This article is about an American soda company. For the Atlantic City nightclub, see Clicquot Club.
Clicquot Club Company
Grape soda
The Clicquot Club Company (pronounced "Klee-ko"), also known as Clicquot Club Beverages, was one of the largest national beverage companies. It sold
Cott Beverage Corporation in 1965 and eventually dissolved.[1]
History
1922 advertisement featuring Kleek-O the Eskimo Boy
In 1881, in the town now known as Millis, Massachusetts, Henry Millis (son of Lansing Millis, after whom the town was named in 1885) made a suggestion to Charles LaCroix, of the LaCroix Fruit Farm, that he call his sparkling cider "Clicquot" - after the famous French champagne, Veuve Clicquot - and start selling it. Shortly after, Clicquot Club was built by Henry Millis from money he had received from his father, Lansing.[1]
The company produced mainly
sparkling cider for the first few years but later on Millis would experiment in other flavors as well. The sparkling cider was soon dropped and the company began focusing mainly on ginger ale. During this time the soda company hired a significant amount of the town's residents and would continue to do so for years to come. Millis continued to improve upon his beverages through his philosophy of making the drinks as though he were making them for his own friends. He imported high-quality exotic ingredients including Jamaicanginger, and Cuban pure refined sugar
. These two were the key ingredients to his ginger ale making the company standout in this field.
A bottle of Clicquot Club Ginger Ale, the soft drink for which the company was best known.
Even though word of his soda spread over southeastern
There were 25 sessions of records under the supervision of Harry Reser and issued under the name "Clicquot Club Eskimos" recorded from December, 1925 through February, 1931.
Such clever marketing expanded the company until the factory in Millis became 1/3 of a mile long and even had its own private train station. The area around this massive factory became known as "
cone-top" can, making it easier to manufacture.[1]
With the establishment of a new network of Clicquot Club Bottling Plants in 1938 the company soon had dozens of factories across the country. This number grew rapidly until in 1952 the company had plants in over 100 cities all across the United States, from
.
Derelict remnant of the Cliquot Club plant in Millis
The company began to decline in sales worldwide amid growing competition from other soft drink makers and was purchased in 1969 by the
Cott Beverage Corporation of Connecticut. The Cott Corporation eventually sold off all product surplus before shutting down Clicquot. Today the original plant in Millis remains mostly abandoned, although one-third of it is (as of January 2013) occupied by garden and hardware stores. Although there has been contemplation of starting the company back up again in recent years, no attempts have ever gotten further than the drawing board.[1]
