Who coined the Maxwell House Coffee phrase “good to the last drop”?

In 1884 Joel Cheek moved to Nashville and met Roger Nolley Smith, a British coffee broker who could reportedly tell the origin of a coffee simply by smelling the green beans. Over the next few years, the two worked on finding the perfect blend. Cheek approached the food buyer for the Maxwell House Hotel and gave him 20 pounds of his special blend for free. After a few days, the coffee was gone, and the hotel returned to its usual brand until hearing of complaints from patrons who liked Cheek's coffee. The hotel bought Cheek's blend exclusively.

Cheek resigned from his job and formed a wholesale grocery distributor with partner John Neal, the Nashville Coffee and Manufacturing Company, specializing in coffee with Maxwell House Coffee as the central brand. In 1915 Cheek-Neal began using a "Good to the last drop" slogan to advertise their Maxwell House Coffee. The advertisements claimed that former President Theodore Roosevelt had taken a sip of Maxwell House Coffee, and proclaimed it to be "good to the last drop". Coca-Cola also used the slogan "Good to the last drop".

For several years, Cheek-Neal ads made no mention of Roosevelt as the phrase's originator. Maxwell House distanced itself from its original claim, admitting that the slogan was written by Clifford Spiller, former president of General Foods Corporation, and did not come from a Roosevelt remark overheard by Cheek-Neal. The phrase remains a registered trademark of the product and appears on its logo today.