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Café HAG is a worldwide brand of decaffeinated coffee now owned by Jacobs Douwe Egberts.
History
The company was founded in Bremen in 1906 as Kaffee-Handels-Aktien-Gesellschaft (Coffee Publicly Traded Company). The founder was Ludwig Roselius, who codeveloped the first commercial decaffeination process. Alfred Runge and Eduard Scotland designed iconic posters and packaging, and are credited with designs that defined the company.
In the 1920s and 1930s the company was known for the publication of the Coffee Hag albums of heraldic emblems.
The coffee brand Sanka span off from Kaffee HAG in 1910 for the French market ("Sanka" is a contraction of sans caféine), and American rights to the Sanka name were sold in 1913.
The Kellogg Company purchased Roselius's American branch (based in Cleveland, Ohio) in 1928, then sold it to General Foods in 1939. General Foods acquired the original German company in 1979. In 1990 Kraft Foods merged with General Foods, thus HAG and Sanka became brands of the American company. The spelling Café HAG was standardized in the 1990s. HAG has been owned by Jacobs Douwe Egberts since 2015.