Melitta Bentz

Without this woman, your morning coffee would still come with a mouthful of grounds.

Melitta Bentz was a German housewife.

She loved coffee.

But hated drinking grounds.

Hated the mess.

Hated cleaning the copper pot.

So one morning, she grabbed a brass tin, punched holes in it, and lined it with blotting paper from her son’s school notebook.

She added ground coffee. Poured hot water.

The liquid dripped through the paper, leaving the grounds behind.

Cleaner coffee. Better taste. Easy cleanup.

She called it “perfect coffee enjoyment.”

Her friends loved it too.

So she applied for a patent.

On June 20, 1908, the Imperial Patent Office granted her utility model protection.

She officially launched the business that same year under the name M. Bentz. With just 72 pfennigs of starting capital.

Headquarters? Her 5-room apartment.

Employees? Her husband and her sons, Willy and Horst.

Deliveries were made by handcart.

Her husband handled shop displays.

Later, “demonstration ladies” showed customers how the filter worked.

The breakthrough came in 1909, when they presented the product at the Leipzig Trade Fair.

They sold 1,250 filters at 1.25 marks each.

By 1912, they had 8 employees.

Then war hit.

Her husband and oldest son were drafted.

Melitta ran the business with help from her brother.

Paper became scarce. Coffee was banned.

So she pivoted the company to produce cardboard boxes to survive.

After WWI, the business took off again.

In 1925, she introduced the iconic red and green packaging to stand out from imitators.

In 1929, they moved into a new factory in Minden, still in use today.

By 1932, she stepped down from daily operations, handing the business to her sons.

Before leaving, she implemented a five-day work week, up to three weeks’ vacation, and Christmas bonuses.

Decades before those were standard.

In 1938, she created Melitta Aid, a social fund for employees that still exists.

During WWII, the company paused filter production and became a “National Socialist model plant,” manufacturing goods for the military.

After the war, it joined programs to compensate victims of Nazi forced labor.

Melitta Bentz died in 1950 at age 77.

Four years after her husband.

Today, the Melitta Group employs over 4,000 people worldwide and reported €1.5 billion in revenue in 2017.