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Maxwell House, the 133-year-old brand known for its ground coffee that’s “good to the last drop,” is rebranding as Maxwell Apartment. Why? The joke is that most people can’t afford to buy a home.
The temporary name change is an attempt by the storied brand to leverage the twin economic tailwinds of rising coffee prices and housing unaffordability. As Chris Kelly reports for Marketing Dive, “Maxwell House is having some fun with its name and the grim statistics around the possibility of younger generations owning a home in its latest campaign.” Sounds super fun, right?
Buying a home is more expensive than ever, and young people are being increasingly shut out of the market altogether. To help, for a limited time, Maxwell Apartment is offering customers a year’s supply of coffee—consisting of four 27.5 oz canisters, charmingly described in a press release as a 12-month “lease”—for $40 via Amazon.
In the announcement, Maxwell House, which is owned by Kraft Heinz, notes that buying a year’s supply of its coffee could save customers more than $1,000 annually, assuming they stop going to cafes and make coffee at home instead. It’s kind of like when people with houses tell millennials to stop buying avocado toast to save for a down payment. According to NerdWallet, the median down payment is over $70,000, so customers would have to forgo coffee for 70 years before they can buy a house.
The Maxwell Apartment stunt is an example of earned media, or when a brand receives publicity, media coverage, or other exposure without directly paying for it. Earned media campaigns can be a valuable way for small companies to build word of mouth and gain publicity, but they’re also becoming increasingly popular among big coffee brands. To be fair, we’re as guilty of covering this stuff as anyone—we’ve brought you news of Peet’s Chief Cold Brew Officer job posting and Starbucks’ Global Coffee Creator search, among others.
Maxwell House’s campaign seems slightly more sinister, however, cashing in on the housing crisis and rising coffee prices. Retail prices in the United States surged 21% in August compared to the same time last year. At the same time, house prices keep rising, and the average age of a first-time home buyer is increasing: the median first-time homebuyer was 38 years old in 2024, compared to 29 years old in 1980. Clearly, our coffee habits are the problem.
Read more on the Maxwell House “rebrand” from Marketing Dive here.
Photo by Nao Takabayashi on Unsplash
