Maxwell House is a brand of coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

 manufactured by a like-named division of Kraft Foods

Kraft Foods

Kraft Foods Inc. is an American confectionery, food and beverage conglomerate. It markets many brands in more than 170 countries. 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang...

. Introduced in 1892, it is named in honor of the Maxwell House Hotel

Maxwell House Hotel

The Maxwell House Hotel was a major hotel in downtown Nashville at which seven US Presidents and other prominent guests stayed. It was built by Colonel John Overton Jr. and named for his wife, Harriet Maxwell Overton. The architect was Isaiah Rogers....

 in Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

. For many years until the late 1980s it was the largest-selling coffee in the U.S. and is currently (ca. 2007) second behind Folgers

Folgers

Folgers Coffee is a major brand of coffee in the United States, part of the food and beverage division of The J.M. Smucker Co.-Company history:...

, which is manufactured by The J.M. Smucker Co.

The J.M. Smucker Co.

The J. M. Smucker Company is a manufacturer of fruit spreads, ice cream toppings, beverages, shortening, natural peanut butter and other products in North America. Smucker's headquarters are located in Orrville, Ohio.- History :...

 The company recently unveiled a new slogan, "Good Just Got Great," visible on their website. However, it is best known for its longtime slogan, "Good to the last drop," and is still running ads featuring the line.

"Good to the last drop"

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

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 as the phrase's originator. By the 1930s, however, the company was running advertisements that claimed that the former President had taken a sip of Maxwell House Coffee on a visit to Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...

's estate, The Hermitage

The Hermitage (Nashville, Tennessee)

The Hermitage is a historical plantation and museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, USA, east of downtown Nashville. The plantation was owned by Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, from 1804 until his death at the Hermitage in 1845. Jackson only lived at the property...

, near Nashville on October 21, 1907 and that when served coffee he had proclaimed it to be "Good to the Last Drop." During this time, Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...

 also used the slogan "Good to the last drop". In modern times, Maxwell House has distanced itself from its own original claim stating that the slogan was actually written by Clifford Spiller, former president of General Foods

General Foods

General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the USA by Charles William Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895. The name General Foods was adopted in 1929, after several corporate acquisitions...

 Corporation, and did not come from a Roosevelt remark overheard by Cheek-Neal. The phrase remains a registered trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

 for the product and appears on its logo. While the veracity of the Roosevelt relation to the phrase has never been historically established in the press of local papers that covered Roosevelt's October 21 visit and one of his coffee drinking episodes, without doubt, the Maxwell House Company, itself, for many years, claimed in its own advertising that the Roosevelt story was true. In 2009, Maxwell House ran a commercial with Roosevelt repriser, Joe Wiegand

Joe Wiegand

Joe Wiegand , is a repriser who has portrayed 26th US President, Theodore Roosevelt in all 50 US States, and a consultant to candidates seeking public office. During the last months of the George W...

 telling the "Last Drop" story. The Theodore Roosevelt Association

Theodore Roosevelt Association

The Theodore Roosevelt Association is a historical and cultural organization dedicated to honoring the life and work of Theodore Roosevelt , the 26th president of the United States....

, an organization dedicated to preserving Roosevelt's history and heritage, has paper evidence backing up the story.

Expansion of the product line

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 1966 the company introduced "Maxwell House ElectraPerk", developed specifically for electric percolators.

In 1969, General Foods in the UK launched granulated coffee. They used a pantomime stage format in the London Hilton for a show called "Once Upon a Coffee Time". In this story the weak "Prince of Powdah" and his mentor "Reschem" travel the world in search of blends. Meeting and falling in love with "Princess Purity", and fighting the dragon "Old Hat", the young man emerges as"Prince Granulo", heir to the Kingdom of Maxwell. This show was written by Michael Ingrams, produced by the Mitchell Monkhouse Agency and designed by Malcolm Lewis and Chris Miles of Media.

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. In 1972 the company had introduced "Max-Pax" ground coffee filter rings, aimed at the then still-strong market for drip coffee preparation. Although this method, too, has been eclipsed, the Max-Pax concept was subsequently adapted as Maxwell House Filter Packs (1989) for use in automatic coffee makers. By the 1990s formulations for specific preparation methods had been quietly discontinued. The brand is now marketed in ground and pre-measured forms, as well as in whole-bean, flavored and varietal blends.[3] A higher-yield ground coffee, "Maxwell House Master Blend," was introduced in 1981 and "Rich French Roast," "Colombian Supreme," and "1892," a "slow-roasted" formulation, in 1989. In recent years the names of these products have been modified by the company to present a more "uniform" Maxwell House brand image.

Decaffeinated coffee

Although General Foods had been marketing decaffeinated coffee

Decaffeination

Decaffeination is the act of removing caffeine from coffee beans, cocoa, tea leaves and other caffeine-containing materials. Despite removal of caffeine, many decaffeinated drinks still have around 1-2% of the...

 under various brand names ("Sanka

Sanka

Sanka is a brand of instant decaffeinated coffee, sold around the world, and was one of the earliest decaffeinated varieties. Sanka is distributed in the United States by Kraft Foods.-History:...

" since 1927 and "Brim" and "Maxim," the latter a freeze-dried

Freeze drying

Freeze-drying is a dehydration process typically used to preserve a perishable material or make the material more convenient for transport...

 instant coffee, since the 1950s), it refrained from actually selling Maxwell House-labeled decaffeinated coffee products until 1983, when it introduced ground "Maxwell House Decaffeinated" into east-coast markets. (At the same time, a decaffeinated version of its long-established, lighter-tasting "Yuban" brand was introduced on the west coast.) "Maxwell House Instant Decaffeinated Coffee" finally hit the shelves in 1985. A further modification of the decaf theme, "Maxwell House Lite," a "reduced-caffeine" blend, was introduced nationally in 1992 and its instant form the following year.

Advertising

During the 1920s the Maxwell House brand began to be extensively advertised across the US. Total advertising expenditure rose from $19,955 in 1921 to $276,894 in 1924, and consequently the brand was cited as the most well-known coffee brand in a 1925 study of consumer goods.

Maxwell House was the sponsor of Maxwell House Coffee Time, better known as The Burns and Allen Show. Each episode began with Gracie Allen

Gracie Allen

Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen , known as Gracie Allen, was an American comedian who became internationally famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns...

 saying "Another cup of Maxwell House coffee, George?" George Burns

George Burns

George Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television and movies, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became...

 would always reply "Sure. Pour me a cup, Gracie." Allen would continue "You know, Maxwell House is always good to the last... drop." "And that drop's good too.", Burns would reply. It also featured many comedic advertisements with Bill Goodwin

Bill Goodwin

Bill Goodwin was for many years the announcer and regular character of the Burns and Allen radio program, and subsequently The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on television from 1950-51...

. Maxwell House also sponsored Molly Goldberg on radio and later on television.

Maxwell House was also the sponsor of the radio version of Father Knows Best. Each episode began with the youngest daughter Kitten asking, "Mother, is Maxwell House really the best coffee in the whole world?" to which her mother would reply, "Well, your father says so, and Father Knows Best!" It was later replaced by Postum, a hot decaffeinated beverage that was touted by Father as being a calming beverage that wouldn't keep you up or make you jittery.

Maxwell House was the long-time sponsor of the early television series, Mama

Mama (TV series)

Mama is a weekly Maxwell House-sponsored CBS television comedy-drama series which ran from July 1, 1949 until March 17, 1957.Based on the Kathryn Forbes memoir Mama's Bank Account, which was also adapted for the 1944 John Van Druten play and subsequent 1948 film I Remember Mama, it told the...

, based on the play and film I Remember Mama. It starred Peggy Wood

Peggy Wood

Peggy Wood was an American actress of stage, film and television.-Early career:She was born Mary Margaret Wood in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Eugene Wood, a journalist, and Mary Gardner, a telegraph operator. She was a direct descendant of Daniel Boone...

 as the matriarch of a Norwegian-American family. It ran on the CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 network from 1949 to 1957 and was perhaps the first example of product placement

Product placement

Product placement, or embedded marketing, is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the...

 on a TV show, as the family frequently gathered around the kitchen table for a cup of Maxwell House coffee, though these segments, aired towards the end of each episode, were usually kept separate from the main storyline. Early television programs were frequently packaged by the advertising agencies of individual sponsors. As this practice became less common in the late 1950s, Maxwell House, like most national brands, turned to "spot" advertising, with the agencies creating sometimes long-running campaigns in support of their products. One such 1970s campaign for Maxwell House featured the actress Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton was an American film actress known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz...

, the former wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)

The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

, as Cora, the general store owner who proudly announced that Maxwell House was the only brand she sold. Maxwell House was also a well-known sponsor of the Burns and Allen radio show, during which Maxwell House spots were incorporated into the plots of the actual radio scripts.

Along with television advertising, Maxwell House used various print campaigns, always featuring the tagline "good to the last drop." The publication of its Passover

Passover

Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...

 haggadah

Haggadah of Pesach

The Haggadah is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew to "tell your son" of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus in the Torah...

 by the Joseph Jacobs Advertising Agency beginning in 1932 made Maxwell House a household name with many American Jewish families. This was a clever marketing strategy by owner Joseph Jacobs, who hired an Orthodox rabbi to certify that the coffee bean was technically more like a berry than a bean and, consequently, kosher for Passover

Kitniyot

Kitniyot, qit'niyyoth are a category of foods which are defined by Jewish law and tradition that Ashkenazi Jews avoid eating during the Biblical festival of Passover....

. Maxwell House coffee was the first to target a Jewish demographic, and the haggadah continues to represent a synthesis of American and Jewish interests. It was also reportedly used for the first Seder

Passover Seder

The Passover Seder is a Jewish ritual feast that marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. It is conducted on the evenings of the 14th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, and on the 15th by traditionally observant Jews living outside Israel. This corresponds to late March or April in...

 held at the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 in 2009, and again in 2011, by Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

.

Manufacturing facilities

Maxwell House coffee is still produced at two U.S. locations: Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...

, and San Leandro, California

San Leandro, California

San Leandro is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is considered a suburb of Oakland and San Francisco. The population was 84,950 as of 2010 census. The climate of the city is mild throughout the year.-Geography and water resources:...

. A third plant (the oldest of the group, and the largest in the world at the time), located in Hoboken, New Jersey

Hoboken, New Jersey

Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...

, was closed in the early 1990s. Its enormous rooftop sign, proclaiming the brand name and a dripping coffee cup, was a landmark visible in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 across the Hudson River

Hudson River

The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

 from Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

. The plant was later sold and demolished. The site, like most New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 riverfront property opposite Manhattan, is now occupied by a condominium

Condominium

A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...

. The plant was divested by Kraft Foods to Maximus Coffee Group LP in late 2006. In March 2007, the neon coffee cup sign which glowed like a beacon over the city's East End was removed from atop the side of the sixteen-story coffee roaster building. The same fate befell the Houston plant, at one time the second largest plant in the world; it's huge iconic sign had been visible from Downtown Houston, The University of Houston Campus, the Ship Channel, and to everyone who passed through Houston, on either I-45, or I-10. It was one of the first sites of a major Sanka

Sanka

Sanka is a brand of instant decaffeinated coffee, sold around the world, and was one of the earliest decaffeinated varieties. Sanka is distributed in the United States by Kraft Foods.-History:...

, decafenation plant, and later one of the world's largest Maxin plants, producing freeze dried coffee. The original main plant that housed the traditional M.R.G. section, [mixing, roasting, grinding, and packaging], [and the huge Minute Rice

Minute Rice

Minute Rice is a brand of instant rice. The product was introduced in 1949 by General Foods, who merged with Kraft in 1990 and became Kraft General Foods, which became Kraft Foods in 1995. The product recently was sold to Riviana Foods in the United States, and to Ronzoni Foods Canada Corporation...

 Plant, was once a Ford Assembly Plant. Maxwell house Coffee Company, and the rest of General Foods Corp., were among first large scale manufacturers in The South, and Nationally, to be peaceably, and successfully integrate their entire work force. Oldvet13 (talk) 06:37, 22 October 2011 (UTC) Oldvet13.

External links

• MaxwellHouse.com
• Kraft.com, Joel Cheek biography at Kraft Foods
  Kraft Foods
  Kraft Foods Inc. is an American confectionery, food and beverage conglomerate. It markets many brands in more than 170 countries. 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang...
  
  
• Maxwell House Hagaddah and Joseph Jacobs Advertising