"Good to the Last Drop" ... or was it?
Teddy Roosevelt's 1907 visit to The Hermitage

President Roosevelt
PHOTO: Library of Congress
Four U. S. presidents have come to The Hermitage since the time of President Andrew Jackson. The most famous of those visits was the first.

Theodore Roosevelt paid a short call on October 21, 1907, to pay respects and pledge federal support to the restoration of The Hermitage. While he was there he took what may be the most famous sip of coffee ever taken.
This postcard shows President Roosevelt on his visit to Nashville in October 1907
While touring The Hermitage, Roosevelt said he was impressed with everything that he saw. Then, as he was entering the dining room, he asked for a cup of coffee. "I must have the privilege of saying that I have eaten at General Jackson's table," a Nashville newspaper quoted him as saying.

The president was handed a cup and saucer, and he sipped it. "This is the kind of stuff I like to drink, by George, when I hunt bears," he said, according to the Nashville Banner.

The old Maxwell House Hotel in downtown Nashville
PHOTO: Metro Nashville Archives
At that time, several coffee brands were produced in Nashville. In newspaper articles that ran immediately after Roosevelt's visit, the companies that produced two of those brands claimed that Roosevelt sipped their coffee at The Hermitage. One was a brand called Fit for a King, which was made by a company called H.G. Hill. The other was called Maxwell House, which was made by a Nashville company called Cheek-Neal. The Maxwell House brand had originally been named for a hotel in downtown Nashville that was called the Maxwell House Hotel.

A Saturday Evening Post ad from January 1946
The controversy over whose coffee Roosevelt had been drinking died after a few days.

Ten years later, in 1917, Cheek-Neal began using a "Good to the Last Drop" slogan to advertise Maxwell House Coffee. For several years, the ads made no mention of Teddy Roosevelt. But by the 1930s the company was running advertisements that claimed that the former chief executive had taken a sip of Maxwell House Coffee on a visit to Nashville in 1907 and that he had proclaimed it to be "Good to the Last Drop."

Today, some historians maintain that "Good to the Last Drop" is one of the more famous things the Teddy Roosevelt ever said -- even though there is no evidence that he ever said it.
Please note: The first book or article that contained this information (after 1907, of course) was the 2000 book Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History. If you cite this anecdote, please cite this source.

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