Did you know Coca-Cola Kidnapped Santa Claus? But Saved Charlie Brown's Christmas?

How I became blind at just 17 years of age.

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've got it all along the way.

Well, you're sort of inspired for you.

Okay, welcome back to the podcast.

My name is Kevin Lowe, the host here on The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe, and you're tuning in for an actual special episode on the podcast, episode number 68 coming at you the week of Christmas.

So if you're listening to today's episode upon its release, well, Merry Christmas! From my recording studio to your earbuds, I hope that your Christmas holiday is as amazing as ever.

Today's episode is what I'm hoping is going to even further enhance your Christmas celebrations because I have a special guest with me today, where we're talking about something extra special, something that I truly love in my life and reminds me very much of Christmas.

That, of course, being Coca-Cola.

I'm sitting down with the author of a book called The Coca-Cola Trail.

His name is Larry Jorgensen.

And Larry, he set out to discover the history behind Coca-Cola.

What he would discover, I found to be so intriguing, so interesting about something that, you know, we just think of as another can of soda.

So I do have one warning.

If you're listening and you are one of those people who, oh, God bless your soul, that you you prefer Pepsi over Coca-Cola, please know that we we mean no offense at any point in today's episode.

You're just listening to two guys who are definitely fans of Coca-Cola versus Pepsi.

So please, no hurt feelings.

You know, let us just understand that Coca-Cola is better.

Anyways, today's episode is going to be something fun, something interesting, and something that I hope can just be something that maybe even you let your entire family listen to.

I think your kids will get a kick out of today's episode as we start talking about the history of Coca-Cola.

Or I don't know, maybe in reality your kids would find this totally lame and would never think about listening to a same podcast that their parent listens to.

But hey, I hope that you enjoy it.

And even more so, I hope that you have the most amazing Christmas of all.

And hey, we're taking a break next week here on the podcast.

So I won't see you until next year, 2022, when we'll be coming at you with a bunch more amazing content here on the podcast.

Without further ado, I introduce you to an amazing conversation with an awesome guy talking all about Coca-Cola.

Larry, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Kevin.

This is gonna be a lot of fun and looking forward to this opportunity.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, Larry, what brings us together is probably my most guilty pleasure of all.

And that's nothing quite like a Coca-Cola.

And you have written a book called The Coca-Cola Trail.

And well, that was kind of all I needed to be like, oh my gosh, I've got to learn more.

Any guy who who I assume you must love Coca-Cola, for you to devote all this time and going into writing a book, I'm like, well, I've got to have them on the podcast.

So I uh would love to, I guess, start out by by asking just a general overview of what what is the Coca-Cola Trail, and then kind of we'll dive into where you know the idea for this book came from and all of that.

SPEAKER_00: Well, the Coca-Cola Trail, Kevin, is not about Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia, which is corporate.

The Coca-Cola Trail is about people and places, underlying places in the history of Coca-Cola.

In other words, it's all these places all over the United States where Coca-Cola in one way or another happened because of entrepreneurs, young people who thought, hey, we might be able to make some money bottling this new drink called Coca-Cola.

And so what we've done with the book is we've located places where that happened that are still there.

Now it might be an old bottling plant that now has become a small shopping mall or a brew pub or who knows what.

But we've found these places, and it's places where it's a travel guide.

It's places you can go, you can see these places that have Coca-Cola history, and we tell you in the book why it has Coca-Cola history.

What happened there?

You know, the the very first chapter, we talk about a place in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where Coca-Cola was first bottled.

It wasn't first bottled in Atlanta.

It was first bottled at a little soil shop, candy shop in Vicksburg, Mississippi, by a particular gentleman who owned the shop who was buying Coca-Cola syrup.

And that's how Coca-Cola was sold those days.

It was the syrup.

You had a soda fountain, you put it in a glass, you added the charged water, and you had a Coca-Cola drink.

So that's what we've gone back.

And like in Vicksburg, you can go there.

You can see the soda shop, the candy shop, where it was first bottled, and you can see the equipment that it was used, old hand foot-powered equipment that bottled the first bottle of Coca-Cola.

And that that's the purpose of the book.

Where can I go look, see, touch, feel, and what is it all about?

SPEAKER_02: Well, that well, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

So now what what inspired you to do this in the first place?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm a freelance writer, amongst other things.

And I've been doing some travel features.

And I learned about the Coca-Cola shop in Vicksburg.

And then I I also learned that not too far away, about 60, 70 miles in Monroe, Louisiana, there was a privately owned Coca-Cola museum that in fact was paid tribute to that person that bottled that first bottle of Coca-Cola.

And I thought, well, that's interesting.

Here's two pieces of Coca-Cola history within driving distance of each other.

It would make a wonderful travel feature.

So I set out to do a travel feature, not a book, just a feature for travel magazines.

Went to Vicksburg, looked at that place, got the history on it, took some pictures.

Then I went to Monroe, Louisiana.

And the same thing, there's a nice Coca-Cola museum there.

They do presentations and they have all kinds of old Coca-Cola memorabilia and a big old Coca-Cola truck and so forth.

So I went and I thought, yeah, this is great.

I'm going to do this travel story.

Well, as it turned out, at the second museum, I ran into people who were family of the first bottler of Coca-Cola and started learning that in fact the story I'm after is all over the United States.

There were many, many places where Coca-Cola was first bottled, and how those places became an important part of Coca-Cola.

So I, with a little encouragement from this particular family, their name is Biedenharn, I set out to find some other places.

And I realized this is not a travel feature, this is a book.

And it's an amazing story of how really the small Coca-Cola entrepreneurs created were very instrumental in creating what I call the Coca-Cola Empire.

It was, you know, these people invested time, money, a lot of experimentation, a lot of marketing to promote the Coca-Cola product.

And that that's how it all took off.

And that's what we've tried to explain in the book, and that's why I got into it, is because I found it was absolutely fascinating.

I always thought, gee, Coca-Cola was started by some smart guy in Atlanta and they bottled it and live happily ever after.

Well, not the case.

It was a lot of small businessmen.

I mean, as many as 1,500 bottlers at one time were bottling Coca-Cola around the United States.

SPEAKER_02: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

That's so cool.

So now I'm curious though, we talk about like Vicksburg and all these other cities that that were bottling it, taking the syrup and mixing it with the seltzer water and stuff.

But who do you know who actually created the the recipe?

SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, that was that was John Pemberton in 1853.

Now, Mr.

John Pemberton had been in the Civil War and had sustained a very bad war injury, which he took with him all his life, and he suffered from great pain.

So he decided he was a pharmacist and he was going to find something to cure that pain.

And so he came up somehow, realized that a mixture of the cola nut and the coca leaf would help create a medicine, as it were, that would help relieve his pain.

So he created this syrup using the coca leaf and the cola nut, and he created the syrup.

And it was strictly, as they say, for medicinal purposes.

He was in Columbus, Georgia when he created that particular syrup.

He later moved to Atlanta, Georgia.

So we have a situation here where both Columbus, Georgia, and Atlanta, Georgia claim to be the birthplace of Coca-Cola.

I've talked with one of the uh retired archivists from Coca-Cola, and he says, no, he said John invented it, he formulated it in Columbus, and he took it with him to Georgia, and then that's where it really got into Atlanta, Georgia, and that's where it really got into production, and he he took it to the local drugstore.

And uh again, because that's where you went to get pain relief, was a drugstore.

And from there it took off.

But you know, he only lived a few years after that, and ultimately the the uh Coca-Cola syrup, he sold that formula to Asa Candler.

And Asa then and his nephew proceeded to go around the nation selling Coca-Cola syrup in the gallon containers to pharmacists to sell to make the drink in their pharmacy.

Again, it was a carbonated charged fountain drink.

It was not a bottled drink.

So Mr.

Candler and and his nephew set off to sell Coca-Cola syrup.

Well, that, you know, we have the gentleman in Vicksburg who said, wait a minute, this is going over so well as a counter drink.

If I can get it bottled, if I can bottle it, I can get it out to the people in the country.

Now, we're talking about 1896, you know, and people in the country come into town, that was a pretty good challenge.

So uh Mr.

Biedenharn, Mr.

Joe Biedenharn, purchased some used bottling equipment and started bottling Coca-Cola.

He actually bottled it for five years before Coca-Cola finally authorized the bottling.

He bottled his first two cases, and uh, see, he was also a distributor for the syrup.

Not only was he using it in his drug store and his candy store, but he was selling the syrup in bottles, big gallon bottles to other pharmacists and so forth around the area.

So once he started bottling it, you know, he sent his first two cases that he bottled off to Atlanta, Georgia, to Mr.

Candler, just to let him know what he was doing.

And Candler sent him a note back and said, Well, it's okay, but he wasn't very impressed with it.

And uh Mr.

Biedenhearn, who sent the bottles, was a little unhappy because he said Mr.

Candler never sent his bottles back in those days.

So, anyhow, we've got here's Vicksburg, Mississippi.

We're bottling Coca-Cola for five years.

No one else is bottling it.

When I say no one, I'll have to put a little proviso on there.

There was a pharmacist in Georgia, Valdasta, Georgia, who three years later also got uh got the idea and he started bottling too.

So there were really two places that were bottling it until Coca-Cola gave permission, if we want to use that term, for it to bottle.

Now, that's an interesting story because as it worked out, there were two enterprising young attorneys from Chattanooga.

And you know, they thought, gee, this Coca-Cola thing is pretty good.

I wonder if we could get the rights to bottle it.

So they go off to Atlanta and they talk to Mr.

Cadler, who obviously owns a syrup, and they say, we want to bottle Coca-Cola.

We'd like to get the rights from you, sir, to bottle Coca-Cola all over the United States.

Well, he he said, This is crazy.

Bottle Coca-Cola?

Well, I'm afraid it would lose its taste.

I I he's in fact he called it, he said, bottling is kind of a backstreet business, you know.

He was not impressed with that idea.

They were lawyers, and as lawyers are, they have the wisdom of words, and they kept after Mr.

Candler, and he finally said, All right, I'll tell you what, you guys go back to the hotel in those days, and uh draw up a contract and bring it in tomorrow.

I'll take a look at it.

So they did that.

They went back to Mr.

Candler the next day with their contract, which gave them the United States exclusive rights to bottle Coca-Cola in the United States, except Mississippi, because that's where Joe was already doing it.

And uh Candler just finally gave in.

He said, All right, I'm gonna sell you the rights.

And he did for one dollar.

For one dollar, he sold the rights to bottle Coca-Cola exclusively throughout the United States.

And and the rumor, the the report is that he never even bothered to collect the dollar, and he told the two enterprising uh attorneys from Chattanooga, if this doesn't work out, don't you come crying back to me about it.

unknown: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: So Chattanooga, right?

They got the rights to bottle Coca-Cola, the exclusive rights throughout the United States.

Well, they go back to Chattanooga, and you know, it's like, you know, Kevin, you've heard the story about the dog chasing the car.

What do you do when you catch it, you know?

Well, here they are.

They're they're back in Chattanooga.

Between the two of them, they've got$1,500.

So they they start a little bottling plant, and they're like, this is not, we can't bottle Coca-Cola for the United States with our$1,500 bottling plant.

And then the light goes on.

Wait a minute, we've got the rights.

Let's start, I think today we call that franchising.

Let's start selling territory.

unknown: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: So if you want to bottle Coca-Cola in Paducah, Kentucky, we're going to sell you a 50-mile radius.

That'll be your territory up there in Paducah, and you can bottle Coca-Cola.

Now, we're going to sell you the territory, but you must use the Coca-Cola syrup.

We want to make sure it's the same product.

Well, there was another reason for that, too.

Because every time that bottler in Paducah would buy a gallon of Coca-Cola syrup, the two entrepreneuring attorneys in Chattanooga who sold him the territory would also get a commission on the future sales of syrup to that bottler.

So it went on, you know, they made money even when the guy was bottling.

Every time he bought syrup, they got a commission on it.

So needless to say, they they did rather well.

Not only did they sell the territory, but they kind of kept a piece of the action as well.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

Yes.

Oh my gosh, that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00: Well, it was i it's really how Coca-Cola got started in the United States.

You've got all these people that have invested time and money and energy, you know, into this.

They're going to go out and sell your product for you.

Pretty neat.

Pretty neat.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

I I you know what I think is really cool about this, and and you know, kind of like what you said earlier, is the true like entrepreneurial spirit that's behind Coke.

That's that's truly, it's because of this entrepreneurial spirit of people, you know, literally all over the country, that is what made it rise to fame.

SPEAKER_00: Well, and and let's face it, the people at Coca-Cola all of a sudden got smart too.

And that's why today you will see the Coca-Cola logo on everything.

I mean, the Coca-Cola collectors, it's amazing.

The memorabilia and the way that brand shows up on signs, on billboards, on trays, on you name it, you know, that Coca-Cola logo is without a doubt the most collected, recognized logo company product in the world.

There's no doubt about it.

You know, you and I are are talking, Kevin, you know, you're in Florida and and I'm up here in Louisiana.

But, you know, I did an interview with a radio station in Dubai.

I thought I said Dubai, and he said, absolutely, we love Coca-Cola here.

And so we talked for a half hour to a lot of Dubai about Coca-Cola.

It's all over the place.

But it started right here, right at our backyard, by people who really thought it was worth chasing.

You know, at one time Candler realized the value of the promotion.

And if you notice, there's Coca-Cola signs to this day all over the place.

And they were probably one of the first companies to really jump on the idea of outdoor signs.

Candler once, when he was in visiting in Hollywood and was talking to some movie producers, he told them, he said, you know, the day will come when you won't be able to film a movie outside without there being a Coca-Cola sign in the background.

Well, it almost happened, didn't it?

But it's amazing.

That that brand is so recognized and it's so treasured.

People will will spend money, you know, to collect the logo.

Cities will spend money to restore and preserve Coca-Cola murals.

I mean, it's just it's got that certain memory to it.

You know, it's a happy thing in our life.

You know, how many, how many children who are now adults, when they were young children, would stand in front of the big window at the Coca-Cola plant in their town and watch the bottles get full.

Well, that was done for a reason.

Those plants all had those big windows, and that was to show the world this is how we bottle Coca Cola.

And chances are, if You were standing there as a youngster, or maybe your class was touring the plant, or whatever.

Chances are while you were watching, you were going to get a free Coca-Cola as well.

You know, it was uh they've just created such good memories with that brand that that's why people collect it, because it's good memories.

You know, in towns, the the murals represent a good time in that town, and they want to preserve it.

It's part of the town.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.

And I think I think one of the things that that I wanted to ask you about that I think is is infamous with Coca-Cola is is the bottle.

The shape of the bottle, you know, whether it's the the classic glass bottle or even even the plastic bottle, it has that shape.

And I know there's a story behind that, which actually kind of hits close to where I live.

And so I would love for you to share a little bit what you learned about about the shape of the bottle.

SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's very interesting because back in the early 1900s, all of a sudden we've got people bottling and becoming very successful bottling Coca-Cola.

Well, guess what?

We get a lot of knockoffs.

It happens in every business.

All of a sudden you've got Coca-Cola, but it's spelled with cocaine, you know, K, Coca, K-Cola, you know, uh, you get Chiro-Cola, you got how many different Cola drinks all of a sudden are being bottled, and they're all trying to imitate Coca-Cola.

Well, there was no standard bottle.

So it was easy to create a knockoff.

You could a Cola drink, put it in a glass bottle, and call it Cola.

People will think, hmm, it must be Coca-Cola.

So Coca-Cola said, wait a minute, we have got to establish an identity that's us.

They went to the manufacturers of bottles, the six bottle companies that were making bottles in the United States, and they said, We are going to select one bottle that'll be the Coca-Cola bottle.

And they had a competition amongst the bottling companies, the companies that made bottles, and they said, We're going to select one of you.

Well, in 1905, six companies responded, they all brought sample prototype bottles, five bottles, to a bottler convention, and it was to be voted on which one would become the official Coca-Cola bottle.

As it turned out, the winning bottle was made by the Root Bottling Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, and they got the rights to bottle, and the other five bottlers did not succeed in getting the rights to make the bottle.

Now, an interesting little sidebar on that, each of the bottling companies had brought five bottles, prototypes you could call them, to this meeting.

After the root bottle was selected, the order was that all the bottles should be destroyed except one that would go into the archives of Coca-Cola, one of the root bottles.

So that all the bottles were destroyed, and one went into the archives.

But you know what?

There was another one that didn't get destroyed.

One of another one of the root bottles somehow escaped and went to a very wise collector in California, and that family had that bottle for probably generations.

Two years ago, that bottle came up at an estate auction.

Now we know it was that bottle.

The reason being on the bottom of the bottle is the date 1905.

That was the date of the competition.

Coca-Cola never started using a bottle until 1906.

So there could only be the prototype bottles that were dated 1905.

Well, this surviving bottle came up for auction and was sold for over$150,000.

It's a lot different when, Kevin, when you and I used to pick them up and take them back for two cents, you know?

So that that's interesting how the bottle got started.

And of course, the the Root family just became very famous in Coca-Cola, not only in having the rights to create the bottle, and if you go to Terre Haute, Indiana, the town is just so proud of that.

You'll see Coca-Cola memorabilia all over the town.

They have a special day when they observe the quote birth of the bottle and so forth.

But then the family, the Root family, also realized that the people they were making bottles for were also making a pretty good living selling the bottle with the beverage in it, with the Coca-Cola.

And they became also Coca-Cola bottlers and ultimately sold the glass plant and continued on with uh bottling Coca-Cola, buying Coca-Cola plants throughout the United States and in some foreign countries, and became one of the largest privately owned Coca-Cola bottlers in the country.

And uh actually maintained their headquarters in Terre Haute for quite a while until there was a fire at one of the homes, Chapman Root Sr.

His home caught fire.

And uh, you know, they're up there in the cooler climate of Indiana, and uh Mr.

Root decided, all right, that's it.

We're gonna rebuild, but we're going to Florida.

And they rebuilt right in your backyard, and the Root family today has strong, strong ties in Daytona and uh, of course, Ormond Beach, where their corporate is.

But if you go to the museum in Daytona Beach, there is a whole wing there about the Root family and their adventures in Coca-Cola and also their adventures in auto racing.

In Indianapolis 500, they were very successful for many years.

So that it's an interesting visit to that museum in Daytona Beach.

And uh if if uh you haven't gone, it's certainly worth the time.

And you learn a lot about Coca-Cola and the wonderful family that created the original Coca-Cola bottle.

SPEAKER_02: Wow.

So fascinating, so fascinating.

And again, I sit there and I think to myself, what's so neat about this story is the fact that, you know, it wasn't just one person who did it.

And it's the person who, you know, oh, they are the creator of Coke, and they did it all, and they did the bottle.

But you have all these different groups of people all over the United States, really, who contributed to what Coke is.

I just think it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00: It is indeed, and it's truly an American success story, no doubt about it.

You know, one other little sidebar on that bottle, you remember the original bottle, and for years that Coca-Cola bottle had a light green tint to it.

SPEAKER_02: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: And there's there's a reason why.

When the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute was making bottles, they were getting their sand from a quarry they owned about 50 miles away, ironically, in a town called Greencastle, which has nothing to do with why the bottle was green.

But the particular sand that came out of that quarry that the Root Glass Company owned had certain chemicals, uh, copper being one of the major ones, or minerals, I should say, in the in it.

And so when the glass was made, it maintained that slight green flavor, flavor, green tints.

And um what happened is Coca-Cola liked that.

When they saw that, they liked that.

And they said, that's another thing that'll make our bottle distinctive.

So later on, as other glass companies were licensed to make that same bottle, Coca-Cola told them, if your sand does not have the minerals to create the light green color, you better add them because that is what a Coca-Cola bottle is.

It has a light green tint to it.

And it was simply because that's what was in the sand when it was created.

And like I say, Coca-Cola loved it.

They called it Georgia green.

SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.

That's so cool.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

So neat.

So I'm curious, during this whole journey that you kind of went on, discovering all about Coca-Cola, was there any one thing that, you know, maybe stood out to you above the rest that you found particularly intriguing or that you were just really shocked to learn?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's so many things I learned in this trip down the Coca-Cola Trail.

It's interesting that I guess the diversity is probably the most interesting thing.

The people that got involved, many of them, you know, had most of them had no experience in bottling.

Some of them may have had experience in bottling.

You know, in those days, I mean, bottling itself was not new.

You know, you had your orange drinks and your sarsaparilla and all that.

So some of them did have experience in bottling, but so many of them didn't have an idea about bottling.

They learned it.

And believe me, those two that went back to Chattanooga, when they set up their first bottling plant, there was a lot of broken glass and too much pressure, you know, too much carbonation.

They said that the workers in the plant would wear screen mesh over their face because uh many times the bottles would break.

So I think the one thing that stands out is in fact the variety of people that became attracted to this opportunity, and then how Coca-Cola encouraged it.

You know, it it was these people are supporting our product, we're going to support them.

And Coca-Cola would, I mean, look at the in the communities where Coca-Cola plants existed.

There was so much done in those communities by Coca-Cola.

I sound like a Coca-Cola salesman, but this is what I'm not, but this is what I found.

Coca-Cola really got involved in people's communities, uh, in their needs.

What do you need?

I mean, we're talking about Christmas coming up.

Coca-Cola basically, I always say Coca-Cola kidnapped Santa Claus.

Because the fact of the matter is, Kevin, the Santa Claus that we recognize, the Santa image that is so common in our world right now, was in fact created by the artist at Coca-Cola in the 1920s.

That image was created, I say kidnapped, you know, by Coca-Cola.

And you may recall, I think it was two or three Christmases ago, the uh post office issued a series of four stamps that each had a Coca-Cola Santa on them.

Well, each of those Coca-Cola Santa's was in fact one of them that had been created by the artist at Coca-Cola, the corporate artist.

So, you know, Coca-Cola, when you talk about Christmas, your Coca-Cola is one of the warm memories of Christmas.

Look at the commercials, look at the spots on television.

How about Charlie Brown?

You know, the Charlie Brown Christmas was saved by Coca-Cola.

No one wanted to sponsor it.

They thought it was a dumb idea.

Charlie Brown Christmas and a wragley old Christmas tree.

Coca-Cola said it's a wonderful idea.

And they put up the money to make it possible for there to be what we know this Christmas, Coca-Cola's Charlie Brown Christmas.

And it just, they truly embrace things that people loved.

You know, the Coca-Cola polar bears.

You see the polar bears almost as often as you see Santa.

And then what about coming to a town near you, the Coca-Cola trucks?

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden that's become a biggie.

You know, the big trucks will be all decorated and they'll roll into town.

And that was all created.

The first Coca-Cola Christmas truck was not even a truck.

It was simply an ad agency's idea, and they created it virtually.

And it was such a big, such a big hit that Coca-Cola said, we need to do this.

We need to have Coca-Cola trucks.

And you'll see them, you know, you've probably already seen them, and they're all over the place.

And they bring to town Coca-Cola memories, Coca-Cola samples, and just goodwill at Christmas time.

You can't beat that.

That's that's good.

Again, it's good PR, and it's it shows the warmth that people have for that company.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

No, I I totally agree with you.

And and you are you're so right in the fact of Coca-Cola.

It is, it is just when when you think of Christmas, you can't help but think of Coca-Cola.

You just you can't.

And there's just and there's so many things really in and it, you know, as I'm thinking of it, that you think of are, you know, basically synonymous with Coca-Cola.

And uh that's fascinating.

Now, I did want to ask you, curious, did the recipe for Coca-Cola change at all through the years?

SPEAKER_00: The question I usually get, so we might as well confront it, is was there cocaine in Coca-Cola?

Yeah.

And and that that became almost an urban legend that it that was why everybody liked it, because it had cocaine in it.

No, it didn't.

When the uh syrup was developed, as we talked earlier, it had the cola nut and it had the coca leaf used.

But the coca leaf was not processed like they do when they make cocaine, you know.

But unfortunately, there was a slight, and I mean slight, a minuscule cocaine-related type could be detected in the original Coca-Cola.

Not enough that it would have made any difference, but it certainly supported, uh-huh, there's cocaine in Coca-Cola.

So did the did the recipe change?

Yes.

Mr.

Candler spent thousands and thousands of dollars back in the 20s because he was tired of hearing that Coca-Cola has got cocaine in it.

He hired chemists and pharmacists and who knows what all to guarantee no one could ever find anything that resembled cocaine in the Coca-Cola beverage.

It was never there to start with, but because the coca leaf was used in the development of the syrup, obviously there was a crossover that was because it was the same same product.

It was a Coca-Leaf, but it wasn't processed like cocaine.

But it's, you know, so yes, that changed.

Of course, the other change, and then the big one we could talk about, remember the new Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola came out with the new Coca-Cola.

And that was the result.

You talk about a marketing challenge in those days.

Pepsi was doing, you may remember the Pepsi Challenge.

And people would have two unmarked glasses of cola beverage, and they would be asked to sample, and they would sample.

And many times the winning beverage was Pepsi-Cola, and it was driving Coca-Cola people crazy.

What's going on?

Well, they found that in looking at it closely, Pepsi, and to this day, Pepsi is a sweeter product.

So if you're offered two drinks and you get just a sip of each one, chances are you're going to pick the sweeter one.

But when it when you go for longevity, you're going to drink a can.

The sweeter one is usually not your choice.

But Coca-Cola was so misled by this marketing ploy of Pepsi that they were winning the Pepsi Challenge, as it were, that Coca-Cola had created a new formula.

They came out with the new Coca-Cola, and it was sweeter, and people did not like it.

I've run into stories about little old ladies in the shopping center, you know, the grocery store, who would see the Coca-Cola delivery man and threaten him, you know, bring my Coca-Cola back.

But it took two years for it finally to get through to Coca-Cola.

People don't like the new Coca-Cola.

They don't like it.

They want their old Coca-Cola back.

And finally, the new Coca-Cola, as it were, became a thing of the past.

Every once in a while, I recently I think Coca-Cola did a sort of memorabilia run of it, and they made some for fun, basically.

Yes.

But uh it's not, you can't walk into the grocery store and find the new Coca-Cola.

They they learned probably one of the most expensive lessons in marketing.

You can only imagine the money they must have spent not only developing that new Coca-Cola, but in promoting it, you know, getting people to try it, and then finding out that the people didn't like what they tried.

So what a lesson.

What a lesson.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

No, that's so funny.

And and and I just sit here and I think to myself, like, oh my gosh, like, Coke, what were you thinking?

Because me, I we are families.

We are Coca-Cola family.

And and and and it's the running joke when you go to a restaurant and and you say the waitress asks what we have to drink.

You say a Coke.

She says, Is Pepsi okay?

And we say, No, I'll have I'll have water.

You know, because no, no, Pepsi is not okay.

We want a Coke.

SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I don't know about over in Florida, but I know around here, if somebody wants a soft drink, they say, I want a coke.

You know, they don't, you know, and it doesn't make any difference.

You know, it's a coke.

Absolutely.

That that place might not even sell it, you know, but that's what they're asking for.

Coke has become anonymous with having a soft drink.

But you know, we we talk about the flavors, coke has changed, has added.

Well, the original Coke has not changed, but Coke has added a lot of options.

And I'll give you an example.

My favorite right now has become the new Coca-Cola Coffee.

I don't know if, Kevin, if you've tried that one, but it's a good one.

And it's it's called Coca-Cola Coffee.

It comes in that slim can that they're using now for a lot of their new flavors.

And it has three flavors.

It has a dark and a vanilla, and I'm trying to think what the other one is.

I drink the dark, I love it.

And and what I what I will actually do is I'll take a can and open it up and let it get slightly flat.

Little carbonation escape, because the coffee flavor comes through even stronger.

Wow.

And it's just, it's a I like it a lot.

But Coca-Cola does that too.

SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm sitting here thinking to myself, I cannot believe I've not even heard of this before.

And I'm sitting there thinking, I love Coke, I love coffee, and they sound amazing put together.

So I've definitely have to try this.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a good one.

And it's only been out, I guess, as far as real mass distribution.

I think I've only been able to get it for about six or seven months, you know.

But it's it's a winner.

I hope they don't give up on it because we'll own it, you know.

And but that's Coca-Cola.

I mean, look at the drinks not only that have the Coca-Cola name on them, but look at the other beverages that Coca-Cola owns.

And we're not talking just min-main orange juice here.

We're talking the other involvement with with energy drinks, with Monster.

And now they've PowerAid.

The competitor to Gatorade, pardon me, Florida.

The competitor to Gatorade, Coca-Cola now owns, they bought it like a couple months ago.

And you can bet with Coca-Cola behind that brand, Gatorade better get ready for some serious competition because it's coming from Coca-Cola.

It's the one area Coca-Cola had a small investment in that Power Aid product, and they ended up buying the whole line.

And you you can watch in the next month, you know, just watch it happen.

You're going to see a lot of promotion and a lot of go after.

After Gatorade Market from Coca-Cola.

But they own so many different beverages.

For example, are you aware that there's a milk called Fairlife?

And you'll see it.

It's in the stores.

I buy it all at home.

Fairlife is owned by Coca-Cola.

Again, it's one of those products that they invested in because they believed in what that dairy was doing and the type of product they were producing.

And they believed in it so well that ultimately they bought the whole operation.

So if if you go to the store and you see Fairlife, they make uh several different milks, you know, from the locale to whatever, you know.

And they I think lately I've seen sort of a yogurt type thing with the Fair Life name on it.

But it's it's all Coca-Cola-owned.

And that's Coca-Cola.

They keep up with trends, what's going on, what are people drinking, you know, and that's why Coca-Cola continues.

Well, and let's face it, you you talked, you know, talk to Mr.

Buffett about where he puts his money.

Coca-Cola, he's one of the biggest investors.

He wouldn't sell his Coca-Cola stuff closely.

So the people at Coca-Cola are pretty sharp.

They know when to hold them, and they do know when to fold them.

Some things that they try go away, and uh the ones that are good stay, and and you know, you look back at another way that that they became big was during the Second World War.

Coca-Cola went overseas and established small bottling companies in the war zone.

And the and they did this because they wanted the American boys, when they're over there fighting the war, to have Coca-Cola.

And there was no charge for Coca-Cola.

If you were in the service and you were over there, Coca-Cola had a plant that was making Coca-Cola for the fighting boys.

And when they came home to the United States, I wonder what memory they had and what they would drink.

Don't you know a typical Coca-Cola?

Go out and do something for people, and they will be your friend forever.

SPEAKER_02: That is just, oh my gosh, it's so interesting.

It's so it's so smart.

It is so, so smart on the the people behind Coca-Cola, you know, all the way from the very beginning of how they have grown into to what it is today.

When when, like you said, I mean, when you know that you've done well with your branding, when somebody who wants a soda, they say, I want to coke.

SPEAKER_01: That's right.

SPEAKER_02: You know, and yeah, that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00: Well, and the the people, you know, obviously, as uh like in any industry, there's been a merger, a consolidation.

You know, little bottlers were bought out by bigger bottlers.

And one of the things uh you can credit that to is transportation.

And one time, you know, there was a cool plant in almost any town of any size.

Well, as transportation improved, they found it made more sense to bottle in one place and and truck it to other locations.

So that's how that all happened.

And um, the families that have remained, and believe me, there are families that are, you know, fourth, fifth generation families that are still bottling and selling Coca-Cola, these people are amazing people.

I've had the chance to meet them, to learn their family histories, and to really get to know people that love the product as much as their customers love the product.

And they'll tell you amazing stories as to how they got started and how they got into it.

And I've I've got all that in the book, and and it's interesting.

You know, some of them they thought, oh, we don't know if this is gonna go, we'll try it.

You know, I've got a good example out in Iowa, one of the biggest independent Coca-Cola bottlers in Iowa is a company in the town of Atlantic, not to be called confused with Atlanta.

And they were bottling, you know, soft drinks, uh, oranges and limes and all that, and they were making ice cream, and they bought out a company that was an ice cream company, and they found in the safe a contract that for the territory for Coca-Cola.

But this company that they bought had never bottled Coca-Cola.

And in Iowa, there wasn't much Coca-Cola bottling going on anywhere.

So they they thought, well, let's try it.

So they bottled some Coca-Cola, and what they would do, somebody would order, you know, a grocery store would say, send us a case of sodas.

They are called sodas.

So they'd put in some orange and they'd put in some lemon and some sarsaparilla, and they'd slip in a couple of Coca-Cola's to see what would happen.

Or guess what?

The Coca-Cola started taking off.

And the next thing they were sending four cases of Coca-Cola because they got people to try it.

SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00: But that it took that you know, that interest.

It took the families to say, we believe in this and we're gonna promote it.

And they did.

There's a case in uh Santa Fe, New Mexico, where same thing, the guy uh family got the rights to bottle Coca-Cola, and so they bottled their first couple cases, and the man took it over to his favorite local grocery store.

So confident in what he had, he said, I'm gonna leave this case here, and I'll be back in a week to pick up the money, and you go ahead and sell it.

Well, he came back in a week, and his case of Coca-Cola was being used as a doorstop.

And he said, hmm, gotta get people to try it.

So what he did, he thought, you know, if you if people are thirsty, they'll try it.

So he bought a large 50-pound bag of salted peanuts in the shell.

And he got his kids put these peanuts in little bitty bags.

And he would go to the high school football game and he would sell peanuts.

And he knew that for every bag of peanuts he sold, that person would come back and before the game was over, would probably buy two bottles of Coca-Cola.

And so that was his way of getting people to try Coca-Cola, and that became, you know, sort of that bottling company.

That became their tradition for years just because that's the way they got started.

And of course, how about the country song, you know, Peanuts and My Coke?

You know, I mean, give it a try.

Why not?

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

Oh my goodness.

Well, well, there is so much about Coca-Cola.

I was just so intrigued.

And I can only imagine, you know, those listening are as well.

Where can people find your book, The Coca-Cola Trail?

SPEAKER_00: The simplest way is to go to the website, the Coca-Cola Trail.com.

And you go there.

Actually, there are now two books, Kevin.

We've got the Coca-Cola Trail, and uh, what happened after I published the Coca-Cola Trail, I would get communications either in person or by email or whatever, from people that say, you know, your book is great, but you forgot about.

And they would tell me about the Coca-Cola plant in Sparksville or wherever.

So I started a little box, I called it the Forgotabouts.

And pretty soon I had enough leads in that little box to do another book.

So I have since done the second book, which is called Return to the Coca-Cola Trail.

So there are two.

If you go to the website, there's two books there.

I would recommend the buy the original one first, because that really gives you, you know, how it all started.

And the second one is just a continuation.

Anyhow, so we were talking about there are two books.

You can get them at the website.

There are a lot of places, but they're not in the big bookstores.

You know, they're not at Barnes and Noble and all that, books a million.

But there are places there are, for example, in your backyard, go to the museum.

The gift store at the museum in Daytona Beach has got the books.

There's a lot of museums that have them.

There's a lot of country stores, places that sell Coca-Cola memorabilia.

You never know.

You're going to walk into a store and there's going to be a display of the Coca-Cola Trail books.

But if you want to make sure, and you know, now buying online is the where we're at.

Just go to the website, the Coca-Cola Trail.com, and uh, you know, if if you want, put a little message there, sign this to me or sign this to my sweetheart or whatever.

We'll sign it and send it off to you.

SPEAKER_02: Well, that's fantastic.

Fantastic.

Well, my goodness, Larry, I am just I'm blown away.

I'm I'm so excited that I got to to sit down and have this conversation with you today about now your two books and about Coca-Cola.

And I don't know, it's been an awesome episode, awesome conversation with you.

And to be quite honest, I'm kind of uh feeling like I need to go pop a Coke.

SPEAKER_00: So I will confess I've had one sitting here next to me while we're talking, and it is the Coca-Cola coffee.

That's my current uh beverage of choice.

And we'll see what they come out with next, but that's where we're all now.

SPEAKER_02: Well, fantastic.

Well, well, Larry, again, you know, sincerely, uh, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be a guest here on the podcast.

I'm I'm super excited for my listeners to get to hear our conversation, something fun, a little bit different, and about just this, you know, amazing.

Really, really, it's a story of an entrepreneurial, you know, story of a business, of a company that has become so well known that it's, you know, it becomes part of our out of you know, our holidays, our part of our Christmas.

And uh, so so Larry, just I would, you know, sincerely thank you.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I've enjoyed it and and have the opportunity to to talk about Coca-Cola during the holidays.

What could be better?

You know, that that's the the time to do it, and and you've been very gracious to let that happen, Kevin.

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.

You listen to me.

I want to wish you a Merry Christmas if you are indeed listening today's episode when it is released, the week of Christmas.

And well, I hope you've enjoyed the episode, and let's do it all, all ourselves a favor, and let's go have a nice, ice cold Coca-Cola.

And that's the lowdown with Evan Low.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles that may be standing in the way.