MAXWELL HOUSE
Maxwell House coffee was created by wholesale grocer Joel Owsley Cheek in 1892. Cheek got the coffee name from The Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. The coffee had its own debut in the hotel dining room where guests raved about it so much that they demanded the hotel keep serving it. Cheek then teamed up with investor John Neal to establish the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company and began mass producing the coffee.
THE BIRTH OF MAXWELL HOUSE
MAXWELL HOUSE THROUGH THE YEARS
Maxwell House has one of the most popular slogans in advertising history. The coffee was described as “Good to the Last Drop” by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 at the Maxwell House hotel in Nashville. By the early 1900s, Maxwell House had grown beyond Nashville and became one of the first coffee brands sold nationwide, coming out in grocery stores across the United States. In 1928, it was sold to the Postum Cereal Company for around $40 million, which renamed the coffee division Maxwell House Products Corporation. It was later acquired by General Foods, then Kraft, and today its ownership is split, with Kraft Heinz holding North American rights and JDE Peet managing the brand internationally.
