Chicago Sun- Times
Lisa Donovan , 1st of October 2008

There's a big story behind coffee boy

Julius Meinl coffeehouses pay tribute to the Turks with its sweet-faced coffee-boy logo.
Brian Jackson/Sun-Times

The corner of Montrose and Lincoln Avenue has a new landmark of sorts and its history, or shall I say "his" history, dates back hundreds of years.
Perched on a canopy over the entrance to the newly opened Julius Meinl coffeehouse at 4363 N. Lincoln is what employees refer to as the Meinl coffee boy, a 6-foot-2-inch bronze sculpture of a lad wearing a fez and looking into the bowl of coffee he's carrying.

The Vienna-based Meinl, with two cafes in Chicago and five across the globe, not to mention all the outlets that carry the brand, is simply paying homage to the Turkish Ottoman Empire and its contributions to the coffee world, explains Natalie Berg, director of marketing for Julius Meinl North America. Of course, it can be traced back to war and conflict. In this case it was 1683, when the Hapsburgs of Vienna were trying to push back at the Turkish Army that had surrounded the capital. The short version of this story is that the Hapsburgs were successful. The Turks surrendered, abandoning the camp set up at the city's doorstep.
Enter the spy who had helped the Hapsburgs, Georg Kolschitzky. Fluent in the Turkish language - even infiltrating the Army camps by dressing like a Turk, red fez and all - he had gotten the intelligence necessary for the Viennese
troops and their allies to push out the Turks.
For his work, Kolschitzky was allowed a single wish, a reward of sorts. He opted for the Turk's tents and several hundred bags of what was believed to be "camel feed" left behind, Berg said. Of course, Kolschitzky knew that the "feed" actually was unroasted, green coffee beans. He loaded up the goods, went to Vienna and opened one of the first coffeehouses there, making the drink part of popular culture there and beyond.

Opening in the late 1800s, the Meinl family of Austria wanted to pay tribute to the origins of the Viennese coffee culture. "It only makes sense we pay tribute to the Turkish, for the coffee beans," Berg said.
And the cherubic-faced coffee boy logo was born.
"It's friendly," Berg said of the choice of a child for a logo.

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For further information please visit our website at www.meinl.com.