Charles Leiper Grigg was born in 1868 in Price’s Branch, Missouri. As an adult, Grigg moved to St. Louis and started working in advertising and sales, where he was introduced to the carbonated beverage business. By 1919, Grigg was working for a manufacturing company owned by Vess Jones. It was there that Grigg invented and marketed his first soft drink, an orange-flavored drink called Whistle for a firm owned by Vess Jones.
After a dispute with management, Charles Leiper Grigg quit his job (giving away Whistle) and started working for the Warner Jenkinson Company, developing flavoring agents for soft drinks. Grigg then invented his second soft drink called Howdy. When he eventually moved on from Warner Jenkinson Co., he took his soft drink, Howdy, with him.
Together with financier Edmund G. Ridgway, Grigg went on to form the Howdy Company. So far, Grigg had invented two orange-flavored soft drinks. But his soft drinks struggled against the king of all orange pop drinks, Orange Crush. But he couldn’t compete as Orange Crush grew to dominate the market for orange sodas… read more >
