Maxwell House
Joel Cheek was a little obsessed with coffee. Working as a traveling salesman, Cheek sold a variety of groceries, but it was with coffee that he spent his spare time, trying different mixtures and convinced that eventually he would come up with a better blend than those on the market.
Apparently, Cheek was right. In 1892, Cheek convinced the management of one of Nashville’s best hotels, the Maxwell House, to give his latest blend a try. The reaction of Maxwell House guests to the new coffee was so enthusiastic that the hotel owner decreed that no other brand be served in his dining room, and Maxwell House brand coffee was born.
A few years later, in 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt was staying at The Hermitage, the historic Nashville residence of Andrew Jackson. Served a cup of Maxwell House coffee, Roosevelt proclaimed it “Good to the last drop,” thereby providing Cheek and his company with an endorsement to die for and a slogan still used by Maxwell House today.
A minor and not entirely serious ruckus, however, erupted at the time when a few pundits pointed out that the standard meaning of “to” in such a context was “up until,” raising the question of what was wrong with that last drop in Roosevelt’s cup. Only when a Columbia University English professor was enlisted to testify that “to” in this case could also mean “including” did the pundits quiet down and drink their coffee.
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