Tom Burton, a clerk in the Whitney wholesale grocery firm, is unable to advance beyond his lowly position. In the boardinghouse in which he resides, there lives Frances Clayton and Flash Lewis, also in Whitney's employ but a great talker and salesman whom Tom envies. Tom and Frances fall in love and marry but Frances, realizing Tom's lack of ambition, decides to leave him and take a job of her own. Unable to get a raise, Tom quits and one day, while in a small country town, he enters a general store and discovers the products of his former company languishing on the shelves. Hitting upon the idea of a "taste and buy" campaign to sell the products, Tom undertakes a whirlwind campaign which nets the company many orders. Josiah Whitney, the head of the firm, is so impressed that he offers Tom Flash Lewis' job and thus having made good, Tom is reunited with Frances.