QUALITY ORANGE KIST BEVERAGES

The Quality Beverage Company started operations in April 1929(3) at 213 South Boone Street, with Samuel V. Tarver as President, John W. Sherod as Vice President, and Adelia G. Tarver (Sam's wife) as Secretary Treasurer.(1) By 1935 the name has been changed to Quality Orange Kist Beverage with John W. Sherod gone.(1) In 1937 they are distributing Cooks, Fehrs, and Piels beer.(1) Sometime in February 1938 (3) the company moves to a new location at 840 West Market Street, and changes it's name to the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company. The South Boone Street location, according to the 1938 city directory, becomes the Double Cola Bottling Company with Frank G. Lee as Manager.(2)

This is the Quality Orange Kist Bottling Company building as it stood in 1936.

This is the Quality Orange Kist Bottling Company building as it stands today. From the looks of it though it's about to follow some of it's peers into oblivian.

Company owners Samuel V. Tarver and Adelia G. Tarver from 1936.

6oz Kist Bottle

7oz Stone Mountain Bottle dated 1928. I am wondering if this bottle has anything to do with the Stone Mountain Bottling Company of Norton, VA.

8oz Blue Bird Bottle dated 1929

6oz Orange Kist Bottle dated 1935

Full page ad celebrating the seventh year anniversary of the bottling company with pictures of the employees working at the company at the time.(3) Note the Pepsi-Cola ad. Just click on the ad to enlarge.

12oz Orange Kist Co. Pepsi-Cola paper label bottle missing label. After finding a shard of this bottle while digging, I wondered what the possibility of it being from this company; however, it had no bottom. Then I found the complete one pictured, unfortunately there was no town name. I knew of only one Orange Kist Company that eventually was associated with Pepsi in the area and that was the one in Johnson City, the only way to prove it, aside from a picture of a bunch of these bottles with labels at the plant, was if proof that the company was indeed bottling the brand in the mid to late 1930's when these type of custom bottles were prevalent, see the ad above.

July 20, 1937 ad for Hires Root Beer from the Hires Bottling Company, of course the address is still the Quality Kist location on South Boone. It's ads like this that if they didn't have the address and you didn't know better you'd end up thinking that it was a separate bottling company.

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