 Brewer/bottler #2393 | | | Name | The Sun Rise Bottling Co, |
| | Address | Use for all Sunrise crowns where local bottler is not known if crown appears to be from 1955 or earlier. |
| | | | | | | | Extra info | Sun-Rise started as a beverage line created by a soft drink manufacturer and bottler called the Tazewell Manufacturing Company. The company was started in 1910 by W. A. Scott and was located in North Tazewell, Virginia. The Sun-Rise line was developed as a group of fruit-flavored soft drinks in addition to a root beer flavor. Some of the other flavors available in the Sun-Rise line were Strawberry, Orange, Black Cherry and Lemon Sour flavors.
In 1922 the company name was changed to The Was-Cott Corporation, after their most famous soft drink, Was-Cott Ginger-Ale. The name changed again in 1931 to the Sun Rise Bottling Company, when the company was sold to James G. Buston. They started three new drink brands: Chro-Mo, Tazewell Orange and 2 To 1. They also continued to make the Sun Rise Beverages line.
In 1956 Sun Rise Beverages was sold and relocated. The new Sun-Rise Incorporated was now located in Marshall, Minnesota. The brand went national with the help of the Coca-Cola Company that took over the bottling and distribution of the Sun-Rise line.
Excerpt from Tazewell-Orange.com
The Clinch Valley News reported on May 3, 1899 that a new wholesale grocery house at Kelly (North Tazewell, VA) was going to be established. The firm was called Scott & Dinguid Brothers which was owned, and operated, by Mr. William Armistead Scott, Jessee T. Diuguid, and George A. Diuguid, Jr. both of which were from Lynchburg, VA. The company would be dissolved in May 1901, with the Diuguid’s leaving the organization in the hands of William Armistead Scott who renamed it W. A. Scott & Company. On October 6, 1910 the Clinch Valley News noted that the foundation for an addition to the W. A. Scott & Company building had been completed, and the rest of the new structure was being built. This new addition is most likely what would become the Tazewell Manufacturing Company, and the place where Was-Cott Ginger Ale was born. According to W. A. Scott his ginger ale formula was based on a formula brought over from England, and was being produced at the old tavern on Main Street in Tazewell, in the 1870’s.
W. A. Scott placed the first ad for his new carbonated soft drink on September 8, 1911. This original ad had the name as “W. A. Scott’s Ginger Ale”; however, this mistake was quickly corrected the next week, and Was-Cott Ginger Ale was introduced to the Tazewell County area. Scott wasn’t satisfied with just supplying Tazewell County, and the surrounding counties, he envisioned a much broader distribution area. By 1913 he was shipping large shipments of the beverage to points as far away as Nortfolk, VA. Large shipments were also being made daily to different sections of the country, and eventually to other countries, not bad for a product from the Appalachian Coalfields. Along with the Ginger Ale they are also producing Was-Cott Mineral Water to satisfy the spring water craze that was going on during the teens and twenties. Things appear to have been going well for W. A. Scott & Company, along with the Tazewell Manufacturing Company; however, tragedy struck just after noon on January 15, 1920 when a fire broke out on the top floor of the building. The blaze had reduced the entire building to a smoldering ruin by half past two o’clock that afternoon. Bystanders were treated to free Was-Cott Ginger After the fire was put out, and W. A. Scott, who had plenty of insurance on the structure, started planning the building’s replacement. It appears that a couple of the other towns in the area were making very tempting offers to Scott to relocate to their towns; however, it appears that they were in vain.
In order for the company to keep operating Scott had to work fast. Stras Harman and Company gave him some space for his clerical workers in their building, and he leased a building belonging to the Star Milling Company on a temporary basis into which he moved some of his new machinery in order to continue bottling. The Was-Cott Corporation was incorporated on April, 23, 1921, with W. A. Scott as President/Treasurer, George W. St. Clair as first Vice President, both of Tazewell, VA, Hiram T. Gates of Richmond, VA as Second Vice President, and F. H. Forbes of North Tazewell, VA as Secretary. Jameson George Buston is one of the directors of the company; he will become more important to the company in the future. The Austin Construction Company of Philadelphia got the contract to construct a new three story brick and concrete plant, including a basement, and equipped it with the most modern machinery available at the time. They started construction in August 1921 and had forty five working days to complete the building. In fact this new building was heralded as one of the largest bottling plants in the state of Virginia. Scott had built the new plant in the same location as the old building, across the tracks from the Norfolk & Western Railway station. This time he added a rail spur in front of his loading dock to make the shipping of his product much more efficient. An intensive advertising campaign was implemented which would eventually reach the entire country thus creating many distributors who would need product supplied to them via rail.
Eventually Was-Cott was picked up by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, who owned the A&P grocery store chain, to be distributed in their establishments all over the eastern United States. Was-Cott Ginger ale was produced in three sizes of amber bottles, with paper labels, the 7 ½ oz selling for five cents, 12oz sold for ten cents, and the 16oz for twenty cents. The mid-twenties starts seeing some changes at the Was-Cott Corporation, originally only producing ginger ale and mineral water, Scott seems to be picking up franchises for national drinks while also changing the bottle color and labels for his signature product. The Was-Cott Corporation is bottling three types of Was-Cott Ginger Ale (regular, club, and extra dry), Orange Crush, Lime Crush, Cherry Crush, Strawberry Crush, Mandalay Punch, Hires Root Beer, Apple, and Peach products by 1928. When the Depression hit in 1929, it seems to have affected the Was-Cott Corporation adversely as we find that W. A. Scott is selling automobile and life insurance by June 6, 1930. On August 29, 1931 the Was-Cott Corporation’s bottling plant was sold at public auction where it was purchased by W. A. Scott’s brother in law, Jameson G. Buston, who had been a member of the board in the former corporation, and held the job of Receiver at the plant.
J. G. Buston’s era is the reason that this company is my favorite local bottler. He changed the name to the Sun Rise Bottling Company and decided to create his own soda brands even referring to the company on a 1930’s bottle opener as the Sun Rise Flavor Company. The first was the bread and butter of any bottler, a flavor line named Sun Rise Beverages, along with “Giant” Was-Cott Ginger Ale, and a Ginger Beer going by the name Giant Chro-Mo which they trademarked on December 20, 1934. One of the most mysterious brands from the Sun Rise Flavor Company is Love’s Dream which was trademarked on April 23, 1932, and was sold with the tagline “Dedicated to the American Woman” which leaves me wondering what flavor this brand was. Then there is Dixie Belle Sun Rise Flavor’s first cola which was trademarked on September 11, 1936.(4) I’m sure there are still more brands that were created by this company that we just don’t have any information on yet.
By the end of the 1930’s the company has started using ACL (Applied Color Label) bottles, and now have new brands including Lucky Giant Cola “A franchise Drink”, which makes me think that they actually tried their hand at franchising one of their brands. Tazewell Orange “A Delicious Drink” which although trademarked on November 23, 1943 the company claimed they had been using since 1931. Then there is 2 TO 1, "Two to one you’ll like, because it’s two to one in your favor" which was a Lithiated Lemon soda trademarked on June 2, 1939. Another one that was filed for trademark on April 1, 1939, after having been created in February of the same year is something called You And Me, yet again we don’t know what flavor this was. Last but not least we have Rhythm Punch with the inspired tagline "Tastes like grapes" which while being trademarked on December 3, 1943 was created in November 1940.
Many of these new brands created by Sun Rise Flavors didn’t seem to make it past the World War II. Giant Chro-Mo and Love’s Dream don’t seem to have survived the 1930’s, Lucky Giant Cola, which most likely replaced Dixie Belle as the company’s cola, and 2 TO 1 appear to have disappeared around 1942. The creation of new brands slows to a stop by 1944 when they pick up their first franchise drink, the grapefruit drink named Squirt. The company actually shut down for a short time during the war most likely due to the sugar shortages, and their employees joining the war effort. Other bottlers continued to operate, but rationed their products to the public. The Sun Rise Bottling Company was registered as a partnership on March 24, 1947 comprised of Jameson George Buston, Earl Stanley Wallace, and John Wharton Gillespie, the former commonwealth’s attorney for Tazewell County. April 1948 the bottling company acquired a franchise for Red Rock Cola, followed in June 1948 with a franchise to bottle Hires Root Beer. Hires Root Beer had originally been bottled in Tazewell during the Was-Cott Corporation era. By October 1948 Buston has sold his interest in the company to Wallace and Gillespie, and the company finally received the equipment they had ordered for a complete refit of the bottling plant.
The creator of this company, and its most famous product Was-Cott Ginger Ale, William Armistead Scott died in March of 1950 , soon followed by Jameson George Buston on December 24, 1950. The nineteen fifties would become an era of changes at the Sun Rise Bottling Company. By 1953 the company is bottling Red Rock Cola, Hires Root Beer, Squirt, Rhythm Punch, Tazewell Orange, Was-Cott Pale Dry Ginger Ale, and Sun Rise Beverages. This wasn’t to last as by 1955, the brand that had started it all, Was-Cott Ginger Ale had been dropped in favor of Canada Dry Ginger Ale because the latter’s rise in popularity nationwide was eclipsing Was-Cott in sales. Wallace and Gillespie also sold the trademark to J. G. Buston’s creation "Sun Rise" Beverages to Sun Rise Inc. of Marshall, MN, whether or not the brand itself was sold or just the name is still unclear to me; however, the Sun Rise Bottling Company is listed as the original owner of the trademark which Sun Rise Inc. of Marshall, MN currently owns. Sun Rise Incorporated franchised the Sun Rise Beverages brand into the 1980’s, mostly to Coca-Cola Bottlers, and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Winona, Minnesota bottled the brand until last year. Neither Was-Cott Ginger Ale nor the Sun Rise Beverages line show up in the advertising in 1955.
Sometime in the year 1960 the Sun Rise Bottling Company is closed, the bottles, other supplies, and bottling equipment is sold to the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Norton, VA, the owner of which made a practice of buying up smaller bottlers so that they wouldn’t be bought by others to compete against him. This on the surface seems kind of cruel; however, his actions made perfect business sense, and actually ended up saving many of these company’s bottles for future generations. This makes him a hero in this researcher/collector’s opinion. The plant itself was sold to the locally based Deskins Supermarket chain which bricked up the windows in order to convert it into a warehouse which was in use until the company went out of business several years ago. The building now stands empty, a monument to the bustling business community that was once North Tazewell, VA. |
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