In just about every restaurant kitchen, the decaffeinated coffee pot has an orange band. Ask a person under 30 why that band is colored orange, and they won’t know. They will know that it means decaf, but they won’t know why. The reason, of course, it is orange is becauseMORE HERE

The nation once had many regional pet food brands. In my native Northern Neck, we had Huff n Puff, which was a cat food made in Reedville from the waste from that town’s menhaden haulers. Another familiar brand is Twin Pet, which still survives as a discount brand at Wal-Mart.MORE HERE

In a discussion about whether Episcopalians believe in purgatory, our parish priest asked us to consider our actions, what we practice. Regularly, we pray for the departed, and if we pray for them, and are serious about it, it means that we believe, by what we do, that we thinkMORE HERE

Today, the A&P, once the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., and the largest grocer in the U.S., is no more. How did it get there ? Simple. It neglected its core brand, A&P, and went trudging off in all sorts of different directions in search of something new. A&PMORE HERE

MECHANICSVILLE – While it is no longer made on Hope Farm in Mechanicsville, Virginia, Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew brand is still on the market. A great Virginia recipe, it has the proper ingredients for such a stew. In fact, the only Brunswick Stew that beats it was the Rt. Rev.MORE HERE

The original brand of saccharine sweetener, Sweet ‘n Low, is doing a major push to rebuild its brand in the wake of newer sweeteners such as Equal and Splenda. Sweet ‘n Low dates from 1957. The approach is a good one for an older brand. Above, a full page backMORE HERE