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Julius Meinl

Austrian coffee and food company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ670154 ↗
Source-derived summary

Julius Meinl International (German: Julius Meinl AG, Meinl-Gruppe), also known simply as Julius Meinl, is an Austrian manufacturer and retailer of coffee, gourmet foods and other grocery products. The company is based in Vienna, Austria, and it is named after the founder, Julius Meinl I.

History

Julius Meinl I was the founder of a new category, selling ready-roasted coffee for the first time in 1862.

In German-occupied Warsaw and Minsk, Meinl owned four grocery and luxury food stores where locals were not allowed to shop.

Julius Meinl III ceded control of the company in 1987 to his son, Julius Meinl IV. 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.

Today, Julius Meinl is a leading coffee company in Austria, Central and Eastern Europe, and it sells coffees and teas in more than 70 countries. The company's motto is "How may I serve you?" Fifth-generation family members are still working in the business.

Its "Pay with a Poem" campaign has been running since 2014, inspiring people worldwide to pay for their coffee or tea with a poem. This campaign started in Bucharest at "Les Bourgeois", a very nice place in Old Town.

Julius Meinl formerly operated two coffee shops in the U.S., both on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois, before closing its final location in 2022.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Julius Meinl” as austrian coffee and food company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1862, 1987, 1998, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1862-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Julius, Meinl and Austrian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as austrian coffee and food company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q670154. VIAF identifies the subject as 136740534. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1987, 1998 and 1999.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Julius Meinl”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Julius Meinl primary sources, Julius Meinl archive and Julius research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Julius Meinl”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Julius Meinl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.