For much of the early 20th century, Hills Brothers was not just a coffee company, it was a household name whose red tins could be found in kitchens across America. Yet alongside its famous coffee line, the company once produced a parallel brand that is mostly forgotten today: Hills Brothers Tea. For decades, it appeared in grocery stores beside the coffee tins, marketed with the same confidence and care. Then, slowly and without public announcement, Hills Brothers Tea vanished from the market. Unlike the coffee, which survives under various corporate owners, the tea brand left behind almost no trace, only scattered advertisements, a few surviving tins, and faint references in historical trade publications.
Hills Brothers Tea emerged in the early 1900s, when the San Francisco–based company expanded beyond its flagship coffee to compete in a booming national tea market. At the time, American grocers stocked loose-leaf teas from China, India, and Ceylon, often sold in bulk and scooped into paper bags. Hills Brothers sought to differentiate its tea in the same way it had revolutionized coffee: with airtight packaging designed to preserve freshness and aroma. Early promotional material emphasized sealed tins and protective linings that kept tea leaves “unsullied by air or moisture”, a marketing strategy that mirrored the company’s vacuum-packed coffee campaign.
Advertisements from the 1910s and 1920s show that Hills Brothers Tea came in multiple varieties, including black, green, and blended teas sourced primarily from British-controlled regions in Asia. One 1922 trade catalog described the tea as “carefully selected from finest estates,” reflecting the growing trend of American companies attaching provenance to their products. The brand was distributed widely along the West Coast and gradually reached national grocery chains as the company’s coffee operations expanded.
During the mid-century decades, Hills Brothers Tea maintained a quiet but steady presence. It never achieved the iconic status of the company’s coffee, yet it enjoyed a reputation for reliability among households that purchased Hills Brothers as a complete beverage suite. In the postwar grocery boom of the 1950s and 1960s, department stores like Sears and A&P listed Hills Brothers Tea in their catalogs. By this point, the packaging had shifted to simpler tins and boxed tea bags, aligning with changing consumer preferences. Still, the tea did not receive the heavy advertising push that supported Hills Brothers Coffee. Its growth remained modest, overshadowed by dominant national competitors like Lipton and Tetley.
The disappearance began gradually in the 1970s as corporate ownership and market pressures reshaped the company. Hills Brothers had been acquired by Nestlé in 1985, but earlier restructuring had already trimmed its product lines. Tea consumption in the United States was declining, with instant coffee and sodas taking larger shares of the beverage market. Hills Brothers Coffee, which still sold strongly, was considered the company’s core identity. The tea, by contrast, lacked the same brand loyalty and faced stiff competition from both low-cost grocery-store labels and the rising specialty tea movement.
By the early 1980s, Hills Brothers Tea was being phased out quietly. Supermarket records show fewer restocks, and trade magazines from the period reference the company's “return to coffee-focused growth.” No formal discontinuation announcement was ever made. Instead, the tea line simply stopped appearing in catalogs and distribution lists. Stores that carried it replaced the shelf space with larger tea brands or modern herbal blends. Within a decade, Hills Brothers Tea was practically forgotten outside of collectors and those who remembered buying it in childhood.
Today, surviving tins of Hills Brothers Tea are considered rare artifacts of American grocery history. They occasionally appear in antique shops or online auctions, decorated with the company’s early logo, complete with the turbaned “Hills Brothers Arab,” an emblem that itself has since been retired. The tea brand’s disappearance illustrates how even well-known companies can shed entire product lines when consumer demand shifts and corporate priorities tighten.
Unlike Hills Brothers Coffee, which endured multiple corporate transitions and remains on store shelves today, the tea line simply did not have the same economic momentum or cultural foothold. Its quiet exit reflects a broader trend: the consolidation of the American tea market into a handful of dominant brands, leaving little room for regional or legacy labels. Hills Brothers Tea wasn’t discontinued because it failed, it was quietly absorbed into a changing landscape, overshadowed by larger competitors and evolving consumer tastes.
Hills Brothers Coffee survives as a recognizable name, but the tea that once shared its shelf space exists only in memory, and in the occasional dusty tin that resurfaces to remind collectors of a vanished chapter in the company’s history.
Sources & Further Reading:
– Early 20th-century Hills Brothers promotional catalogs and trade advertisements
– Grocery trade journals (1910s–1980s) referencing Hills Brothers Tea distribution
– Nestlé acquisition records and product line reductions
– American tea consumption studies and market analyses during the mid-20th century
– Private collector archives featuring surviving Hills Brothers Tea tins
(One of many stories shared by Headcount Coffee — where mystery, history, and late-night reading meet.)
