Drink Nehi Beverages

In 1905 a Georgia pharmacist named Claude Hatcher founded Union Bottling Works. He created a successful line of beverages including Chero-Cola and Royal Crown Ginger Ale in the basement of his family's grocery business. When Hatcher registered Chero-Cola as a trademark in 1914 Coca-Cola immediately sued, successfully claiming to own the rights to the word "cola" and forced Chero to remove it from all advertisements . Nehi (pronounced knee high) flavored sodas were introduced in 1924 as a result. Nehi was originally called Melo but legend has it the name was changed because Claude Hatcher heard a salesman describe a competitors bottles as knee high. Nehi was so successful that the company changed it's name to The Nehi Corporation in 1928 and was listed on the New York Curb Exchange.

Nehi sold very well until 1930 when the great depression caused a substantial drop in sales. The Nehi Corporation incurred a large amount of debt during this time. In 1933 as sales began to stabilize the company's founder and president Claude Hatcher unexpectedly passed away. Hilary Richard Mott the company's vice president took over as president in 1934 and manged to eliminate the debt within 1 year. He also had the company's chemist Rufus Camm reformulate Chero-Cola to better compete with Coke and Pepsi. The reformulated cola became Royal Crown Cola but many people called it RC Cola.

By 1941 Nehi was Available in 47 of the 48 US states. Nehi was endorsed by many celebrities over the years including Robert Ripley from Ripley's Believe It or Not! Nehi is probably best remembered from the TV show Mash where Radar O'Reilly drank it frequently. In 1959 the Nehi Corporation's name was changed again to the Royal Crown Company after the company ultimately won the legal right to use the word "cola" from Coca-Cola. Today Nehi is still a part of the Royal Crown Company who is owned by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group. There are still a handful of independent bottlers who retain the rights to produce Nehi.




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Back in 2001 I was stocking Nehi on the shelf in a convenience store when a woman walked by holding a 20 ounce bottle of Coke. She was so excited about Nehi and told me she had not seen it since she was a kid. She put the Coke away and asked me how much the Nehi was. I told her that it was $1.39 for a 12 ounce bottle. The Coke was $1.49. She immediately became very angry and suggested i was ripping everybody off because the price of Nehi was only 40 cents when she was a kid. I tried to explain that everything was more expensive since that time but she could not accept the fact that the price of Nehi had changed. She went back to get the Coke and continued to mumble under her breath about the price of Nehi until she left the store.