Production designer Bob Shaw used the Anthora paper coffee cup to help recreate the look of 1990s New York for “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It was the sort of detail that barely needed to be noticed to do its job. For decades, the blue-and-white paper cup was part of the city’s visual shorthand, as familiar as a yellow cab, a subway token, or steam rising through a street grate. Put one in the hand of a detective, stockbroker, cabbie, newspaper reporter, or bleary-eyed commuter and the scene immediately felt more like New York. That made the Anthora an unusually useful movie prop: inexpensive, ordinary, instantly recognizable, and so thoroughly woven into everyday city life that it could establish a place – and even an era – without a word of dialogue.
It was the sort of detail that barely needed to be noticed to do its job.
The Anthora also evokes a particular New York, before coffee became an experience to be curated. It belonged to the age of corner coffee shops, Greek diners, newsstands, pay phones, tabloid newspapers, and coffee ordered simply “regular”—milk and two sugars—then carried down the sidewalk beneath a plastic lid. There were no tasting notes, loyalty apps, or elaborate menus; there was coffee to go, often handed across a counter with change from a dollar. The Anthora was disposable, but the world it represented was not. Today, seeing that familiar cup on screen can feel like spotting an old New Yorker in a crowd. Sometimes the smallest prop tells you exactly where – and when – you are: one blue paper cup, and you’re in New York.
Committed to keeping the story of the iconic Anthora coffee cup alive, NY Coffee Cup honors a beloved symbol of New York’s diners, sidewalks, and everyday coffee rituals—celebrating its unmistakable design, rich cultural history, and lasting place in the city and beyond.
