Meet Papa
Our History
Recognize the face? It's the face that has graced our packages of gourmet coffee for years and represents trust, experience, quality and most importantly, the Papanicholas legacy.
With more than one hundred years experience and three generations working in the coffee industry, our company continues to provide the highest quality coffees to grocery stores nationwide. It all began with our founder, the late Nicholas A. Papanicholas, who grew up in the 1930's working with his father and uncle in the family business, Aroma Coffee - a wholesale coffee distributorship. At Aroma Coffee, Nick learned the importance of starting with premium coffee beans and traditional European roasting techniques.
By 1982, Nick had mastered the industry and left Aroma Coffee to pursue his vision of supplying grocery stores with fine blended specialty gourmet coffees. Nick's goal was to give the world the freshest gourmet whole bean and ground coffees at a reasonable price. To do so, Nick launched the Nicholas A. Papanicholas Coffee Company in the garage of his family's modest Wheaton, IL. home. Nick worked tirelessly and could be found packing coffee beans at all hours of the day and night. It wasn't long before Nick's whole bean coffees got the attention of premier Chicagoland grocery stores, such as Treasure Island and Sunset Foods. In 1985, Nick landed one of his largest accounts when he confronted the coffee buyer at Jewel about the lackluster coffee brands on their shelves. He convinced the buyer to stock Papanicholas gourmet coffees and the rest is history.
Today’s Operation
Today, not much has changed. PapaNicholas Coffee Company is still family-owned and operated. Of course, we've outgrown Nick's garage and moved to a real factory in Batavia, IL. where we continue to manufacture and deliver premium, yet affordable, coffees using a roasting process that is second to none. We roast fresh crop coffee beans daily, which we personally select from the world's finest markets. These choice beans are slowly roasted in very small batches - a process that is time consuming, but deliciously worthwhile. And PapaNicholas coffee beans are affordable, about ten cents a cup, because we believe premium coffees should be an everyday luxury!
Currently, PapaNicholas distributes more than fifty varieties of premium whole bean and ground coffees in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Recently, we added a new product to our repertoire. In 2001, we introduced our coffee drinkers to the convenience and great taste of PapaNicholas premium ground coffee, available in six flavorful varieties. We now offer over twice as many flavored varieties. Each year we sell more than one million pounds of premium coffee through retail and food service, and thanks to our customers, we have been the #1 retail premium packaged coffee company in the Chicagoland area for the past nineteen years!