Gevalia
Gevalia is the largest coffee roastery in Scandinavia. It is located in Gävle (Gevalia in Latin).
Gevalia was introduced in 1853 in Sweden by Victor Theodore Engwall & Co. After 120 years as a family company it was sold in 1971 to Kraft Foods.
Gevalia produces 40,000 metric tons of coffee every year. Most of it is sold in Sweden, Denmark and in the Baltic area, but some is exported to North America.
Gevalia began North American sales via mail-order delivery service in the 1980s. Gevalia is perhaps best known for its introductory offer of a free coffeemaker and other coffee-related incentives of relatively higher-value brand-name coffeemakers for the cost of shipping in exchange for trying their coffees. These offers appeared in magazine advertisements, direct mailings ("junk mail"), and television commercials until the company switched to an intense Internet presence of online advertisements in banner ads on Web pages and in unsolicited bulk e-mail. Some of these Gevalia.com e-mail advertisements were the basis of the 2005 lawsuit filed by Hypertouch accusing Gevalia and its parent company Kraft of massive spamming.
Although a mainstream supermarket brand in Europe, Gevalia attempts to market itelf in the United States an ultra-premium brand despite its almost exclusive use of unsolicited bulk e-mail and Web page banner ads. Gevalia is also the primary coffee brand for the Tassimo coffee maker in the United States.
News
In 2005, Kraft was sued by Hypertouch, an ISP, for spamming its Gevalia coffee brand. Kraft was accused of sending multiple waves of junk advertisement to the ISP's customers, the action brought under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 act. The parties resolved their dispute by mutual agreement and the litigation has been dismissed.
Trivia
Gevalia coffee was blatantly advertized by Rob Corddry on a 2003 episode of The Daily Show, where a photo showing a crate of Gevalia left outside Qusay Hussein's home in the hot Iraqi Sun was offered as definitive proof that Qusay Hussein was really dead - since no one would leave such fantastically aromatic coffee beans out in the sun like that.
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