Years before Starbucks debuted the pumpkin spice latte, a small, family-owned coffee company in Pennsylvania had already rolled out a predecessor.

“We were the company that developed pumpkin spice [coffee] before anybody,” Randy Fasig, owner of Fasig’s Coffee in Allentown, told PA Local by phone.

There are several written histories about the rise of pumpkin spice. Perhaps the most frequently cited example, published by The Chicagoist, points to a 1998 mention of Fasig’s pumpkin spice coffee in Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper as one of the earliest references found anywhere. And while a Tampa Bay Times article from two years prior mentioned pumpkin spice coffee in a piece on local roasters there, Fasig is confident Pennsylvania had it first.

Fasig, now 71 and “basically retired,” can’t recall the exact year of their pumpkin spice coffee launch, but it was advertised with the Northampton Farmers Market in 1997 and “may go back to 1991.” He added: “Before we introduced it to supermarkets we sold it to specialty food customers for years.” Starbucks rolled out its pumpkin spice latte in 2003.

Flavored coffee was increasingly big business at the turn of the century. Vanilla, caramel and hazelnut were some of the earliest success stories. The feat of engineering was spurned by some traditionalists, but cup by cup, demand grew.

Fasig’s — which at the time was roasting a million pounds of coffee a year — went all in on the flavor trend. All in. By the time they added pumpkin spice in the 1990s, Fasig says, the company had launched 70 flavored coffees — cinnamon, amaretto, and chocolate hazelnut among them.

They would eventually offer more than 200 flavors, many of them tailored to niche palates. A licorice-flavored coffee, for instance, was highly sought after in Italian enclaves in and around Philadelphia.

“I mean, we had people buying 25 pounds of it at a time,” Fasig said of that variety.

Fasig’s offerings were sourced through and developed with “flavor houses,” companies where food scientists can make powders and syrups taste like almost anything. One house, Michigan’s FlavorSum, established in 2021, told PA Local that it maintains a library with hundreds of pumpkin spice “recipes.” It has clients in baked goods, beer, spirits and coffee, and fine-tunes its formulas to cater to each.

“We may add a bakery note for customers who want to offer a pumpkin spice pie flavor,” Director of Marketing Lisa Jackson explained in an email. “We can incorporate the flavor of cheesecake with pumpkin spice for a creamier experience. Some customers want a higher level of cinnamon in their pumpkin spice flavor, while others request a milder spice level.”

Flavored coffee is typically seasoned by applying oils or powders directly to the beans.

Pumpkin spice, in its most basic form, is a relatively simple blend of nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger — actual pumpkin is not a typical ingredient. Perception researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found the combination triggers something deep within the recesses of our comfort-seeking brains.

Food historians believe the first recipe containing the combination now known as pumpkin spice was found in the first American cookbook. American Cookery, published in 1796 by an orphan from Connecticut named Amelia Simmons, calls for joining mace, nutmeg, ginger and allspice into a “pompkin” pie filling.

One of the first uses of the phrase “pumpkin spice” can be found in a 1936 cake recipe in the Washington Post. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the spice trade and Southeast Asia, where, as the Post noted in 2023, bloody campaigns were waged for access to spices like nutmeg and clove.

Flavored coffee wasn’t invented by companies like Fasig’s. It can be traced back to the Middle East centuries ago. But the 1990s explosion played a big role in opening up the coffee market to people who didn’t like the robust and charred notes of standard brews.

This is particularly true of flavor profiles that evoke sweets, and iced beverages high on both sugar and caffeine. These can taste closer to milkshakes or ice cream floats than java.

Fasig first discovered pumpkin spice coffee during consultations with flavor houses, which involved a gauntlet of taste tests. He embraced the mix on a hunch. After all, pumpkin pie is a dessert, and desserts and coffee go hand in hand, he thought.

“I just said, ‘Hey, this is what I’m looking for. Can you work me up a few samples?’”

The flavor sorcerers obliged, and pumpkin spice coffee became a Fasig’s bestseller almost immediately.

“There were a few flavors that really combined very well with coffee, and pumpkin spice was one of them,” Fasig recalled. “It almost reached the most popular flavor in those days, which was vanilla nut cream, a hazelnut cream flavor. You almost couldn’t make enough of it.”

In the spring of 2003, years after the October 1998 Morning Call piece, a team working in Starbucks’ “liquid lab” in Seattle began the monthslong process that would produce the pumpkin spice latte. The rest is culinary and pop culture history.

Pumpkin spice is everywhere now — hamburgers, water, even toilet paper. “Oversaturation” may not fully cover it. As Delish once put it: Your entire life can be pumpkin spice now.

A lengthy behind-the-scenes article on the pumpkin spice latte published by Starbucks makes no mention of the pumpkin coffees that came before it. Starbucks has sold hundreds of millions of the lattes since, but Fasig has never had one.

Hours after speaking with PA Local, Fasig called back to say he decided to try a related beverage, the pumpkin spice frappuccino, for the first time. His review: “Pretty good” and “very sweet.”

Fasig’s still sells its own pumpkin spice coffee online. The recipe hasn’t changed, Fasig said, but the business has. It’s smaller than it was in 1998. And Fasig, who owned 13 cafes at the company’s height, says he lacks the full-throttle energy he possessed in the brand’s experimental heyday. He now advises new companies, and is happy to still be in the mix.

“I mean, I just like coffee,” he said.

This story first appeared in PA Local, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA taking a fresh, positive look at the incredible people, beautiful places, and delicious food of Pennsylvania. Sign up for free here.

BEFORE YOU GO … If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by the Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media.