He received a common school education in Pittsburgh and Allegheny.
In 1860, John Arbuckle entered the wholesale grocery business McDonald and Arbuckle, begun by his brother Charles, his uncle Duncan McDonald and his friend William Roseburg.
The uncle and friend left the business and John and Charles assumed charge.
Prior to the sixties coffee was not generally sold roasted or ground, ready for the coffee pot. Except in the big cities, most housewives bought their coffee green, and roasted it in their kitchen stoves as needed.
By 1865, John Arbuckle had satisfied himself at a carefully roasted coffee, packed while still warm in small individual containers would measurably overcome the objections to selling loose coffee in a roasted state. A good cup of coffee meant daily roasting until 1868, when Arbuckle perfected a glutinous mixture, made of Irish moss, gelatin, isinglass, white sugar, and eggs for preserving the freshness of roast coffee.
In 1868 he patented a process of glazing coffee, which had for its object the preservation of the flavor and aroma of coffee by sealing the pores of the coffee bean.
John Arbuckle was viewed as quite a trendsetter when he started selling his Ariosa brand coffee beans in brown paper bags.
Arbuckle was also the first coffee seller to realize the impact of sophisticated advertising. His marketing campaigns emphasized the power of standard coffee and featured ads ridiculing the failed attempts of housewives at roasting their own beans.
In 1873, Arbuckle combined heart Rios and Santos beans to produce a blend called Ariosa. It was the first successful national brand of packaged coffee in the United States.
Ariosa became one of the best selling coffees in the United States, from the East Coast to as far as the western frontier, where cowboys boiled strong Ariosa coffee over their campfires and the Southwest, where Navajos built dwellings out of empty Ariosa wooden crates.
Arbuckles’ was so successful that in the 1880s the company established branches in New York, Kansas City and Chicago as well as ports in Brazil and Mexico. John Arbuckle died at his home Brooklyn home, March 27 1912.
John Arbuckle
