Featured today is a beautiful antique coffee bin from the Henry Horner & Company coffee and tea importers and distribution company which was based in Chicago, Illinois. This particular company was a roaster of coffee beans shipped to them, so they roasted the beans and then sold them at bulk in containers such as this one shown. Early general store coffee bins are hard to find in excellent condition because they were simply used a lot by the store patrons and subsequently dented, scratched, etc. often. The metal slide in advertising piece was interchangeable to allow the seller to show which brand of coffee they were selling in the bin in bulk at that moment.
The Henry Horner Company started in 1856 by Henry Horner after his arrival from Bavaria. Quickly becoming one of the largest grocer wholesalers, the company was originally based at Randolph and Canal streets in downtown Chicago. Upon Henry’s death, his wife and kids took over the business but by 1921, they merged to later become Durand, McNeil and Horner Co. By this time, it was no longer one of the Midwest leading food distributors as it once was.