Coffee Culture New Orleans

Starting in the early eighteenth century, importation was New Orleans’s lifeblood, as coffee and other agricultural goods moved through the city’s port and fanned out to all corners of the emerging nation. New Orleans became the United States’ top coffee importer in the nineteenth century, jockeying for position with larger port cities. As the century progressed, coffee importers and brokers built ever-stronger connections between New Orleans and the national coffee trade.

Because New Orleans was such a coffee town, coffee culture began infiltrating the city’s practices. Coffee exchanges opened, creating spaces to share new ideas and partake in important cultural conversations over coffee. For guests, coffee was prepared at home and served black or caf au lait with milk. The French Market and similar venues boasted coffee stands, and enslaved women such as Rose Nicaud bought their freedom by selling coffee from carts in the market