The orange handle on a diner’s decaf pot traces back to Bremen, Germany, in 1903, where coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius developed a commercial decaffeination process: steam the green beans, flush out the caffeine with a solvent, first benzene, then roast. He sold the coffee in Europe as Kaffee HAG, and for France he coined Sanka from sans caféine. His first US push around 1909 and 1910 used the clumsy names Dekafa and Dekofa, and in 1914 he founded the Kaffee Hag Corporation in New York just as World War I began.

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, the Alien Property Custodian seized the company and auctioned it, US trademark included, to an American firm. Roselius returned in 1923 with the Sanka name and two New York coffee houses, then took to the radio in 1927. General Foods, owner of the grain drink Postum, bought Sanka in 1928 and made it a television sponsor, and Sanka’s bright orange label became so tied to decaf that restaurants adopted orange rimmed pots.

• WEAF radio carried programs such as the Sanka After Dinner Hour, pitching decaf as the evening coffee.
• Sanka sponsored I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, and The Andy Griffith Show, where cast members delivered the ads in character.
• On The Goldbergs, Gertrude Berg turned to the camera mid-episode to recommend Sanka, then slipped back into the scene.
• Robert Young, TV’s Marcus Welby, was Sanka’s spokesman from 1976 to 1982, and Lena Horne appeared in 1980s ads.
• Folgers decaf breaks the rule with green handled pots, and in several European countries Sanka faded as a budget brand by the 1970s.