Quick Facts
Biography
Julius Meinl International (German: Julius Meinl AG, Meinl-Gruppe), also known simply as Julius Meinl, is a manufacturer and retailer of coffee, gourmet foods and other grocery products. The company is based in Vienna, Austria. It is named after its founders Julius Meinl I, and Julius Meinl II.
Julius Meinl III ceded control of the company to his son in 1987. The retail division of the group, except the high-profile flagship store in downtown Vienna, was sold to Rewe by Julius Meinl V in 1998/1999.
Later the company's name was changed to Ragusa Beteiligungen, and the company was delisted from the Vienna Stock Exchange in February 2007.
Julius Meinl operates three coffee shops in the U.S., all three on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. In 2015, Julius Meinl opened a subsidiary in Cincinnati, Ohio to begin distribution in North America.
Logo
The first logo of the company was designed in 1924 by Joseph Binder, a Viennese graphic designer. The logo depicted a dark-skinned boy with a red fez on his head, as a hint to the origin of the coffee. The design has changed significantly over the years, but the silhouette of a boy has remained its core part. In 2004, Italian designer Matteo Thun has performed a redesign of the logo, making him look upright and using a single colour for the whole logo, effectively eliminating the boy's dark skin colour.
In 2007, an initiative called Mein Julius (English: "My Julius") started using the original version of the logo to protest against racist stereotypes and misinterpretations of Africa and the colonial period. This initiative has not indicated that they used the pre-redesign version of the logo, which led to criticism of the initiative itself.