Bluefield Beverage first opened it's doors on January 24th 1983 as a subsidary of the Kroger company and their first carbonated beverage plant at the time. It was a huge economic boost for the Bluefield's at the time, providing much needed jobs to the area, and providing local bottling services for kroger grocery stores in the area along with 800 other Kroger stores in an 18 state area stretching from Georgia to Michigan and west into Missouri.

Richard T. Morath, a 34 year old Kroger marketing production official from Cincinnati, was named general manager of the new bottling plant. Initially the plant started out with only 30 employees and operated two production lines. One line canned Big K and it's new Cost Cutter brand beverages and the other line put them in plastic two liter bottles.

In 1984 the company introduced it's own soft drink line called Rocky Top. The brand was produced and distributed in cans and two liter bottles in many flavors, including cola, root beer, lemon lime, dr. topper, red cream soda, caffine-free cola, and other flavored sodas. The company was given the right by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant to use their classic hit song "Rocky Top" to promote the line of soft drinks. The soft drinks were eventually dristributed and sold in over 300 locations within a 90 mile radius, sales did very well and was the beginning of many successful years of business for the company.