The Nehi Bottling Company arrived in El Paso
in 1931. A decade later the owners renamed the company Nehi-Royal
Crown to reflect its popular cola drink. The name, Nehi, was dropped
in favor of its younger, still more popular RC Cola in 1965. In 1970
the company merged with The Seven- Up Bottling Company of El Paso (in business
in El Paso since 1937) to join forces against the two giants of the industry,
Coke (Magnolia Coca-Cola Co.) and Pepsi (Woodlawn Bottling Co.), who were
engulfing the sales market. The growing company bought out the Canada
Dry Bottling Company that had been in business since 1948. The triple
company was in turn swallowed by a newcomer to El Paso, Kalil Bottling
Company of Tucson, Arizona, the firm that continues to distribute products
from all three sources in 1997.
Nehi Bottling Company (1931-1941)
Nehi originated with the Chero-Cola Company,
started in Columbus, Georgia, by Claude A. Hatcher in 1912. Twelve
years later, in 1924, the company initiated Nehi flavors and became the
Nehi Corporation soon afterward (Riley 1958:264). The El Paso plant,
a subsidiary of the Nehi Bottling Company of Phoenix, Arizona, opened at
1916 Myrtle Ave. in April, 1931 under the direction of Rhea R. Faulkner.
The owner of the firm, Joseph S. Pittman was a resident of Phoenix and
owned the Nehi bottling plant in that city (EPCD 1931; U. S. Census of
Manufacturers 1931). Pittman started the Nehi Bottling Co. at 14 N. 14th
St in Phoenix in 1929. He was both owner and manager of the Phoenix
plant and listed the company as "bottlers of Quality beverages" (Phoenix,
Arizona, City Directory 1929-1930).
In 1931, Nehi employed eleven workers (including
both plant employees and drivers) during the hot summer months but decreased
its staff to seven employees during the slack, colder months. Plant
workers generally worked a four-day week unless extra production was necessary
to maintain the flow of product to the route drivers. The drivers,
however, delivered six days per week during the peak season. The
company utilized four one-and-one-half-ton trucks to deliver a total of
24,058 cases of soda from April to December (estimated 30,058 cases for
the year) along with 4,498 cases of still (non-carbonated) beverages (estimated
5,578 annually). Both still and carbonated beverages wholesaled at
80¢ per case and were sold in nine-ounce containers (U. S. Census
of Manufacturers 1931).
Faulkner was replaced by Sidney O. Austin,
who managed the El Paso operation in 1933 and 1934 and was followed by
Homer T. Archer in 1935. Austin became a salesman for Harry Mitchell
Brewing
Company after he left Nehi but moved from El Paso in 1936. Archer,
on the other hand, had worked for Nehi from its inception in 1931 and remained
as foreman in 1936 after his short stint as manager. Archer continued
to serve as foreman until 1939 after which he no longer appeared in the
city directories. Prohibition ended in 1933, and soft drink sales
fell due to the combination of increased beer drinking and the continuing
influence of the Great Depression. By 1933, sales had decreased to
18,500 cases per year (a 38.5% drop), and the company correspondingly employed
less workers than in 1931--ten during peak periods with a decrease to only
four during the winter. Not only were sales lower, but Nehi used
smaller, seven-ounce bottles which sold for 70¢ per case, a price
more in line with the smaller bottlers in the city. To help make
ends meet, Nehi also distributed Coors beer (since Prohibition had just
ended), although the beer distributorship was listed in the name of the
manager rather than under Nehi Bottling Company. Both Austin and
Archer served as Coors distributors at the 1916 Myrtle Ave. address, but
the company closed out the beer distribution after 1935. City directories
only list Pittman from 1935 until the company changed its name in 1941.
Names of local managers during that period are unknown (EPCD 1931-1940;
U. S. Census of Manufacturers 1933).
Nehi-Royal Crown Bottling Co. (1941-1965)
Although the company remained at 1916 Myrtle
Ave. (see Figure 31), changes began to happen during World War II.
In 1941, Raymond Platt took control of the business, changing the name
to Nehi-Royal Crown Bottling Company to reflect the popular cola drink
that had been introduced by Nehi in 1935. Whether Platt actually
bought the business, was an intermediate selling agent, or was another
manager for Pittman is unknown. Winfield Fulton Ritter bought the
company in 1942 as a means of livelihood for his son, Robert. The
family had been looking for a good investment and purchased the company
through an El Paso bank, never even meeting Pittman (or Platt). Robert
R. Ritter signed the note his father produced and succeeded in paying off
the entire sum in less than three years. Robert soon took on his
brother, William P. Ritter, as a partner in the enterprise (EPCD 1941-1946.
Unless otherwise cited, information about the Ritter family and operations
of the Nehi- Royal Crown business during their ownership comes from interviews
with Robert R. Ritter).
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| Figure 10a-1 - Nehi-Royal Crown Bottling Plant (1916
Myrtle), ca. 1951-52 [Photo courtesy of Robert R. Ritter |
The elder Ritter had originally migrated from
Camden, New Jersey, in hopes that the desert climate would be good for
his health. He eventually settled in Lordsburg, but met his future
bride, Margaret Barnes, in Silver City and married her there in 1910.
The family moved to El Paso in 1920. Ritter was the father of four
children, John, Robert, William, and Margaret. Robert was born on
Christmas Day, 1916, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while his parents were
there on a trip. He met Anna Tomasine Gray in college at the Texas
School of Mines (now UTEP), and the couple graduated together in 1940.
Two years later they were married, and, in July, Robert was inducted into
the Army where he served until the end of World War II. He was trained
as a lieutenant in anti- aircraft, but, because he was bilingual in Spanish,
he was stationed in Panama for three years. Robert returned in October
1945 to rejoin his brother, William, who had served as a Staff Sergeant
during that time in the U. S. Army Air Corps.
While the brothers were away during the war,
the company bookkeeper, Mrs. Cartwright, took over the business--and ran
it quite competently until they returned. Although sugar was rationed
during World War II, the Nehi-Royal Crown Bottling Company survived comfortably
due to military contracts with nearby Fort Bliss. The Ritters negotiated
an agreement whereby their company would have the stock of sugar that went
into military sales replenished by the post, thus allowing them to have
sufficient available sugar to fulfill their civilian contracts. The
brothers sold Nehi and Royal Crown beverages to Post Exchanges as far away
as White Sands, and business prospered through the war years.
In fact, business was good throughout the 1940s.
The Royal Crown territory expanded until it covered an area from Van Horn,
Texas, in the southeast to Lordsburg, New Mexico, in the west and on northward
to Truth or Consequences (formerly Hot Springs). Nine trucks serviced
customers and tended to the first paper cup dispensers in El Paso.
The Ritters introduced the cup dispensers to Post Exchanges at Fort Bliss
in 1946 or 1947 and even had them installed in the popular Plaza Theater
in downtown El Paso. The Ritter brothers expanded their business
in 1947, buying the Nehi Bottling Co. in Phoenix, Arizona from J. S. Pittman,
the original owner of the El Paso plant. The Ritters immediately
renamed the company the Nehi-Royal Crown Bottling Co. to match the name
of their El Paso enterprise (Phoenix, Arizona, City Directory, 1946-47).
Winfield Ritter died of cancer that year, leaving his four children
financially well off. William, who had moved to Phoenix, sold his
share of the El Paso enterprise to Robert in 1948. The following
year, William became the sole owner of the Phoenix plant (EPCD 1947; Phoenix
CD 1949-50; Ritter interview).
Bottling and bottlers flourished in El Paso
during the early 1950s. The El Paso Times called the city "the soft-drink
capital of the Southwest"(EPT 4/25/1954 E11:2). Nehi-Royal Crown
flourished along with it, although its territory had diminished somewhat.
The company employed eleven to thirteen employees, and its trucks delivered
to an area that extended from a western extreme of Las Cruces, New Mexico,
to Sierra Blanca, Texas, in the east. As a franchise bottler, all
bottles, caps, and flavor syrups were received from the parent company
at Columbus, Georgia. With the latest in postwar technology, the
entire bottling process took only twenty-three minutes--twenty of which
were used in the sterilization of the bottle prior to filling. In
addition to Royal Crown Cola, Nehi flavors, and Par-T-Pak mixers, the company
bottled two unnamed varieties of sugar-free drinks in cola and orange flavors
( EPT 4/5/1953 B13:4; 4/25/1954 E11:2; EPHP 4/24/1954 39:1; 4/28/1956 F12:1).
Par-T-Pak had been introduced by Nehi in 1933, so it may have been in use
much earlier (Riley 1958:266).
William became interested in Phoenix real estate
and, in order to devote more time to his new pursuit, sold the Phoenix
plant to a syndicate in 1969 with Roy Blakeman as the new president, Rafael
Scobey as vice president, secrerary, and treasurer, and A. G. Charlton
as general manager. The new company, located at 2121 Willett St.,
advertised itself as "Bottlers and Distributors of RC Cola Diet Rite Cola
Par-T-Pak Beverages and Nehi Flavors, Delivery Throughout Maricopa County,
Pima County, Globe And Miami, Arizona" (Phoenix CD 1969). Although
friends chided him that it was a poor choice, he bought the Safari Motel
in Scottsdale and expanded his real estate interests. It proved to
be a wise decision--today William P. Ritter is a multi-millionaire.
Robert and Anna were divorced in 1967, and he remarried to Ouida Williamson
in 1970. Always an avid photographer, he discovered an artistic talent
upon retirement and became a serious painter--with works selling for as
much as $1,000 (see Figure 32).
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| Figure 10a-2 - Robert R. Ritter with one of his paintings,
3/20/1996 |
Ready for retirement, Robert Ritter sold the Nehi-Royal
Crown Bottling Company in El Paso to Louis C. Hamilton and Louis C. Hamilton,
Jr. in 1956. The Hamiltons had come to El Paso a year earlier from
Muskogee, Oklahoma, looking for a dry climate to help Louis Jr.'s daughter
to recover from asthma. Although they were not specifically looking
for a bottling
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| Figure 10a-3 - El Paso Telephone Directory, 1967-68 |
Royal Crown Bottling Company (1965-1969)
In 1965 of the parent company changed the
name of the El Paso enterprise to the Royal Crown Bottling Company.
They incorporated the firm and placed John R. Broadhurst in the position
of president. A period of management turn-over followed when Lloyd
Hopkin replaced Broadhurst the following year and was in turn replaced
by W. G. Wolfe in 1967. John Garson took control in 1968 and retained
his position until the company again changed ownership in 1969 (EPCD 1965-1969). |
