Santa
Clara County
Biographies
FIGPRUNE CEREAL COMPANY
It was while traveling for a
coffee and spice house that the inventor and manufacturer of the Figprune Cereal conceived the idea of producing a beverage
which should combine the products of field and orchard, and which, while
proving delightful to the senses, should also strengthen the body and do away
with the evils of excessive coffee drinking. It took three years of continuous
experiment along chemical and health lines to arrive at a favorable and
satisfactory result, which, based upon the purest of products, the best of
combinations and the most genuine of intentions, has more than justified the
expectations of its promoter. In no other state in the Union could such happy
results be obtained, for nowhere else are there a hundred thousand acres of
fruit trees, unsurpassed in the quality of their yield, and in no part of the
country does the grain attain to greater luxuriance or sustaining power. A
blending of fifty-four per cent of Santa Clara figs and prunes with forty-six
per cent of Santa Clara grain has been found to make a perfect, nutritious,
healthful and deliciously flavored beverage, to which concoction has been given
the appropriate name of Figprune cereal coffee.
Like other promising and energetic
pioneers of the west, the Figprune Cereal began its
career in a becomingly modest manner, depending upon its innate excellence to
determine its future status. After the incorporation of the company in March,
1900, which company consisted of local financiers, the first seat of operations
consisted of two galvanized buckets and two tubs, and a stove in which the
finished product was roasted. The prunes and figs and grains were stirred by
hand, and it was decided by the management that if one hundred and fifty cases
could be disposed of in a month, the light of financial opulence would flood
the establishment, and the experiment might be considered an unqualified
success. The seal of approval being placed upon the beverage almost from the
first, the ambition of its promoter soared accordingly, and the galvanized
buckets and tubs became the victims of the theory of the survival of the
fittest. To-day the factory on the corner of Fourth and Virginia streets has a
capacity of four hundred cases per day, and new buildings, extensive
warehouses, and general thrift and prosperity, have supplanted primitive and
inadequate facilities. The formula of manufacture has been modified somewhat,
so that now the ratio is sixty per cent of fruit and forty per cent of grains,
all of the products being raised in California, and all being the best possible
to procure. The process is not divulged by the management, but the simplest
methods prevail, and the beverage is all and more than its manufacturers claim
for it.
Transcribed By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: History of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast
Counties, California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1278-1281. The
Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2017 Cecelia M. Setty.