Joel Owsley Cheek moved to Nashville in 1884 as a coffee broker and teamed up with British broker Roger Nolley Smith, who could name a green bean’s origin by smell. After years of blending, in 1892 Cheek gave 20 pounds of coffee free to the buyer at the Maxwell House Hotel. When it ran out and the hotel went back to its cheaper brand, guests complained, the hotel bought Cheek’s blend exclusively, and within six months it let him use its name. Cheek quit brokering and, with partner Maxwell Colbourne, built what became the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company.

The company began using Good to the last drop in 1915, and General Foods bought it in 1925. In the 1930s General Foods claimed Theodore Roosevelt coined the line at the Hermitage in October 1907, a story made up by former General Foods president Clifford Spiller. Roosevelt did visit and drink coffee there, but reportedly said it was the kind of stuff he liked to drink when he hunted bears. The brand kept the tale going, even hiring a Roosevelt impersonator for a 2009 commercial.

• In 1932 ad man Joseph Jacobs had a rabbi certify coffee kosher for Passover as a berry, which led to the free Maxwell House Haggadah.
• Barack Obama used the Maxwell House Haggadah at White House Seders from 2009 to 2016.
• The brand sponsored the CBS show Mama from 1949 to 1957, and later Margaret Hamilton played shopkeeper Cora in its ads.
• Michael Caine saw Shakira Baksh in a 1971 Brazilian Maxwell House commercial, tracked her down in London, and married her in 1973.
• Instant coffee supplied to World War II troops reached civilian shelves in the fall of 1945.