Anthora facts for kids
The Anthora is a paper coffee cup design that has become iconic of New York City daily life. Its name is an Eastern European-accented pronunciation of the word amphora.
The cup was originally designed by Leslie Buck of the Sherri Cup Co. in 1963, to appeal to Greek-owned coffee shops in New York City, and was later much copied by other companies. The original Anthora depicts an image of an Ancient Greek amphora, a Greek key design on the top and bottom rim, and the words "WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU" in an angular typeface resembling ancient Greek, for example with an E resembling a capital sigma ("Σ", a letter pronounced like English "s"). The blue and white colors were inspired by the flag of Greece. The cup subsequently became the metropolitan area's definitive coffee-to-go cup.
Sales of the cup reached 500 million in 1994 (when it was by far the most popular design for the company's cups), but had fallen to about 200 million cups annually by 2005. One New York Times writer in 1995 called the Anthora "perhaps the most successful cup in history". By 2007 it was mentioned in passing in a New York Times television review as "one of those endangered artifacts".
The trademark was acquired by the Solo Cup Company, which licenses sales of the cup. The Anthora coffee cup is featured in movies and television shows that are set in New York such as Goodfellas, The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie, Archer, Brooklyn 99, NYPD Blue, Suits, Friends, Men in Black, How I Met Your Mother, Succession, the Law & Order franchise, Marvel's Daredevil, Marvel's Luke Cage, Flight of the Conchords, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Tick, Tick... Boom!
Buck never made royalties from his design, but as a salesman he was well-remunerated for the success of the product. When he retired from Sherri Cup Co. in 1992, he was presented with 10,000 Anthoras printed with a testimonial inscription. After Buck's death in 2010, a New York Times writer described the motto on the cup as having "welcome intimations of tenderness, succor and humility".
