Pure Joi

The Times of Acadiana: Welcome Back - Thursday, August 25, 2005
By Stella Theriot.

There was a time in Lafayette’s history when it was home to a coffee-roasting and grinding facility. The Mello Joy Pure Coffee Company was located at 1013 9th St. from 1936 until 1975, when founder Louis R. Begnaud sold certain assets of his business to the Community Coffee Company. After about a year, Mello Joy disappeared from grocers’ shelves.

Begnaud and his brother Will were both working for Grimmer Coffee Company, the makers of Creole Belle Coffee, at the time that they decided to go into business for themselves. They created the smooth blend of Mello Joy in an era before drinking coffee was cool. When they came up with their original blend, they never dreamed eclectic coffeehouses would be a part of Lafayette’s business landscape or that exotic flavored coffees would gain such popularity.
Early on, Louis bought Will’s part of the company. He then grew his coffee business and made Mello Joy a familiar household name.

According to his grandson, Brian Begnaud, the firm became the predominant coffee provider in the state of Louisiana and in the southern territory. Because of its popularity, Mello Joy commonly became known as the “King of the Deep South”.

Brian says when he came back to Louisiana a year ago, he found that people were still talking about his grandfather’s coffee. That’s when he got the idea to stage a comeback.
He started fine tuning the recipe earlier this year and that’s when he discovered that some of the coffee beans his grandfather used aren’t available anymore. “We’ve got the taste profile as close as we can,” Brian says. He says countless taste tests were performed and the results show the flavor is right on the mark with the original blend.

The roasting, grinding and packaging are being done in Atlanta right now until the demand gets higher, Brian says. His ultimate goal is to have a facility in Acadiana once again.
He says numerous restaurants and grocery stores have been contacting him and Mello Joy is debuting around the area. “We’re going to be the exclusive coffee in all of the Cajundome,” Brian says, “as well as the convention center.” Adrien’s and Billeaud’s Supermarket in Broussard have agreed to stock Mello Joy and CajunGrocer.com has decided to sell the coffee online and Albertson’s and Super 1 Foods. Brian says it’s also in Camellia Country Market, a couple of stores in Houma and in Kroger in The Woodlands, Texas.

Although word is getting around that Mello Joy is back and sales have been increasing, bringing the coffee back to the masses has not been as smooth as its blend. Besides the unavailability of certain coffee beans, Community Coffee has filed suit to stop the process.
Joe Lemoine of Onebane, Bernard, Torian, Diaz, McNamara & Abell is Brian’s attorney. Lemoine says the crux of the suit is that it appears Community Coffee abandoned all use of the Mello Joy trademark by not promoting the brand. That opened the door for Brian to use and register the mark.

“In July of 2000, (Community Coffee Co.) would have had to renew that registration in order to keep it alive and they elected not to do so,” says Lemoine. He adds that the company’s failure to use the trademark for about 23 years — unless it was temporarily suspended with specific intention to resume use — waived its right to the brand name.

“When (Community Coffee) let the registration lapse in the year 2000, Brian decided he wanted to pick it up,” Lemoine says, “and see if he could restore that which was the Mello Joy tradition to Lafayette — a Lafayette brand coffee — and to restore the cultural tradition.”

He says that after learning what Brian had done, Community Coffee filed a competing trademark application and has brought suit in U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge to block Brian from producing and selling Mello Joy. “We don’t think it has any merit,” says Lemoine. Nancy St. Pierre, public relations director for Community Coffee, says, “Because it’s a legal matter with proceedings surrounding it, I really don’t think it’s proper to speak about it publicly.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will decide which one has rights to the trademark, Lemoine says. “We believe the jurisdiction over who gets registration resides with the Patent Office, not with the courts,” he says. That preliminary ruling should be made within three to four months.

Meanwhile, Brian is moving forward selling Mello Joy. He has a Web page, www.mellojoy.com, and a toll-free number, 1-86-MELLO-JOY. And he’s looking for reliable employees like his grandfather found.

Mastern St. Julien was hired as roastmaster in 1936 and worked with the Begnauds until the company was sold to Community Coffee Co. in 1975. St. Julien was working for the Roy Coffee Company at the time, but he believed in the Begnauds and their new venture enough to take a chance.

“Every 28 minutes — we had two roasters — 500 pounds of coffee used to come out,” St. Julien recalls, “and I used to take care of both of those roasters by myself.” Their day started at 5 a.m. and by 11:30 a.m. about 20,000 pounds of Mello Joy had been bagged and workers were free to go. St. Julien operated a small trucking business on the side that he would attend to after his roasting duties were done each day.

The aroma of those roasting coffee beans would permeate Downtown and complement the smell of baking bread rising from Evangeline Bakery only a few blocks away on St. John Street.
Says St. Julien: “At 5 o’clock in the morning, everybody opened their windows.”

He says the Begnauds kept adding to the plant facility, which was located at 1013 9th St., until the warehouse portion fronted 8th Street. The building is still partially in use today, with Louis Begnaud’s son, Donald, housing his fiberglass business there.

Brian’s father, Mike Begnaud, remembers working at Mello Joy. “I started working with my dad when I was 12 years old,” says Mike. He worked in a variety of positions through the years, including packaging and delivering coffee, putting Mello Joy decals in clocks and keeping the books.

Mike says people never stopped asking about Mello Joy. So when Brian decided to bring it back, he wasn’t surprised by the overwhelming interest. He says numerous former customers out there have been hoping to see their old favorite again. “I think it’s going to really be accepted again,” he says, “because everybody referred to it as the good old Cajun dark roast coffee.”
St. Julien says he believes Louis Begnaud would be proud that Mello Joy is back on the market and he is confident that suppliers and consumers will welcome it back. Mike agrees: “All my dad ever did was brew coffee. That was his pride and joy.”

“They’re going to have a lot of people going back to Mello Joy,” says St. Julien.

Brian Begnaud is counting on that.