coffee-and, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

coffee-and adj.

also coffee-and-cake

in context, referring to anything seen as cheap, minimal, second-rate, e.g. (theatre) coffee-and role, a small part that will pay for little more than snacks.

1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 286: And that was how it went, mostly coffee-and stuff.
1949		I. Shulman Cry Tough! 123: The forty-five bucks a week, after it had hunks bitten out of it [...] didn’t leave him more than coffee-an’ money.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 46/1: Coffee-and [...] anything picayune, petty or cheap. (‘Coffee-and dough’— unimportant money.) (‘Coffee-and touch’—a petty theft.) [...] Coffee-and grifter or hustler. 1. A petty thief or racketeer. 2. A cheap prostitute.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1999		J. Ridley Love Is a Racket 391: No more coffee and cake setups. This is the big one.

In compounds

coffee-and habit (n.) (also coffee-and-cake habit) [habit n.]

(US drugs) a small-time heroin habit, adopted either through grim self-control or through simple poverty.

1938		D. Maurer ‘Lang. of the Und. Narcotic Addict’ Pt 2 in Lang. Und. (1981) 101/1: coffee-and habit. A form of chippy-habit. The jocular inference is that it is really no habit at all.
1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl.
1959		J.E. Schmidt Narcotics Lingo and Lore.
1972		R.A. Wilson Playboy’s Book of Forbidden Words 66: Chippy user [...] a person who uses cocaine very occasionally in order to avoid becoming addicted, which is also known as having a chippy habit or a coffee-and-cake habit or a Saturday-night habit.

coffee-and pimp (n.) (also coffee-and mac)

a small-time pimp, whose women barely make him a living, let alone provide the high style to which he would aspire.

1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 174: The girls called him a ‘coffee and’ pimp, because Irene gave him just a dollar a day.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 23: ‘That coffee-an’ mac you got,’ a French girl would crack to a straight one.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 46/1: Coffee-and pimp. One who lives off the earnings of cheap prostitutes. ‘A bunch of them street-corner coffee-and pimps took a drop (were arrested) on that short-arm heist (rape charge).’.