Managing Editor
Maxwell House Downtown plant opened in 1910
Bet you didn’t know:
• Maxwell House Coffee was named for The Maxwell House, a Nashville hotel that served a special blend created by coffee salesman Joel Cheek starting in 1892.
• The coffee’s motto, according to legend, was credited to President Theodore Roosevelt, who was served a cup on a visit to Nashville in 1907 and said it was “good to the last drop.”
• The illuminated coffee cup on the Jacksonville plant was the largest electrical sign in the city when installed in 1955.
The Maxwell House plant in Downtown Jacksonville turns 100 years old this year, quietly serving as one of the world’s largest coffee plants and one of the city’s oldest manufacturers.
“We’re very happy here,” Plant Manager Joseph Waryold said last week during a rare interview inside the building. “We want to remain here a long time.”
The plant doesn’t invite many visitors inside its property gates or within the building, and those allowed likely won’t view any of the processing because of competitive reasons.
The plant produces Maxwell House coffee and General Foods International coffees for the United States and Canada. Maxwell House is owned by Kraft Foods.
Maxwell House opened in Jacksonville in 1910 as the Cheek-Neal Coffee Co. along Bay Street, across from the existing plant that was built in 1924. The original building was demolished.
It has grown to a 400,000-square-foot plant on 10 acres at 735 E. Bay St. in an area that had been an industrial center. It sits across the street from the vacant waterfront property that once housed Jacksonville Shipyards, and where coffee beans arrived long ago.
Maxwell House operates around the clock, shutting down only for major holidays. It employs 220 hourly and 45 salaried workers, lower than the 600 people employed in the 1980s. Waryold said technology improved the production process.
Raw coffee beans arrive in Jacksonville by ship and are sent to a Westside facility for cleaning and blending before being brought to the plant for roasting, grinding and packing. The product is then transferred to a Westside warehouse for distribution.
Waryold doesn’t report the volume of coffee produced, also for competitive reasons, although it has been publicly reported that the plant can produce up to 1 million pounds of coffee a day.
As it expanded, Maxwell House also updated the plant’s landscaping and exterior with brick and fencing to fit in with the surroundings. It’s near the Arena and Baseball Grounds.
“We want it to look attractive to people,” Waryold said.
He also said the plant receives very few complaints for anything, such as noise or the scent of roasted coffee. “We mostly get compliments for the smell,” he said.
Waryold started at the plant in 1981 as a shift supervisor, later moving with Kraft to other locations and returning in 1999 as plant manager.
Through Maxwell House’s history, it survived the corporate decision to keep either the Jacksonville or Hoboken, N.J., plant open. After the citywide Keep Max in Jax! campaign 20 years ago, the local plant won.
While it sounded like a good idea to some members of the community, Waryold said that a request to open a coffee shop at the plant won’t happen. “It’s not our base,” he said. “We’re in manufacturing.”
Waryold arrives at work between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. and puts in six or seven days a week. He estimates he drinks a pot a day of Original Maxwell House coffee. Straight up, no cream or sugar.
A 100th anniversary celebration for the employees, retirees and their families will take place in late summer or early fall, he said. He wasn’t sure how many retirees the plant has, although about 100 attend a twice-a-year luncheon.
He said the average tenure of a Maxwell House employee is about 15 years, ranging from new to more than 40 years on the job.
Waryold, 54, is closing in on 30 years with the company and plans to stay in the Maxwell House ranks as Jacksonville plant manager until he retires.
Maxwell House time line
1869 - The Maxwell House, a hotel built by Col. John Overton and named in honor of his wife, Harriet Maxwell, opens in Nashville.
1892 - Coffee salesman Joel Cheek creates and sells the hotel a special blend, becoming known as Maxwell House coffee.
1901 - Cheek and John Neal begin to make Maxwell House coffee in a Nashville plant. The company name soon becomes Cheek-Neal Coffee Co.
1907 - President Theodore Roosevelt, on a visit to Nashville, is served a cup of Maxwell House coffee and legend has it he says it is “good to the last drop.”
1910 - The Cheek-Neal Coffee Co. builds a plant along Bay Street in Jacksonville to produce up to 40,000 pounds of coffee a day. It employs about 30 people.
1924 - A new, larger plant is built near the original building, boosting output to about 70,000 pounds a day and employing about 70 people.
1928 - Postum Co., later named General Foods Corp., buys Cheek-Neal Coffee Co.
1937 - Maxwell House offers two grinds - regular and the new drip grind.
1946 - Instant Maxwell house coffee is introduced nationally.
1954 - A new soluble coffee facility is added to the Maxwell house plant in Jacksonville.
1955 - A 95-foot illuminated sign of “Instant Maxwell House” - with the cup and the drop - is erected out side the building, becoming the largest electrical sign in Jacksonville.
1959 - The iconic “perking pot” television advertising campaign begins.
1967 - A new building is added to the Jacksonville campus to produce its own cans.
1969 - The original 1910 building is demolished.
1989 - Kraft merges with General Foods.
1990 - Jacksonville is chosen over Hoboken, N.J., to consolidate East Coast operations as the community launches the “Keep Max in Jax!” campaign.
2010 - Maxwell House reaches its 100th anniversary in Jacksonville.
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