Last week the U. S.'s biggest trademarked food company bought out the biggest-selling high-grade brand of coffee—paying for it the equivalent of 66 million dollars.
Postum Company, biggest trademarked food company, began at Battle Creek, Mich., 33 years ago when the late Charles W. Post pottered around an oven with wheat bran and molasses. By roasting them he sought a coffee substitute. He found the substitute and called it Postum Cereal.
People liked Postum cereal's morning brew, and their purchases gave Post enough money to continue pottering around the oven. Whole wheat and barley came out of the oven Grape Nuts. Later came thin, crisp Post Toasties, then Instant Postum powder. These four products were the foundation blocks of the great Postum business.
Two and a half years ago a great superstructure began. Postum Company, which had multiplied its 200,000 common shares to 2,000,000, began to buy allied but not competitive companies—and their trademarked advertised products. That is why the Postum Company now sells besides its first items this array of eatables:
Baker chocolate D-zerta
Baker cocoanut Swans-Down flour
Hellman mayonnaise Instant Swans-Down
Annis horseradish Minute tapioca
Log Cabin syrup Minute gelatine
Sanka coffee* Pearl tapioca
Jell-O Baker cocoa
Jell-O ice cream powder
To this unparalleled list of advertisingly famed eatables the Postum Company last week added Maxwell House coffee.
Cheek-Neal Co. of Nashville makes Maxwell coffee. Fifty-five years ago Joel O. Cheek and J. Will Neal worked for a wholesale grocer at Nashville. Mr. Cheek's job was to sell coffee to the general stores of Tennessee hill villages. He rode a saddle horse and carried coffee samples in his saddle bags. At that time he affected a pointed beard. When he came home from a trip he would potter around his kitchen oven roasting experimental blends of coffee. He used twelve-pint coffee pots for brewing his blends. His eight sons and one daughter guard those pots as heirlooms. Two of these sons sell Dodge cars in Tennessee. The other six are officers in the business. J. Will Neal and his son, J. Robert Neal, are vice presidents at Houston where the company has one of its seven coffee-blending factories and distributing plants. President is Joel O. Cheek, 75. For two years now his sons have managed to keep him from working hard. But he is at the Nashville offices almost every day.
In the Reconstruction 1870's, Joel O. Cheek and J. Will Neal quit their jobs to sell coffee for themselves. The Maxwell House (Hotel), now tattered, was just opened at Nashville. Young Mr. Cheek persuaded the managers to use his coffee and when Maxwell House guests demanded the blend, he used the hotel's name as his trademark.
President Roosevelt once stopped at Nashville at the Hermitage (Andrew Johnson's home) and had a cup of this coffee. He smacked his lips and demanded another. Cried he: "Good to the last drop."
Until 1921, when Cheek-Neal opened a factory in Brooklyn, it was a sectional brand, known little out of its own territory—the South.