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Maxwell House
USINFO | 2013-05-23 17:18
Maxwell House is a brand of coffee manufactured by a like-named division of Kraft Foods. Introduced in 1892, Joel Cheek names his new coffee blend "Maxwell House" in honor of the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. For many years until the late 1980s it was the largest-selling coffee in the United States. The company's slogan is "Good to the last drop," which is often incorporated into their logo and is printed on their labels. In 1884 Joel Cheek moved to Nashville and met Roger Nolley Smith, a British coffee broker who could reportedly tell the origin of a coffee simply by smelling the green beans.
In 1917, Cheek-Neal began using a "Good to the last drop" slogan to advertise their Maxwell House Coffee. For several years, the ads made no mention of Theodore Roosevelt as the phrase's originator. In 1942 General Foods Corporation, the successor to the Postum Company, began supplying instant coffee to the U.S. armed forces. Beginning in the fall of 1945 this product, now branded as Maxwell House Instant Coffee, entered test markets in the eastern U.S. and began national distribution the following year. In 1976 the product was joined by "Maxwell House A.D.C." coffee, the name reflecting its intended use in automatic drip coffee makers such as Mr. Coffee, which were in the process of pushing aside traditional coffee-preparation methods.
