Who was Alice Foote MacDougall?

Long before Leslie Buck created the Anthora to-go cup for coffee-drinking New Yorkers, Alice Foote MacDougall built a coffee empire from scratch. Left with three children and no fortune after a failed marriage, she took a $38 gamble on a family coffee blend and hustled her way into business, sending out hundreds of letters to drum up orders. “I simply don’t believe in failure,” she declared, and her tenacity paid off.  By 1919, she opened the Little Coffee Shop in Grand Central Terminal, which she transformed into a welcoming café with waffles, percolators, and charm. The shop’s success launched a string of stylish, European-inspired eateries that made her a household name in New York’s caffeine scene.

By the mid-1920s, MacDougall was running a million-dollar business with five locations, 700 employees, and a reputation as the queen of coffee in Manhattan – long before Starbucks was even a dream. Her cafés were elegant sanctuaries in a postwar city, designed to comfort and uplift, especially for working women. Though she later warned against the hardships of business for women, her legacy stands as a pioneering force in both coffee and female entrepreneurship. “There is romance in coffee,” she once wrote – and through her vision, grit, and grit-laced glamour, she helped turn that romance into a New York institution.

Dedicated to preserving the legacy of the iconic Anthora coffee cup – a true symbol of New York City’s street culture, corner delis, and daily rituals – NY Coffee Cup celebrates its enduring design, cultural significance, and place in coffee history, both in NYC and beyond.