Was the frappé really invented by accident in 1957?

That is the story Nescafé's Greek site tells, with a hedge, and the Thessaloniki fair built a museum around it in 2017. Greek reporting has also turned up Nescafé advertising for a frappé running about two months before that fair opened, so the accident is disputed rather than settled.

Is National Frappe Day the same as International Coffee Day?

No. International Coffee Day falls on 1 October, agreed by the International Coffee Organization's member states in March 2014, and the ICO notes that individual countries keep their own national coffee days on other dates.

Is a frappe the same as a Frappuccino?

No. A frappé is instant coffee shaken with cold water until it foams; the Frappuccino is a blended drink with its own history, launched by The Coffee Connection in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1992.

National Frappe Day

Next celebratedWednesday, October 7, 2026

National Frappe Day picks the coffee nobody brews, the one you shake with cold water until the foam holds. Make it in a jar with a lid, and give it the hour it asks for.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEOctober 7

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYCoffee

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

An American day for a drink Greece made its own.

No founder, sponsor, or establishing document for an October 7 National Frappe Day could be located. Nothing under the name appears in the Federal Register's index of federal documents, or in the Chase's Calendar volumes HathiTrust indexes.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

A shaken coffee with a paper trail against it

National Frappe Day belongs to a drink whose own manufacturer will not quite vouch for how it began. Nescafé's Greek site runs a company timeline, and the 1957 entry stops to hedge before it names anybody: as the story goes. Then it gives the man, the shaker, the ice cubes and the straw.

That hedge is doing real work. Greek reporters have been picking at the accident story since 2006, and what they keep turning up is printed and dated. The drink has a longer and messier past than the legend allows.

The day itself is American, which adds a second problem. The word does not name the same drink in Athens, outside Boston, and on a US coffee chain's menu board.

ORIGINS

Frappe Day history

INTRODUCTION

In the autumn of 1888, four California newspapers ran the same short item under the heading Delicious Frozen Coffee. It explained that in Europe the same ice was called cafe mousseux, also cafe frappe a la glace. The earliest of the four is the Newcastle News of 19 September.

That is decades before the moment Greece keeps as the frappé's birthday, and the gap is where the trouble starts.

CHAPTER 01

A shaker meant for cocoa

The 22nd Thessaloniki International Fair opened on Saturday 31 August 1957. On the stand of Andreas Dritsas and Son, the Piraeus firm that represented Nescafé in Greece, the product on show was a children's chocolate drink whipped up in a shaker.

One of its salesmen, Dimitrios Vakondios, wanted his usual instant coffee and found no hot water. He reached for the cocoa shaker instead, put in coffee, sugar and cold water, and beat it. What came out had a head of foam on it, and that is the moment Greece has kept.

CHAPTER 02

The advertisements that came first

The story has been questioned in print since 2006, when the journalist Nikos Bakounakis called the frappé's origin either historical, meaning documented, or mythological. Seven years later the magazine Gastronomos went looking for paper.

It found a Nescafé advertisement in Kathimerini of 11 July 1957, recommending a Nescafé frappé for very hot weather. That ran about two months before the fair opened. A rival Swiss instant, Mocafino, answered with its own iced version on 20 August.

CHAPTER 03

What Greece did with it anyway

The drink won the country regardless. Kafea Terra's green coffee director told Coffee Intelligence that the cold instant frappé held the Greek market for nearly thirty years, and that hot espresso sales dropped every summer until the firm's owner, Yiannis Iosifides, built the freddo espresso in 1991.

The fair has since built the legend into itself. In 2017 DETH-HELEXPO and Nestlé opened a frappé museum in Pavilion 11 for the sixtieth anniversary, and turned the roof outside into a beach bar with real sand.

National Frappe Day sits at the American end of all this, on 7 October. No founder, sponsor or establishing record for it could be located, so what the day hands a reader is the drink and the argument behind it.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Delicious Frozen Coffee

Four California papers run the same syndicated item explaining that in Europe the ice is called cafe mousseux, also cafe frappe a la glace. The earliest is the Newcastle News of 19 September.

Nescafé is born at Orbe

Nescafé's own company history dates instant NESCAFÉ to 1 April 1938, at Orbe in Switzerland.

A frappé line in a Greek film

The comedy Propantos Psychraimia, starring Mimis Fotopoulos and Dinos Iliopoulos, carries a passing joke about being turned into café frappé.

The fair the legend is set at

The 22nd Thessaloniki International Fair opens on Saturday 31 August. On the Nestlé agent's stand, a salesman is said to improvise a cold coffee in a cocoa shaker.

The freddo espresso arrives

Kafea Terra's green coffee director dates the freddo espresso to this year, built by the firm's owner Yiannis Iosifides for summers when hot espresso sales fell.

A museum for the frappé

DETH-HELEXPO and Nestlé open a frappé museum in Pavilion 11 of the 82nd fair, marking sixty years since the drink is said to have been invented there.

AT A GLANCE

The frappé at a glance

Word origin: French frappé, past participle of frapper, to chill, literally to beat
Oldest English sense: the adjective meaning iced, dated to 1848
As a noun: American English, dated to 1922, for an iced drink
Two pronunciations: frap, or fra-pay
Dictionary senses: a partly frozen drink, a liqueur over shaved ice, a thick milkshake
Greek sugar grades: skétos plain, métrios two teaspoons, glykós four teaspoons
The foam: proteins form a membrane on the surface that traps air

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Frappe Day

HABIT

Surveys put Greece's coffee at 60 to 65 percent cold.

Recent surveys cited by Coffee Intelligence suggest cold coffee is 60 to 65 percent of all the coffee Greece drinks. A 2023 national survey quoted in the same report found that 95 percent of Greeks buy coffee.

CLASS

The drink changed who it belongs to

Sarah Charles, a coffee writer based in Greece, told Perfect Daily Grind that there is a big class distinction attached to the order, and that it is almost only working-class and rural Greeks who drink frappés now. She describes the freddo as the modern, urban, more expensive choice.

LANGUAGE

The split that New England never closed

Clara Silverstein, writing in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, dates the nationwide switch to ice-cream milkshakes to around 1915, and New England did not follow. That split never closed, which is why the same six letters still get you different drinks in different places.

We created the name. I have never taken credit for creating the concept.

George Howellformer owner of The Coffee Connection

GOOD TO KNOW

National Frappe Day Around the World

Athens

the capital has its own claim on the drink, and Kathimerini traces café frappé here to at least 1948, at Petrograd on Stadiou Street, the shop of the Russian composer Nicky Yakovlev

Eastern Massachusetts

a frappe is ice cream blended with milk and syrup, and a milkshake has no ice cream in it at all; the word researcher Barry Popik dates the New England sense to a frosty blended coffee drink in Boston in 1868

Rhode Island

in parts of this state and southeastern Massachusetts the same drink is ordered as a cabinet, usually coffee flavoured and made with Autocrat Coffee Syrup

United States

the Frappuccino is a different drink again, launched by The Coffee Connection in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the summer of 1992 and carried to Starbucks when the chain was bought in 1994

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Frappe Day

Shake one the way the story tells it

Put instant coffee, sugar and a splash of cold water in a shaker or a screw-top jar and beat it until the foam holds its shape. Top it up with cold water, add ice cubes, and drink it through a straw.

ORDER

Order it by its sugar

A Greek frappé comes skétos, métrios or glykós, which runs from plain to four teaspoons of sugar. Pick one, stay with it all day, and find out which one you actually are.

ASK

Ask for a frappe in Massachusetts

Say the word in an eastern Massachusetts ice cream shop and somebody will hand you ice cream blended with milk and syrup. Ask for a milkshake in the same shop and you will get milk and syrup with no ice cream at all.

READ

Read the case against the famous accident

Kathimerini has published the argument that a Nescafé frappé was being advertised before the fair it is supposed to have been invented at. It is short, and it names its evidence by date.

TASTE

Taste the drink that replaced it

Order a freddo espresso beside a frappé and take the two Greek cold coffees in one sitting. One is instant coffee beaten cold and the other is espresso, and the difference between them is the whole argument.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Frappe Day?

1 / 8

Frappé is the past participle of which French verb?

Answer

No. Nothing under this name appears in the Federal Register's index of federal documents, and no proclamation for it could be found, so it is a normal working day.