# The most special coffee bean

## Details

- **What:** Deltinha
- **Decade:** 1970
- **Where is it:** Across the country

It has been bigger and smaller, rounder and slimmer, darker and lighter. It has been a soft toy, a figurine, and it has even existed in human form, when the full costume was used at events and hugged hundreds of people in a single day. In many shapes and sizes, Deltinha is part of the history of Delta and of the imagination of many Portuguese people, who have been meeting it again over the last five decades, in many different settings.

The small and friendly coffee bean was born in the 1970s as a way to establish Delta in the market. “I always dreamed of Deltinha,” said Rui Nabeiro. “It is one of my masterpieces.” When Delta was founded in 1961, the coffee sector seemed established and hard to enter. The solution was to try different approaches: invest in packaging and door-to-door distribution, make credit easier for customers and – even before calling it marketing – build a close relationship with the public. “At the time, little was done in that area, but I was already dreaming and making it real. Deltinha was a weapon.”

Together with the purchase of coffee, Deltinhas began to be offered from the north to the south of the country. Children adopted them as toys, and they were also displayed in cafés and pastry shops. On festive days, such as Children’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Father’s Day, the soft toys were even handed out in person in schools and maternity wards, in innovative and, at the time, very striking marketing actions. “Thousands and thousands of Deltinhas went out onto the streets,” recalled the company’s founder. And they are still around.

## Date

2025-10-24