From time to time I will pick up what I call Semi-Local Bottles, which are bottles that don't exactly fit into my area, but are in neighboring areas. Usually these will be bottles I happen to find interesting for one reason or another. First up is one from the town of Greenville, Tennessee, it is a Kist Beverages bottle from 1951. Kist was a national brand flavor line much in the vein of Nehi. The reason I picked up this bottle was that the bottling company that produced the brand actually distributed and advertised it in Kingsport, Tennessee, which is in my area.
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| A 1951 Kist Beverages bottle from the Greenville Kist Bottling Company of Greenville, Tennessee. |
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| The 1950 ad from the Kingsport Times advertising Kist's Chocolate drink. |
Another East Tennessee town with a bottler was Erwin, Tennessee this bottling company was actually a fairly early bottler in the area which had lasted for at least twenty to thirty years before they were producing the bottle shown below. Julep beverages was also an older national flavor line brand dating from the teens.
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| A 1943 Julep Full Flavor Beverages 12oz bottle. |
I am a 2 time resident of Greeneville Tennessee. Please note the 'e' after the 'n' in Greeneville. While every state in the union has a Greenville, only Tennessee has a Greeneville. I am also an avid soda memorabilia collector. Greeneville indeed bottleD KIST but I don't know exactly when the Greeneville KIST Bottling Co. started. I went to the Greeneville Historic Society today and learned that the first KIST bottling plant was on Summer Street and later moved to an old fire station where they were also bottling Frostie root beer. The original KIST building still stands and was recently purchased by a couple that are in the process of renovating it into a fine woodworking showroom and woodworking school. The couple have also collected a few local KIST items (bottle dated 1942 and early tin sign to name a couple). They have a very interesting story which would make for a wonderful article in one of the soda publications.
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