Coffee Cup.
A mystery solved.
When I was around 12 years old I was watching some 80’s slasher flick set in or around Brooklyn and I noticed that people there were all getting their coffees from delis. This was weird to me for two reasons. Coffee came from Hindu liquor stores or the coffeemaker, not Greek delis. The second reason was that they had a cup that I had seen in other movies. This started a love affair with spotting what I could only refer to as, “The East Coast Coffee Cup”. Every time I watched a series, movie, or short film set around the appropriate area I’d have my eyes peeled for the the TECCC (I use the short hand E3C in my inner monologues). Recently I tried explaining my interest in this particular piece of ephemera but I couldn’t explain it besides saying it was a little blue cup with writing, remember I only recently started watching DVDs, the resolution of the image was never good enough to zoom in to discern what was written.
This led me down the path to try to find the cup in an enhanced image. Then USA goes and runs House in HD. Boom!
“We are happy to serve you”
This was the line that cracked the entire case. A quick web search of the phrase turned up dozens of history pages, shops, tribute pages, and loads of flickr pages.
The cup is a Greek motif that reflects the Greek coffee culture that was imported to New York. In 1963 the Sherri Cup Company made a carryout coffee cup that they could easily market to Greek vendors that were now well established small businesses. Leslie Buck, the marketing director at the time used the Greek flag’s blue and white color scheme with a Greek inspired font bearing the now ubiquitos message and a few “Anthora” urns. Voila! A vendor’s answer to scalding people’s hand with coffee, and show off their Greek pride.
If you want to pursue an interest in the cup’s history check out the following link. They sell mugs designed to look like the “Anthora” cup.
