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Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
The story of a pantry shelf, an outline history of grocery specialties: a machine-readable transcription.
A Gentleman Rides
on Horseback
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A Gentleman Rides
on Horseback
Joel Cheek Once Rode Through the
Cumberland Valley with a Spare Shirt
in One Side of His Saddlebag and
Sales Samples in the Other--and
Founded a Great National Business
Joel Cheek Once Rode Through the Cumberland Valley with a Spare Shirt in One Side of His Saddlebag and Sales Samples in the Other--and Founded a Great National Business
Back in the '70s, a young man rode through the Cumberland Valley, in Kentucky and Tennessee, with a spare shirt in one side of his saddlebag and samples on the other.
Today, a genial, white-haired gentleman of 72, he is active head of a great national business, with plants scattered from coast to coast.
The story of Joel Cheek is one of the real romances of the business world.
And it is far more. It is a romance of the old South. For with all his genius, Joel Cheek could not have succeeded so
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greatly had he not been brought up in a land where good things to eat were almost a religion.
Up the Cumberland River, years ago, Joel Cheek travelled on the old side-wheeled steamers. On horseback he rode from village to village, selling coffee for a wholesale house in Nashville.
And all the time he was thinking of the flavors that his fellow Southerners knew and enjoyed--of the wonderful food prepared by their mammy cooks. Was it not possible, by skillful blending, to produce a coffee flavor which could match these achievements?
Here was the task to which he set himself. For years he studied and worked. Between trips he carried home samples of various coffees, blending and roasting them; testing, rejecting; toiling late into the night; always searching for the ideal combination; persevering in spite of countless obstacles.
Finally he perfected it--a coffee blend so rich and mellow that it delighted even the most critical people in that land of good living.
Among the many who soon became enthusiastic over Mr. Cheek's coffee was Mr. Black, manager of the Maxwell House, in Nashville. After a careful trial, he began serving it to his guests. From that time on, no other coffee was ever used by this fine old hotel, and Mr. Cheek named his blend, fittingly, "Maxwell House Coffee."
Throughout the South the Maxwell House itself became celebrated for its delicious food--and especially for its coffee. Wherever its guests went, they carried with them to their homes the fame of Joel Cheek's blend. And so, when, in association with Mr. J. W. Neal, Mr. Cheek built a large roasting plant in Nashville and began to market his coffee, the product was quick to meet success in the Nashville territory.
As the demand for Maxwell House spread farther west a new plant had to be opened in Houston to supply fresh coffee in the markets of the Southwest. But the Southeast, too, was buying Mr. Cheek's coffee in increasing quantities. And so, in 1910, he erected another plant--at Jacksonville, Fla. Six
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year later, to serve a still newer territory, a fourth plant was built in Richmond, Va. Thus the popularity of Maxwell House Coffee was established throughout the entire South.
Mr. Joel O. CheekBut Mr. Cheek, believing firmly in the quality of his blend, was confident that Maxwell House Coffee could become a nation-wide drink. In 1921, backing it with a powerful advertising campaign, he introduced Maxwell House into New York, building a roasting plant in Brooklyn. Although the product had to meet tremendous competition it became, within twenty-eight months, the best selling high-grade coffee in the New York market.
In 1924 a Cheek-Neal factory was built in Los Angeles, the sixth link in a nation-wide chain of giant coffee roasting plants. With the opening of this plant, in January, 1925, Maxwell House Coffee became a truly national institution. Possessed of an exceptional flavor and backed by the biggest advertising campaign ever put behind a coffee, it has established itself from coast to coast.
Long ago, Joel Cheek went into business to supply his coffee blend to the people of America. Today, his sons and his associates, J. W. and J. R. Neal, working with him, he still directs personally the great organization that blends and roasts Maxwell House--America's largest selling high-grade coffee.
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