DOUBLE COLA BOTTLING COMPANY

With the moving of the Quality Orange Kist Bottling Company to their new location on West Market Street the 213 South Boone Street building they had occupied was left vacant. When the Double Cola Bottling Company was incorporated on May 3, 1938 it was vacant no longer. The incorporators of this new enterprise were E. R. Thompson, C. A. Finley, and D. A. Green; however, Frank G. Lee is listed as Manager in the 1938 city directory. The company is a franchise bottler of products from the Seminole Flavor Company of Chattanooga, Tennessee, which included Double Cola, the Double Line, and eventually Double Cola Jr., Double Cola's seven and one half ounce counterpart.

On June 29, 1943 the company purchases land beside their plant for an expansion to be built. It appears that they needed another drink to bolster their line up and picked up a franchise in 1951 to bottle Cheerwine, which was a cherry flavored soda from Salisbury North Carolina. The company was obviously starting to see hard times as they appear to have sold out to the Orange Crush Bottling as both companies are listed as sellers of the two tracts of land on which the bottling plant sat on April 24, 1953.

This is the Double Cola Bottling Company building as it stands today.

12oz Double Cola "A Great Drink A Might Flavor" bottle dated 1943

Double Cola day for the Popeye Club at the State Theatre of Kingsport July 29, 1938

12oz Double Cola "Double Measure Double Pleasure" bottle

Double Cola bottle cap

7 1/2 oz Double Cola JR bottle Thin letter variation

Double Cola JR bottle cap

7 1/2 oz Double Cola JR bottle Thick letter variation

Double Root Beer bottle cap which would have been part of the Double Line

12oz Double Line bottle dated 1948

Double Cola of Johnson City ad from the 1950 City Directory

10oz Double Line bottle dated 1950

An ad introducing Cheerwine to the Kingsport, Tennessee area from June21, 1951.

6oz Cheerwine bottle dated 1951

Here is a soda crate that tells a story. What you are looking at is a Cheerwine crate from Johnson City Tennessee. As we know the first bottler to produce Cheerwine in Johnson City is Double Cola, and that the company was sold to the Orange Crush Bottling Company. This would have included the Cheerwine crates and bottles which the Orange Crush Bottling Company had acquired the franchise for which is most likely when they received the OC stamp. Of course Orange Crush didn’t continue to bottle the Cheerwine brand and eventually took over the Grapette franchise for Johnson City. They then repurposed the Cheerwine crates by repainting them orange thus creating this strange looking survivor.

10oz Double Cola bottle dated 1952

10oz Double Line bottle dated 1952

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