In the annals of coffee history, one name stands out as a true innovator: Jabez Burns. Born in London in 1826, Burns would go on to revolutionize the coffee roasting business, patenting cutting-edge machinery that transformed the industry. His inventions, entrepreneurial drive, and commitment to quality set the stage for coffee‘s evolution from an exotic luxury to a daily staple enjoyed by billions around the globe.
As a pioneer in coffee roasting technology, Burns was in many ways a man ahead of his time. His ability to identify inefficiencies and engineer solutions to streamline the roasting process foreshadowed the disruptive ethos of today‘s tech startup founders. Through mechanical aptitude and business savvy, Burns didn‘t just build a successful company – he helped write the recipe for the modern coffee trade itself.
The Making of a Visionary
Jabez Burns‘ origin story reads like a Victorian-era Horatio Alger tale. Born into a working-class family in London‘s East End, his early life was marked by political turmoil and economic uncertainty. His father, William Burns, was a basketmaker by trade and an ardent supporter of the Chartist movement, a working-class campaign for voting rights and social reforms in 1830s and 40s Britain.
Amidst this tumultuous backdrop, the Burns family made the decision to relocate to the Scottish industrial city of Dundee in 1829 when Jabez was just three years old. Here, young Jabez likely received a solid education from his father, learning not just the three R‘s but also the values of hard work and egalitarianism.
These lessons would serve Jabez well when, at the tender age of 18, he made the bold choice to emigrate to the United States in search of opportunity. Arriving in New York City in the summer of 1844, Burns‘ first job was as a teacher in rural New Jersey, a testament to his intellect and adaptability.
But it was Burns‘ next career move that would set the stage for his future success. In 1845, he began working as a teamster for a thriving coffee and spice importer named Henry Blair. The bustling ports of New York were then the center of a booming international coffee trade – in 1846 alone, the city imported a staggering 50 million pounds of coffee, up from just 4 million pounds two decades prior.
It was through his work with Blair that Burns first immersed himself in the growing coffee business. He also met his wife Agnes, the daughter of a fellow Scottish immigrant, through the city‘s tight-knit expat community. The couple wed in 1847 and would eventually have seven children together.
Over the next decade, Burns worked his way up the ranks of the coffee and spice trade. He was employed in a variety of roles from bookkeeper to manager at several leading importers and mills. At one of his longest-running positions with the famed Globe Mills, Burns‘ knack for mechanical problem-solving first came to the fore.
The Invention That Added Up
As a bookkeeper tasked with painstakingly calculating commodity prices and shipment values by hand, Burns found himself frustrated by the tediousness and inefficiency of the work. In true entrepreneurial fashion, he decided to engineer his own solution – the "addometer", a mechanical adding device Burns patented in 1858.
Drawing of Jabez Burns‘ 1858 Addometer adding machine from his patent application. Source: Wikimedia Commons
While Burns only ever produced a prototype of his adding machine, it was nonetheless a remarkably prescient invention. Featuring a series of gears, levers and dials, the addometer was capable of computing sums and differences and an early forerunner of later digital computing devices.
The actual patent model of Burns‘ machine is still intact and now part of the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Though Burns ultimately decided not to commercialize the addometer, the experience of designing and fabricating it no doubt shaped his approach to his next world-changing venture.
Firing Up a Coffee Revolution
By the late 1850s, Burns was already a respected figure in the New York coffee scene, with over a decade of experience in roles ranging from delivery cart driver to factory manager. He had developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the industry, from raw bean sourcing to roasting techniques to packaging and distribution.
Sensing a prime opportunity, Burns made the move to start his own business in 1864. He set out to design a superior coffee roaster that would be more efficient and yield a higher quality product than the standard models then in use. The result was Jabez Burns & Sons, a pioneering coffee equipment manufacturer that would grow to become the industry leader over the next half century.
At the core of the company‘s success was Burns‘ patented roasting machines. Continuously improved and refined over the years, the Burns roasters were technological marvels renowned for their speed, precision, and consistency. An 1874 pamphlet from the company boasted that their "new Patent Coffee Roaster" could roast up to 1,000 pounds per hour, a tenfold increase over older methods that could scorch and unevenly cook the beans.
Illustration of the Jabez Burns & Sons coffee roasting plant from an 1874 company pamphlet. Source: Pinterest
Burns‘ innovative roasting technology ushered in a new era of scale and standardization in the coffee business. Thanks to his machines, coffee roasting could transition from an artisanal craft practiced in small batches to a mass-market industry capable of producing tons of identically roasted beans on a daily basis.
This consistency was a key factor in coffee‘s rapid growth in popularity in the late 1800s. Between 1860 and 1890, coffee consumption in the US ballooned from 3 lbs per capita to over 9 lbs per capita. By the turn of the century, Americans were collectively quaffing more than a billion pounds of coffee a year.
Jabez Burns & Sons played a central role in the industry‘s staggering expansion. An 1889 profile of the company‘s Manhattan factory reported it was producing upwards of 50 roasters a year and had annual revenues approaching $200,000 (equivalent to over $5 million today). The article described Burns as the head of the "most unique coffee machinery workshop in the United States, and undoubtedly the largest."
An Inventor and Entrepreneur for the Ages
While Jabez Burns is best remembered for his transformative contributions to coffee roasting technology, his ingenuity and entrepreneurial drive manifested themselves in numerous other ventures and inventions across the course of his life.
Ever observant, Burns was constantly seeking out new opportunities and unmet needs in the market. Recognizing the growing demand for news and insights on the burgeoning coffee and tea trades, he launched his own industry publication, The Spice Mill, in 1878.
Initially conceived as an in-house journal for Burns & Sons customers and employees, The Spice Mill quickly gained a wider following. For a time it was the only periodical of its kind focused exclusively on the coffee and spice business. That was until Burns‘ erstwhile editor decided to strike out on his own in 1887 and founded a competing magazine, The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, which soon surpassed The Spice Mill in influence.
Unfazed, Burns continued to work on refining his coffee machinery designs and exploring new technical frontiers. Over the course of his career, he was awarded an astonishing 17 patents on inventions ranging from a "consolidated coffee-grinding mill" to a "refuse-consuming furnace". While not all of these ideas made it to market, they speak to Burns‘ restless creative spirit and problem-solving prowess.
Table listing coffee roasting and grinding equipment patents awarded to Jabez Burns between 1864 and 1886. Source: Author research.
Burns was also decades ahead of his time in his data-driven approach to business optimization. Long before the emergence of management science and operations research in the 20th century, Burns was a devoted practitioner of time and motion studies on the coffee roasting process.
In an 1873 letter to employees, Burns exhorted his team to diligently document the weight, moisture content, roast time, and fuel consumed in each batch they processed in order to generate efficiency benchmarks. He was relentless in his push to eliminate waste and maximize output. In the same missive, Burns boasted that his recently updated roaster model could process green coffee beans into a dark Italian roast in just 15-20 minutes, a 25% reduction from the previous standard.
Roasted in Remembrance
After an extraordinary life as an innovator, Jabez Burns passed away at his home in New York City on September 16, 1888, at the age of 62. At the time of his death, the company he built from scratch employed over 30 workers supplying coffee roasting and grinding equipment to hundreds of grocers and cafes across the US and abroad.
Burns was eulogized in his cherished Spice Mill magazine as a visionary leader who helped elevate coffee roasting from an "unscientific process" to a "highly systematized art." The publication credited Burns with ushering in an era in which coffee went from an exotic indulgence to a "necessary beverage of everyday life" thanks to his technical acumen and quality standards.
While the Burns company would continue in operation under his sons‘ stewardship for another 70 years until its acquisition in 1960, its founder‘s legacy extends well beyond his namesake brand. Jabez Burns‘ inventions and innovations helped create the template for the modern coffee industry.
By increasing the scale, speed and consistency of the roasting process, Burns and his contemporaries were able to dramatically expand the availability and affordability of coffee, setting the stage for its current status as the world‘s second most traded commodity (after crude oil). Today, over 2.6 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily by people across the globe.
Burns‘ impact can also be seen in the rise of vertically-integrated coffee giants like Starbucks, Keurig, and Nespresso. Much like how Burns sought to optimize every segment of the supply chain from raw materials to roasting to packaging, the 21st century coffee business is dominated by companies that control production from bean to cup. Consumer preferences for single-origin and lighter roasts may have evolved, but the pursuit of quality and efficiency that Burns evangelized endures.
Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership
As a pioneer in applying emerging technologies to revolutionize a traditional industry, Jabez Burns offers a powerful role model for today‘s entrepreneurs. Burns succeeded in combining technical ingenuity with business acumen, crafting a compelling vision of a better way forward for his sector.
Long before the rise of big data and the Internet of Things, Burns was an early advocate for leveraging quantitative metrics to streamline manufacturing. One can only imagine what he might have achieved with access to modern tools like enterprise resource planning software or machine learning algorithms for predictive maintenance.
Burns also embodied the kind of holistic leadership that is all too rare in the C-suites of many modern corporations. Having worked his way up from a cart driver and bookkeeper to company owner, Burns had firsthand knowledge of every facet of his industry. He could connect with employees on the factory floor as easily as hosting potential clients in his Manhattan showroom.
This ability to understand the needs and perspectives of all stakeholders allowed Burns to build strong teams and customer relationships. He was known for his generosity and progressive views towards his workers. In an era of 12-hour days and child labor, Burns & Sons operated a reduced 8-hour workday. He also encouraged his employees to submit ideas for improving the production process, spurring a culture of innovation.
Perhaps most of all, Burns demonstrated the importance of relentless curiosity and continuous improvement. In a feverishly competitive and fast-moving business environment, Burns succeeded by constantly staying one step ahead. Even as his patented roasters became the industry standard, he never stopped searching for incremental advances and new solutions.
At a time when inventors had to rely on mechanical ingenuity rather than software and silicon, Burns showed how even traditional commodity businesses could be fertile ground for entrepreneurial disruption. In doing so, he not only changed the coffee industry, but brewed up a template for innovation that is still percolating today.
