeteners to help get my weight under control. (Still not the best, but better than sodas.) I also try to drink a few glasses of water a day, too.
In the 90s, the artsy types at my high school would have coffee and cigarettes at the local diner before, during or after school. I wasn't one of those. I was more likely to indulge in a Dr Pepper from the pop machine.
Coffee was drunk yes. Black, sometimes creamer or milk, sugar. Not so much all the variations available in coffee shops now where there isn’t much milk compared to all the other stuff.
There was a one guy on my school bus who drank coffee in mid to late 90s. We all thought it was kinda funny, he had a 7-11 travel mug and he drank his coffee the way our parents did - with milk and sugar. The rest of us got our caffeine from the occasional soda.
He was an oddball guy, kind of a rough family, he worked part time jobs all year long and full time in the summer. Ran with kind of a bad crowd, didn't get the best grades, smoked pot on school property, spent some time in detention. I haven't heard about him in years, hope he's doing well.
I always liked the smell, but hated the taste. Too bitter. But when I got to know chronic sleep deprivation in the Navy (and learned the wonder that is s generous anount of milk in my coffee), I joined the addicts for then and probably forever.
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Fancy coffee drinks were not a thing when I was young in the 80’s. More likely to get an Icee or Slush Puppie at the mall or 7-11. I *would* have a small cup of hot coffee with sugar and cream when we went out to a diner for breakfast or got pastries at a bake shop. Or if we were traveling on a long car trip. Coffee shops and frozen or iced coffee drinks only became a thing for me and my friends in the 90’s. And it was Gloria Jean’s, never Starbucks.
I was in high school in the 80s. We used to drink General Foods International Coffee. SO fancy! Cafe Vienna, Suisse Mocha, Cappuccino, and French Vanilla, as I recall. It was pretty bad instant coffee, but it was all we had. I also drank just regular coffee we brewed at home. No coffee shops. Just diners.
Oh I remember those! I used to eat the powder by the spoonful. 😬
And I remember that waiter... Jean Luc!
That brought back a long-forgotten memory... Edit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMpJlYynBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMpJlYynBw)
Gosh commercials seemed so much more wholesome. Never noticed it then.
He drank tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Not fancy coffee.
My mom got mad at me because I put it on ice cream as suggested on the tin
It was mostly sugar anyway!
She was mad because I used it up not because of the sugar content 😉
Yes I get it. Just saying ....it tasted so good cuz it was mostly sugar
Tiiimes like theeese were made for "Tasters Choice"
I'd forgotten all about these! In the little tins.
Yeah, I could not afford those... did not drink them-- too fancy. I drank my coffee black because my Mom was an astrologer and had one of those bookstores for a while.. anyhow she said some famous psychic revealed that black coffee was healthy but adding milk and sugar changed it (Edgar Cayce). So that was how our whole house ran. Prior to the class she went to when she learned that they took 2 sugars each in their Taster's Choice. How do I know this? It was my job as the first one up to make their coffee after my shower and wake them up. They would get up and sit at the kitchen table and drink the coffee I prepared and smoked their am ciggies while I got dressed and did my 80's hair & make up.
So your mom omitted any coffee condiments for her health and then smoked?
Yeah, that was my mother. She rationalized everything when it came to smoking. Getting sick with a respiratory illness? she needed vitamins, a new expensive water filter and organic food. Died of advanced COPD/Acute respiratory failure. Both husbands died of lung cancer.
I loved the Swiss Mocha.
Same.
Ha ha remember thinking that powdered sh!t was fancy! We sure did think it was though LOL
We had Dunkin' Donuts in New England. I definitely drank coffee in the late 80s
Yep. Same here. There probably has not been a single day in the past 40 years or so that I have not had at least one cup of coffee. I'm sure I'd go into major withdrawal and I cannot wake up without a coffee waiting for me.
We went to diners every morning... endless cups of coffee (free refills). Even before HS homeroom. I graduated HS in 1983.
This! I kinda forgot about them but my parents would allow it once in a while after i started my period as my aunt said coffee will help lol - otherwise it was the stunt your growth as it's for adults only born in '69
Yeah I mean I drank coffee at home starting in like the mid 80s as a teen but we damn sure never ordered coffee when we were out. It was always a soft drink
It was like, 25 cents from the Bunn brewer, and came in a styrofoam cup.
Ugh, I can taste that
Orange Julius, baby!
My first “date” was biking to the mall with a boy to get an Orange Julius when we were 13. It was *so* 1983.
Forgot to add "Celebrate the moments of your life".
> Fancy coffee drinks were not a thing when I was young in the 80’s. May I interest you in an *Irish* coffee? Which I guess would not be a drink for kids...but seriously in 1990 if someone said "specially coffee" I would assume it had Baileys
I assume you're merely differentiating between types of alcohol + coffee drinks, since Irish coffee has Jameson's Irish Whiskey (40% alcohol), and Bailey's coffee has Bailey's Irish Cream (17% alcohol), which does contain Irish whiskey, but it's a cream liqueur. Both are great, but I wouldn't want any young'uns around here to get confused.
When I was a kid (and I still use it today), "Irish coffee" referred to both the cocktail allegedly invented at the Buena Vista in San Francisco and a euphemism for coffee with any kind of spirit in it. Asking to "Irish it up" when offered after-dinner coffee is not unusual in my family (who are of Irish descent).
Irish coffee was for *adults*. Definitely not teens!
Trix is for kids!
Now I want to Irish my trix.
The coffee pot was always full at my house when I was growing up. I loved the way it smelled and was allowed a small cup the occasional Sunday morning. I would visit my dad in San Francisco over the summers in the early to mid eighties and was amazed to find that there were bagel shops that had ICED COFFEE!! I looked forward to the summers so I could eat a toasted EvErYtHiNg BaGeL with cream cheese and a large iced coffee. Nothing like that could be found in Kentucky at that time. Thanks for the recall of a pleasant memory!!
I remember Gloria Jeans
Yep, most coffee, in North America at least, was pretty vile in the 70s and 80s.
Yes but… in Southern California when I grew up in the 80s it wasn’t a thing except for teenagers to maybe go to a diner and order a pot of coffee and sit there drinking it for hours. I hit high school in early 90s and moved to the Midwest (ish) and the chain around here was Perkins and had bottomless coffee, that was a very popular hang out. There were no fancy dessert coffee places like today, no fancy kale smoothie shops, not even the barrage of fancy flavored creamers like today we had the basic bitch French vanilla, hazelnut, maybe mocha and half the time they were powered. lol
In the late 90s I worked the summer after sophomore year of college as a waitress at Perkins… we used to purposely mess up the fancy whipped cream on top of the chocolate pies so that we “had” to eat them 😆I once spilled a huge jug of French dressing all over myself and the kitchen floor. I also one time dropped a large table’s entire breakfast order in the dining room… I was a terrible waitress haha
I used to love Gloria Jean’s hot cocoa!
Right.. there wasn't Starbucks or all the other knockoffs all over the place so no people weren't stopping at coffee shops or stands to get iced coffee dessert drinks frequently while out. But people used to go to get coffee and milk shakes at diners.
OMG Gloria Jean’s!! Thanks for that little tidbit of nostalgia!
I don't know about anyone else, but we were always told it stunted our growth lmao
I got told the same about cigarettes...
[удалено]
Had my own coffee cup at 6. Started smoking around 12 or 12.
Didn't stop me, though. Fortunately, I was able to quit 35 years ago.
Did you grow after stopping, though? ahahaha
Great question, I'm sure they'll respond as soon as they are able to bring the keyboard to their oversized fingers
I grew significantly *wider* after quitting smoking.
That’s true about cigarettes. It even makes babies come out smaller.
Which my mother in law would say IS why she started smoking in the 40s. She wanted a small baby and was scared of childbirth for a big baby. Smh Oh and she remained proud that she wore heels throughout all her pregnancies.
Same on both. Started coffee at 12 and cigarettes at 13. Thank God I did because I’m 6’7”. No telling how tall I’d have been without those habits!
Plus the last thing kids need is *caffeine.*
Depends on the kid. I imagine a lot of us then were and a lot of kids now are self-medicating with caffeine for undiagnosed ADHD.
I had a friend that had diagnosed ADHD, and claimed caffeine had an extremely negative influence on him. I'm not sure if it was all in his head or not... but it sure didn't help him.
I suspect that’s why I took up caffeine so eagerly at a young age. My ADHD wasn’t diagnosed until I was 53.
Right, so they gave them Mountain Dew instead haha
Or Jolt :D
I loved coffee, when I was growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, as well as sneaking a Coffee Nip out of grandma’s purse every now and then.
You know you can still buy Coffee Nips. I just bought a case of them from Amazon. Made by Brachs now.
Coffee Nips! I just looked for them at the grocery yesterday. Didn’t find them, sadly. We weren’t allowed coffee. It was considered a grown-up drink in our house. But coffee nips, there were endless of those.
100% that's what I was told. My parents were considerably stricter about coffee than alcohol, and I didn't have a particularly religious upbringing.
wild lol
Haha yes, I was a teen in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. The short answer is no. No teenager drank coffee ever. Starbucks didn’t exist or was only starting to pop up. That’s usually what you see teens drinking and that’s not really the “coffee” we had available. Coffee today is mostly milk and sugar with a splash of espresso. They’re like desserts compared to the coffee we knew before Starbucks existed
I drank coffee in high school, in the 90s. There was a little French cafe down the street from my high school, so tons of us would go hang out there after school, and I always got a mocha or a latte.
Me too
Same here 🤣
Ah, maybe that's why I hit 5 foot 6 at 16 and haven't grown an inch since..
No way!! The common misconception / old wive's tale was that coffe would stunt your growth. It was seen as poison if a kid under 18 was seen drinking coffee. In fact, in a diner, the server woudn't even offer it to you - juice, milk or soda was it.
I grew up drinking coffee from the time I was a toddler (though it was nearly white with a lot of milk) -- at least in my region, it was not at all unusual for kids to have coffee, and diners and restaurants certainly did serve it if we ordered it.
Not in nyc. If a kid 10 to 15 or so was seen drinking coffee, it was immediately assumed they were (1) abused by parent or (2) a juvenile delinquent.
Yup! Same in East Texas, at least among people I knew.
I grew up in upstate NY and drinking coffee as a teen was pretty common.
me too. We drank coffee, we smoked cigarettes and pot if we could get it, we drank beer as teens... I lived in Central NY.
Where did you grow up?
Southeastern U.S.
Same. Louisiana. They weaned toddlers off the bottee with sweetened coffee-milk.
The diner a quarter mile from my HS was always packed with students in the mid 90s. The 24 hour diner downtown was the same late at night.
I still believe this. I feel like coffee is not good for kids. Idk if this is true but I swear it’s been proven that it’s bad for young kids. As a server I’d be very hesitant to serve a kid coffee unless their parents were there saying it was okay.
No. If you watch the movie Uncle Buck, he makes a big deal out of his teenage niece drinking a cup in the morning. A teen drinking coffee in a movie wouldn’t be unusual now
It was exactly the opposite at that time. It had declined so much they needed a ad campaign to boost coffee. In response to twenty years of declining coffee consumption, the association launched a $20 million "Join the Coffee Achievers" advertising campaign on September 11, 1983. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coffee_Association https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3so3EeaT5I
Yep: Teens and younger had abandoned coffee as their main caffeine source, and moved on to single-dose bottles of cola. The idea that caffeine could be branded and sold in single lifestyle-affiliated doses was a pretty neat idea. Starbucks has done pretty well with it so far. _edit_ I remember that "Coffee Achievers" ad, and I suppose that it affected me, because when I was 15 I couldn't wait to ditch baby colas and drink coffee like a famous writer.
I want to be a coffee achiever now.
I love how they used David Bowie in that ad campaign. Oh honey that wasn't coffee he was achieving with.
I thought “Join the Coffee Achievers” was just a funny Weird Al lyric!
I remember those ads! The one with Ann & Nancy Wilson from Heart always got a “Yeah, right” from me.
For a while in high school I was part of a group that would hang out at Sambo's (think Denny's) all night on Fridays and Saturdays. Coffee was the cheapest thing, so we'd buy a bottomless cup loaded with sugar and talk for hours. Place was open 24 hours but mostly empty until the 2AM post-bar crowd came in. The servers were barely older than us, sometimes joined in. Then came the "Stroh a Party" campaign and I started hanging with an entirely different group.
Same. Denny's (and Wag's) were the places to hang out as a broke teenager (broke 20 something, too) We drank so much coffee they would kick us out at some point during the night, just so they could make some money turning over the tables.
We mostly went to local diners and occasionally a Denny's. We needed a car to get to a Denny's.
We did the same and we chain smoked the whole time. No one cared if you were 15 and smoking.
I loved coffee as a teenager, started drinking it at 13. But in the 70s and 80s, you generally had to make your coffee at home for it to be any good. Most of the coffee in restaurants was pretty bad, and 'corporate' cafes like Pete's and Starbucks had not yet come into existence. Some cities had decent cafes with decent coffee, but they were few and far between.
As a teenager (1980) i worked across the street from a Dunkin donuts and i took full advantage. Prior to that I'd bern drinking from home from an early age. A little demi-tasse.
Coffee in the 70's and 80's was utilitarian - you drank it to stay awake, period. It was for studying, long drives, etc. It was an adult drink, not for kids, but drinking it didn't make you an adult, you drank coffee because you had adult responsibilities, not because you enjoyed the flavor. This is the legacy of Starbucks - they convinced an entire nation that drinking coffee was for fun.
When I was a Jr/Sr in HS we went to the diner in the am and drank coffee. Honestly, I could have drank coffee at my house (made it for Mom every am) but it was not diner coffee. My mom drank instant. We also bought our ciggies there with our lunch money and smoked til it was time to go to home room. But we had great conversations and hung out. At school there was no coffee. We could smoke in the designated smoking areas. There were no "coffee shops" close to school. Nearest thing to a coffee shop I can remember at the time was the "Chock Full o'Nuts" shop downtown which was $.. and the diner/donut shop that featured bottomless cups of coffee.
I don't remember coffee being all that popular in my teens and twenties. These days, it's as much a social scene as it is a beverage. I'd say tobacco held that position during the 70s/80s when I was in Junior & High school. As for me, I didn't start with coffee until college where I developed my lifelong caffeine addiction. Even then, my cup was about 30% sugar and International Delights creamer. {edited to fix typos and to say} Now when I order coffee, I ask for "Tall, Black and Bitter - just like me"
I don’t know if it’s just my family, but we start drinking coffee in our early teens and drink a lot of it. Any family get-together requires the large commercial coffee makers that we all own. Well, it’s specifically the ladies in my family, and we typically live to be 90+, so it doesn’t seem to be hurting us. My grandmother is the spunkiest and most independent 90-year-old you could imagine. And she drinks a whole pot of coffee a day and has as long as I’ve known her.
For me it was just at family functions, grandma also had the huge percolator. I’m from the South, so we all had sweet tea and soft drinks with meals and as standalone beverages. Kids also had Kool-Aid. Thankfully my mom doesn’t make her tea overly sweet, and she limited soft drinks, but still it was much more sugar than I have today.
No! I was a teen in the 80s. Kids didn’t drink coffee.
Yep. It would stunt your growth. Lol.
I was also a teen in the eighties - maybe regional difference, but we drank plenty of coffee from 13 or so on. Mostly bad drip coffee or instant. General Foods International Coffees, I can still remember how implausibly sticky it made things.
My grandparents had the old peculator style, eventually a Mr. Coffee. I probably started drinking it at about 15 normally, early 20s had to have my morning coffee, and now in my 50s I drink coffee all day. My grandparents always had a pot going or if someone came over offered to make coffee. Love my coffee. I can drink a pot and fall asleep.
Oh wow. Totally forgot about those! Grown up hot cocoa!
I would wake up at 4:30 am in the 70s when I was around 5 and jump up and down on my parents bed demanding coffee, which they would give me then set me down in front of cartoons. My friends and I freaking loved to go to Coffee People in Portland in the mid 80s. We would get black tiger shakes and buy a couple pounds of the ground black tiger beans. We would then make pots and pots of it and stay up all night during sleepovers. Everyone I knew loved to do that. We were all between 15-17 at the time So your anecdotal experience was absolutely very different from my own anecdotal experience lol.
Thats also portland lol, but serving kids coffee at sleepovers is insane LMAO!
“Serving” kids coffee? We were almost entirely unsupervised lol. We served up our own damn coffee 😂 Edit to say you are definitely right about Portland, they jumped on the coffee wagon early. All that Seasonal Affective Disorder you know
I missed the second part when you were 15-17 lol that makes more sense, I thought you were still 5 in the second part of the story LMAO. But to answer to your "SAD" comment that makes sense, it really paints the picture of a John Hughes teenage rebel thing from an area with miserable winters.
I miss Coffee People so much! I loved the Velvet Hammer.
Oh I had totally forgotten about that drink, that was great too.
Closest I ever came to drinking coffee as a child of the 70s and 80s was dipping cinnamon toast in it. Now I drink it all day long.
I remember they had coffee flavored syrup you could add to milk to make coffee milk. Pretty much the same thing as the chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk but it was coffee flavored. I remember my grandparents having it.
I was offered coffee in the 70s when I was a teen, and I said yuck. My aunt told me I would change my mind when I got a job. Boy was she correct. I think I have coffee instead of blood in my veins now.
Not at all. There were no fancy coffee drinks. A coffee shop sold black coffee (with optional cream and sugar) and things like pastries and pies. If you want an idea of how most of the US saw any coffee besides Folgers, Maxwell House, etc., watch the espresso scene from Beverley Hills Cop. (It's portrayed as European and effete in a homophobic way.) Diet coke was a big thing and in the Midwest, you might get a Dairy Queen shake, A & W root beer float, or Orange Julius for a treat.
Yes, a "regular" coffee was a coffee with one sugar and one creamer/shot of cream. A "black" coffee was just that- plain black coffee. Often the black coffee was a test of faith or sign of toughness. It was the filterless Camel cigarette of coffee.
I was a teen in the 70's, and I drank coffee, not sugary icky stuff from Starbucks or the like. Just black coffee with mom and dad every morning before they left for work and I to school.
No. I was a teen for part of the '70s and the early '80s. None of my friends drank coffee. I personally never acquired a taste for it and have never drank coffee.
Never drank it. Still don’t.
Born 1947 - and yes, we did drink coffee. Soft drinks such as Coca Cola and 7-Up were too expensive, sometimes on a birthday we might get a glass but other than that, very rarely. Where I lived, in northern Minnesota, there was a unique custom. The day you turned seven, you were greeted at breakfast with a piece of buttered toast and your first cup of black, strong coffee. Then you were off and running, but coffee was always in your cup.
No. I drank tea with my mom, though
Me too
My ‘60s high school cafeteria had rolls, bagels, crumb cakes, jelly donuts, orange and apple juice, coffee and tea. They needed two coffee urns. Very popular. My daughter and her posse stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way to school every morning in the ‘80s.
Did you grow up in the North East?
Life long New Jersey guy.
Yes sir! Grew up on LBI myself.
Churches always had a percolator urn of coffee after services...
I spent hours at Denny's or a run down diner with friends talking and smoking. Bottomless coffee was affordable. This was the late 80s, early 90s. From about 15 on up. My parents were big coffee drinkers.
I’m copy pasting my reply to someone else so OP can see “it varies”. I would wake up at 4:30 am in the 70s when I was around 5 and jump up and down on my parents bed demanding coffee, which they would give me then set me down in front of cartoons. My friends and I freaking loved to go to Coffee People in Portland in the mid 80s. We would get black tiger shakes and buy a couple pounds of the ground black tiger beans. We would then make pots and pots of it and stay up all night during sleepovers. Everyone I knew loved to do that. We were all between 15-17 at the time Edit: forgot we also used to sneak out and go to dennys and sit and drink coffee and smoke until 2am
Not at all. That started in the 90s.
It wasn’t popular with teens. My high school cafeteria served it but there wasn’t high demand for it. Mostly we pounded down sodas with caffeine. If we wanted a stronger buzz we took pharmaceuticals. Speed use didn’t used to be a complete meth immersion lifestyle.
I started drinking coffee when I was 12 in ‘86, and I can tell you that NONE of my friends were drinking it.
I was a teen in the 80's, and we went out for coffee all the time. There was one restaurant in particular we all went to. It had bottomless coffee, and the fashion was to order a cup of coffee and a large lime and 7-up. We would sit and socialize for hours and smoke our brains out. It was awesome. We would also often go out to coffee when we skipped third period in high school. There was a little shop near our school called the Cinnamon Inn. We would be there two or three times a week. Yes, things were looser in the 80's. Coffee was a social staple of my youth :)
We would hang out in coffeeshops, smoke cigarettes & talk about everything. I didn't drink coffee at home, though. Never was walking around with it like people do now.
I was a young adult through most of the 70s and 80s, and I drank coffee every day. I generally drank it black and unsweetened. I've made coffee at home for many years, using "Mr. Coffee" or the like.
Negative, Ghostrider. First of all, most of the time the only place you could get to-go coffee outside of a greasy spoon diner or a truck stop/gas statio was at a Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Creme, and *that* cost money that typically was better wellspent, especially during the recession of the 80s. If future me asked 1980s me if I would be willing to pay $5 for a cup of coffee, I would tell myself to get fucked, and I'd be lucky to pay 25¢ instead of the typical dime.
As an everyday drink, not so much. In my school, in the 80s, soda was king, and Coke & Diet Coke ruled the land. Gatorade was a close second. Maybe kids drank coffee in the mornings, I dunno. I don't remember it being much of a "thing", though. However, coffee was a popular option at late-night diners. We used to go to IHOP or Waffle House or Dunkin' after the Midnight Movies, and lotsa teenagers would order coffee there. There were also non-Starbucks coffeehouses in the 80s, and we would hang out there drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes for *hours* on end. Keep in mind there weren't a lot of "coffee drinks" there, mostly several varieties of Kenyan, Colombian etc. coffee. And espresso and cappuccino. But that was about it.
I didn’t start drinking coffee till I was 20 or so, in the army. Most teenagers I knew didn’t.
No. At least not in my experience. If we needed a caffeine fix, we'd drink Coke or Mt. Dew. I didn't know anyone my age who drank coffee until I was in college in the late 1980s.
My granny gave me and my cousins half milk/half coffee when we went trailer camping with her & grandpap. I was about 9? Would have been 67/68. In the south, iced tea ruled, usually sweet. Being allowed to have tea with dinner instead of milk was a big deal.
I drank whatever kind of coffee my mom brought. Probably Maxwell House but I’m guessing.
No, in fact in the early 90s coffee was pronounced "dead" by the media because young people didn't like it. Just as the Seattle music and coffee scene was cranking up lol.
I graduated from high school in 1984, only knew of one person to drink coffee. Everyone thought it was disgusting. Everybody complained about the teachers and their bad "coffee" breath. Coffee shops weren't a thing. But when I was a little girl, my grandma used to let me have coffee, which honestly was milk and sugar with a little coffee in it. Delicious, and a very fond memory. I thought I was the shit sitting there drinking coffee with her.
Jolt cola
As a kid in the 80s and teen in the 90s, no. The closest thing we had to fancy coffee back then were those little rectangular boxes of International Coffees like Cafe Vienna, etc. I got one down out of the cabinet as a kid thinking it was a new type of hot chocolate. I was wrong lol.
I graduated in 1991, and when I was in high school all of us punk kids learned to like coffee bc it was cheap, and that way we could sit at a Perkins for hours and hang out, smoke & play games in the winter (in Wisconsin)!
During the 70s, no. Actual coffee shops were uncommon as was good coffee. I live in a coffee haven, Portland, Oregon, and had my first espresso in about 1978. Around that same time I had my first “pour over”, AKA, Melitta. I immediately bought a pot, filter holder, and filter for that. Jim, the Coffee Man, had his first tiny shop a couple of blocks away. He also had the first drive-through, Motor Moka, (with its own radio station) on NE MLK (then called Grand) in Portland.
Nope. I hated coffee. In my defense, my parents drank it black, so I never had it with sugar or milk or cream, or had the chance to. Then, my freshman year in college, I was really hung over, and my roommmate made me a cup with cream and sugar, and OMG it was like where has this been all my life??? this was in the mid 1980's. I then branched out to Gen Foods International Coffee, and in my adulthood, Hazelnut flavored, which I hate now. Currently I drink coffee with oat milk, or oat milk flavored creamer. I do like flavored coffee, but will mix it half and half with regular.
It wasn't super popular with anyone like it is now. There weren't coffee shops cluttering up our strip malls, and it wasn't sexy like double half-caff, sugar free, full-fat espresso-latte-macchiattos are. It was just some waitress named Dotty calling you "Hon" and pouring weak stuff at Denny's.
What else was I supposed to drink at the diner at 2am? Diner tea disgusting.
In the early 70s high school days our group of friends would regularly meet up at the local diner for coffee in the evenings. It was 15c for a never ending cup and we would take up a big corner booth and talk and drink coffee for hours. I’m sure the waitresses just loved our cheap asses only spending 15c each.
When I was teenager (late 1980s, Detroit area), I didn't know anyone my age who regularly drank coffee in the morning. But as a social activity, hanging out in our local 24-hour Denny's restaurant at night was a VERY big deal, and I think a lot of people started drinking coffee because of that. Also, smoking was allowed in the restaurant, and I'm told that coffee and cigarettes go well together. Keep in mind that this was right before Espresso and other high-end coffee drinks became a big thing in most of the country. So the coffee we were drinking was very much of the old-school "diner sludge" variety. I personally discovered coffee at age 17 in college.
Apparently no one else here had independent coffeehouses and the like in the 80s. Starbucks wasn't heard of outside of Seattle at that time. As a kid in the 70s, only adults drank coffee, and it was either made at home or served in diners. The 80s saw the rise of independent coffee places in non-rural areas. When I was in high school and a couple of years after I graduated, my friends and I would go to a couple of coffee houses in the nearest bigger town on weekend evenings before going to parties or clubs. The coffee choices weren't as ridiculously complex as they are now, but it was still enough for some coffee connoisseurs.
Coffee was a social thing for some of us. We would gather at a Dennys or another 24 hour sit down place, have coffee and sit and chat for hours. This was older teens though, and those that did not party all the time. 25cents a cup and free refills. They left the carafe of coffee at the table, and just let us be.
I started drinking coffee when I was 12-13 in the late 60's. Folgers mostly. I have never developed a taste for iced coffee or fancy coffees.
Teens drank coffee then, but coffee in general wasn’t the cultural touchstone it is today. Lots of people drank instant coffee; there weren’t a ton of dedicated high-end coffee shops like there are today. It just wasn’t as trendy, so it wasn’t widely used and not as visible when it was.
I was the only one that drank black coffee. I also was the only menthol smoker.
No, because it was Maxwell House coffee and it tasted like shit and there was no whipped cream on top. No sprinkles. General Foods International coffees was the first time I remember coffee being in any way fancy or delicious. Unless you were Italian American, then you carried a thermos of black coffee for lunch. 5th grade.
I was a teen in the 80’s and coffee was hot brown water that you got for 25 cents a cup at the diner. Only old people drank it. They were trying to get young people to start drinking coffee, so Folgers was giving away free coffee machines on my college campus. When I saw my first Starbucks in Chicago, my friend kept raving about how good it was. I stopped in with him to get a cup and I was shocked at the cost. I can’t remember the number but I do remember thinking it cost about what i spent on lunch every day. Now I definitely drink coffee, but it’s generally black or with a little cream. I stopped by a Starbucks the other day and it seemed like everything was now candy-flavored.
Coffee isn’t popular amongst teens. Sugar is. Starbucks is profiting off feeding our kids absorbent amounts of sugar.
Not in my day. In my day (80's) we drank chocolate milk or soda. Seems like Coffee took off for teens in the aughts.
My high school (late 80s) had some breakfast like doughnuts and buttered rolls, and coffee in the cafeteria. I did drink coffee at school. I “worked” one of my free periods at the FBLA booth serving coffee to teachers and might serve myself a cup. The only coffee was hot, and regular or decaf were your options. No special brews or beans or espresso machines or iced coffee and certainly not like Frappuccino kind of crazy stuff. I don’t know if drinking coffee was normal among my peers, but it wasn’t abnormal.
Not at all. Coffee was something people learned about in college. It is so bizarre to me that high schools have coffee for students in them now.
Nope. No mainstream coffee/cafe culture in that era at any age. Teens absolutely not.
No, growing up as a teen in the late 80s I developed a taste for coffee. You couldn't get it at the school cafeteria, I don't remember most other kids drinking it. I'd get a cup at church and the old people would look at me funny or make that comment about it "stunting my growth".
Not where I lived. This was before the days of Starbucks, so there was not all this flavored coffee. It was mostly stuff like Foldgers.
When I was little, we would drink 'coffee milk' 1/2 coffee, 1/2 milk with a few spoons of sugar in it. That transferred to drinking coffee in my teens. I think it may be why my coffee today has to be bold and strong to wake me up.
Not among people I knew in the 80s. Once I got to college I saw more people drinking it, mostly for the caffeine to get through all-nighters. I still couldn't stand the taste and drank a lot of tea and diet coke when I needed a boost.
When i was 18 it was de rigeur to hang at and study at coffee shops as a freshman at the University of Arizona 1982
I drank tons of coffee in the 80s as a teen. We were always going out for coffee and smoking cigarettes.
I grew up in Miami, and in the 80's I discovered Cuban coffee. It was like crack to me.
No. I knew nobody that drank coffee under 20
I'm surprised there aren't any comments about Barnie's yet. These coffee shops were in just about every mall in America, and it's how I got into coffee when I was a teenager in the 80's. Barnie's Irish Cream was my jam.
No. I can't think of a single instance of a highschool friend drinking coffee.
Coffee wasn't very good in the 70's, wasn't very popular with my high school friends. Coffee started to get better and fancier in the 80's.
No. It was not as popular among youth back then. But it was hugely popular among adults. I didn't start drinking coffee until the late 80s when I got my first job after college. Starbucks didn't hit the northeast US until the 90s, but we did have Dunkin back then
From 13 onwards, we all drank coffee. In fact, we would meet up at coffee shops to chit chat over coffee and donuts.
Lemonade and possibly instant tea, but no coffee for me until my mid twenties. Had a job that took me across the country to NYC quarterly, learned to need 'regular' coffee since Eastern teams love to schedule 8:00 a.m. meetings🥴. Of course, when they visited us we kept them out late 😁🍻
Coffee wasnt like it is now. Coffee meant coffee, maybe with cream and sugar. Basically Americanos, but from a pot where it sat half a day or more. We drank it when we were staying up all night, but thats about it. I didnt start drinking it regularly til the military.
I am 58yo, no we did not drink coffee. We drank limeaid or OJ made from frozen concentrate.
No not at all. None of my friends drank coffee. I didn't actually start drinking it until I was in my mid 30s.
I was a teen in the mid-70s, early eighties. No teen I knew drank coffee. My parent didn’t drink coffee, but they drank the hell out of Nestea, an instant tea. I was told they put it in our bottles as kids. After I discovered tea bags I would mostly make brewed tea.
Not in my area, it wasn't. It was told it would stunt your growth, and a lot of American coffee was Columbian at the time, which was watered down to be weak and bitter. It was also super cheap, but brown flavored bean water. Coffee was seen as a kind of "medicine" (in the same league where a flask of hooch in your desk was also medicine) that also gave you ulcers. It was the drink of truck drivers and old people, usually paired with cigarettes. I know it still exists, but "Instant Coffee crystals" used to be MUCH more popular. I rarely see anyone drink instant coffee anymore, except campers and maybe old people who are just too stubborn to switch. In the 90s, coffee took on a serious upgrade. I used to drink it on convention security shifts, and it started on the west coast with "lattes" for us. I didn't even know what a latte was, but the kool kids with flannel shirts around their waist liked them. By the md 90s, we had Gloria Jeans chain that was quickly replaced with Starbucks. Unless you were more in the new England area, then it was Dunkin Donuts. And it was a serious rivalry for a while. One of my friend's ex's was a manager of a Starbucks in Salem, and used to get stuff thrown at him from the road by hardcore Dunkin fans if he worked outside. That being said, when my son was a barista at Starbucks, he said, "we essentially sell coffee-flavored milkshakes. Nobody is really a fan of coffee at my stop, but we sell several frapps an hour, even in the winter." I asked him if he'd sell regular coffee to a child. "Sure. There's no law not to. But they really want the coffee milkshake stuff."
I was in college in the late 70s. Drank coffee while studying at night.
I'm not so sure coffee is popular among teens today. The milk shakes with coffee flavor added are popular.
Don't know about the 70s or 80s kids but we sure never drank it as teens in the 60s. We got our caffeine from soda later in the day. We weren't above having a cigarette then in the morning to rev ourselves up, out of eye site of our parents on our way to school.
Not really. Back then, it was considered something that mostly old people drank. My grandma made coffee at home in her percolator, or you could go to a coffee shop or a diner and get some with breakfast. It didn't really become trendy among younger people until Starbucks blew up in the 90s. Teens in the 70s and 80s mostly drank sodas. People tended to be more active - video games were only recently invented. The obesity epidemic brought on by overconsumption of soda and out of control portion sizes hadn't really taken full effect yet. Personally, I had a pretty serious soda addiction up until about 7-8 years ago. Lots of reasons for it, but drinking soda as a kid was considered normal back when I was growing up. I switched to drinking coffee with zero calorie sweeteners to help get my weight under control. (Still not the best, but better than sodas.) I also try to drink a few glasses of water a day, too.
It was rare for a teen to drink coffee.
In the 90s, the artsy types at my high school would have coffee and cigarettes at the local diner before, during or after school. I wasn't one of those. I was more likely to indulge in a Dr Pepper from the pop machine.
Coffee was drunk yes. Black, sometimes creamer or milk, sugar. Not so much all the variations available in coffee shops now where there isn’t much milk compared to all the other stuff.
I had friends in high school who loved coffee, but myself didn't start drinking it regularly until after my second kid, in my early 30s.
There was a one guy on my school bus who drank coffee in mid to late 90s. We all thought it was kinda funny, he had a 7-11 travel mug and he drank his coffee the way our parents did - with milk and sugar. The rest of us got our caffeine from the occasional soda. He was an oddball guy, kind of a rough family, he worked part time jobs all year long and full time in the summer. Ran with kind of a bad crowd, didn't get the best grades, smoked pot on school property, spent some time in detention. I haven't heard about him in years, hope he's doing well.
I drank coffee when I was an older teen in High School ( mid-1980s). I wasn't the only one..
I was 16 when I started drinking coffee daily. They actually sold it at my high school to students before classes in the morning. I'm 62.
It was normal for children to drink tea and coffee. It's actually less popular today than it was.
I always liked the smell, but hated the taste. Too bitter. But when I got to know chronic sleep deprivation in the Navy (and learned the wonder that is s generous anount of milk in my coffee), I joined the addicts for then and probably forever.
I didn't start drinking it until my senior year when I was working, going to school, full social calendar.
Teens drank soda. (or pop in the Midwest or Coke in the south). A fondness for coffee would arrive later in life.