Vess Soft Drinks
- Definition of Beverages: Liquid for drinking; drink; usually applied to drink artificially prepared and of an agreeable flavor; as an intoxicating beverage.
Manufactured and distributed primarily in St. Louis, Missouri and metropolitan area Vess Soda is a brand of soft drink which was founded in 1916 by Vess Jones. In 1994, Cott Beverages purchased “Vess Beverage Assets and Division” and “Vess Specialty Packaging Company”.
Vess has standard cola and fruit flavors in their range of drinks. The most popular flavor of theirs is the orange flavored soft drink called “Whistle”. The cream variety of the drink is an unusual deep pink in color. Their lemon lime flavored soda is called “Vess Up”. Apart from this, Vess also produced flavored soda like Cherry Cola, Black Cherry, Pineapple, Peach, Pina Collada, Strawberry-Grape, Strawberry-Kiwi, and Blue Raspberry. There are also products like Vess Tonic Water, Ginger ale, Club Soda and Seltzer. In the 80’s Vess produced a chocolate beverage almost identical to “Yoo-hoo” (a product from another company) called Vess Chocolate. This product was discontinued in the mid 90’s. As of 2007, Vess changed its slogan to “The Billion Bubble Beverage”.
In the early days of the company, a giant replica of a Vess Soda Bottle was erected at Hampton Avenue and Gravois Boulevard in South St. Louis. It was constructed by Treesh Neon Sign Company. The model of the bottle revolved on a steel pole. In those days it was believed to be the largest revolving lighted bottle in the world. It would be lit up by more than 600 lineal feet of neon tubes. Over a period of time it was removed and kept in the company’s storage room. In 1989, it was repaired and re-erected outside the company’s office, mounted on a similar pole as before. Only now, it did not rotate.
Charles Leiper Grigg, who was a Vess Soda salesman, had developed the Orange Whistle Flavor for Vess. After leaving Jones’ company in 1919, he came up with another orange drink recipe, which he started marketing with Edmund G. Ridgeway in 1920 as Howdy Company.
This new company had thrived through the Prohibition Period. This encouraged Grigg to introduce another soft drink in the market in 1929. This time coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression Period. Grigg had used a lot of catchy names for his earlier inventions which contributed a lot of success towards his drinks. Still he chose to call his new drink “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda” which was later named “7-UP”. The historians of 7-UP said that Grigg changed the name to “7-UP” before the earlier name caused significant damage to the company and the product. Although the origin of the name is unknown, it is believed that Grigg might have been inspired by the cattle brand that consisted of a “7″ and a “U”.
The end of the Prohibition came in 1933. 7-UP started to be marketed as a hangover cure and a drink mixer. Slowly 7-UP started spreading around in the world. In 1967 the Uncola promotion began.
- Ramyajit Gupta
Tags: 7up, beverages, drinks, soft drinks, vess, vess soft drinks
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