JJ Darboven

JJ Darboven GmbH & Co. KG
legal form	Limited partnership
founding	March 21, 1866
Seat	Hamburg , Germany
management	Albert Darboven
sales	around € 300 million
Branch	Coffee roastery
Website	www.darboven.com

The JJ Darboven coffee roastery in Hamburg-Billbrook.

The company JJ Darboven is in Hamburg -based international coffee roaster and corporate group with 11 subsidiaries in nine European countries and over 900 employees worldwide. The main business of the family company , founded in 1866, is importing, roasting and trading coffee , tea and cocoa . Among the displaced in the catering and food brands are the idea - Mövenpick - and Eilles Coffee and the fair trade-certified coffee brand Café Intención.

Company history

The company was founded in 1866 by Johann Joachim Darboven . He filled bags with already roasted coffee and sent them to households. Both were new methods of selling coffee at the time. Johann Joachim Darboven died in 1909. The company was continued by the sons Arthur and Caesar and in the following generation by Herbert and Albert Darboven .

IDEA coffee logo

Logo variant JJ Darboven

Under the 1915 already developed brand idea -Kaffee was from 1927 touted as particularly digestible coffee. It was produced using a finishing process developed by Karl Lendrich from the Hygiene Institute in Hamburg, which was intended to reduce irritants and bitter substances while fully preserving the taste. JJ Darboven later received a patent for “stomach-friendly coffee”.

During the Second World War, the substitute coffee Koff was made due to the lack of green coffee . After the currency reform of 1948, the company switched its production back to real coffee.

The catering business began under Caesar Darboven in 1930. The first foreign subsidiary was founded in 1961 in the Netherlands. Further subsidiaries in other European countries followed. JJ Darboven used the first television commercials in 1963 under the management of Nicolaus Darboven. In 1980 the sales cooperation with Mövenpick Coffee began. In 1987 the Eilles company was taken over with its 50 own specialist shops. In 1993, with Café Intención, TransFair coffee was introduced based on fair trade. For this purpose, the brands "Alberto" for espresso and "Sansibar" (after the bar on Sylt) were set up.

In 2016, Arko bought the 35 Eilles specialty stores in southern Germany that keep their names. At the same time, the Arko roastery in Wahlstedt was given to Darboven.

With the Darbohne the company created an early cartoon character in advertising.

With Arthur Ernesto Darboven , to whom Albert Darboven had entrusted management in 2002, the fourth generation of the family worked in the company. However, in 2008 he left the company after a disagreement with his father. He later also revoked an interim donation of further company shares to his son.

criticism

In various court rulings, the company was repeatedly forbidden from making health-related advertising claims as an advertising strategy for the coffee idea , for the first time in 1937 by the Reichsgericht (RG GRUR 1937, 396).

In its judgment of July 11, 1975, the BGH recognized the advertising as misleading within the meaning of UWG § 3, as the advertising statement “Idea coffee is stomach-friendly, so it is largely free of undesirable roasting irritants that can cause stomach, liver and gall bladder problems “It is not clear that the product is digestible for some of the coffee-sensitive people, but that another part of the coffee-sensitive people does not tolerate the processed coffee well.

In June 2010, the German Coffee Association Hamburg was accused by the Federal Cartel Office of having promoted a cartel of coffee companies in a press release in February 2005, which is why a fine of up to € 90,000 was imposed. The coffee roasters involved included Kraft Foods Aus Haus Service (Bremen), Tchibo (Hamburg), Luigi Lavazza Germany (Frankfurt), Seeberger (Ulm), Segafredo Zanetti Germany (Munich), Gebr. Westhoff (Bremen) and Melitta System Service (Minden) also JJ Darboven. The fines of the latter two companies, which totaled 30 million euros, were reduced because of their cooperation in investigating the allegations.

Darboven IDEE award

The Darboven IDEE-Förderpreis is a prize for female founders and has been awarded since 1997 on the basis of clearly defined criteria. The focus is on