Getting weird in the Philippines and partying in an abandoned factory.
Coca-Cola may have won the soda war, but the untold truth of RC Cola is worth sipping on.
Although he was looking to compete with Coca-Cola, Claud A. Hatcher's first soda was actually
Royal Crown Ginger Ale in 1905. "Hey there! How long have you been out here?"
"Since 1905."
"...Hmmm."
According to Royal Crown Cola International, the Hatchers decided to challenge Coke with
a cherry-flavored cola called Chero-Cola, which debuted in 1907. The business took
off so briskly that the Hatchers soon found themselves in the soda business full time.
According to New Georgia Encyclopedia, the family established Union Bottling Works,
later renamed Chero-Cola Company, to sell its hit product, and by 1920
had grown to supply soda syrups to 700 franchised plants for bottling.
During World War I, the company even started up its own sugar refinery to
meet demand during rationing. Unfortunately, Coca-Cola was none too pleased with the "Cola"
part of Chero-Cola's name and sued the company, claiming that it owned the term.
Mental Floss reports that Hatcher fought the lawsuit for years as he grew his own business,
but in 1923, a judge sided with Coca-Cola, forcing a name change to just "Chero," which
negatively impacted sales. The cola was discontinued as Hatcher instead
focused the business on his popular fruity soda, which was called Nehi.
This led to another company name change, to the Nehi Corporation,
in 1928, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. However,
when the Great Depression hit, Nehi's sales also suffered, and Hatcher died in 1933.
With the company's sales director, H.R. Mott, now at the helm, sales figures
started to improve for the company. Mott nixed production of the worst soda sellers and in 1934
brought Chero-Cola back as a plain cola called Royal Crown, in honor of the line's origins.
According to RC Cola's official history, the new Royal Crown cola was perfected over six months by
a chemist named Rufus Hamm. The work paid off as the soda became popular immediately and turned the
company's fortunes around. By the '40s, the soda had reached 47 of the contiguous United States.
Overall, the '40s were a very successful decade for the Royal Crown company,
and their soda was becoming popular with the public. In 1940, the company had the idea to
hold publicly-performed blind taste tests versus competitors — and won. Meanwhile,
a judge ruled in 1944 that the word "cola" was again fair game for manufacturers,
so the company was renamed once more as Royal Crown Cola Company.
Now with some momentum, Royal Crown contributed plenty more innovations to
the soda scene. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the company manufactured the
first nationally-available canned sodas in 1954, then created bigger 16-ounce
bottles in 1959. The company's first diet beverage, released in 1958,
was called Diet Rite. It was later followed by a caffeine-free version called RC 100
and a cherry-flavored variety, Diet Cherry RC. Our Everyday Life reports that the diet sodas
were created for diabetics, but they proved to be a hit with weight-watchers as well.
According to Culinary Lore, RC was not the first company to produce a diet soda as the
company claims, but they were the first to successfully bring it to the national public
by 1962. Unfortunately, the diet soda generated controversy due to the inclusion of cyclamates
as a sweetener, which was eventually banned in 1970 over health concerns.
"The announcement about artificial sweeteners adds cyclamate to tobacco,
alcohol and a list of other things that aren't good for you."
Since Diet Rite had helped Royal Crown sail to the No. 1 diet-soda spot,
the health scare caused the company's sales to plummet. Mental Floss reported that in a
strange twist, the company diversified by acquiring two fruit juice makers
and seven home furnishings companies, followed by the fast-food chain Arby's.
Unfortunately, the company's next owner, Victor Posner took over in 1984,
and later received a conviction for tax evasion and was also under suspicion of insider trading.
Generations of both children and adults have grown up with Jim Henson, whether
by watching "The Muppet Show" or "Sesame Street" and their casts of lovable characters. What tends
to get left out of the puppeteer's biography, however, is his stint producing television ads.
Long before either program aired on TV,
his puppets starred in commercials for products including coffee, bread,
and Frito-Lay's Munchos, which showcased an early prototype of Cookie Monster.
One of the companies to tap Henson was RC Cola,
and in 1966 he made an array of commercials starring puppets Nutty Bird and Sour Bird.
"Royal Crown is its name - it has quick, fresh energy and you will love RC like me!"
"Is that the end?"
"There is no end to the praises I sing of Royal Crown Cola!"
Around 20 seconds long, the ads combined a playful mix of slapstick comedy and music,
which would define the whimsical worlds Henson would introduce audiences to years
later. Only four commercials were made, and to our knowledge it remained the only collaboration
Henson did with Royal Crown. Still, it's an interesting peek into the pair's early days.
History notes that as Royal Crown suffered through rocky times, Coca-Cola and Pepsi
were engaging in the "cola wars" of the 1970s and 1980s, as the top two cola manufacturers
tried to one-up each other for years. The scuffle kicked off, ironically, with the Pepsi Challenge
taste test - the same method Royal Crown had employed to gain market share decades before.
In 1993, Royal Crown was acquired by Triarc Companies — which, according to Funding Universe,
had its own history with the troublesome billionaire who briefly owned RC in the '80s,
Victor Posner. Triarc tried to resuscitate the flailing brand,
pouring in an additional $25 million to the annual marketing budget, which somewhat picked up sales.
In 1999, the new owners hoped to turn around the company's previous Diet
Rite controversy by partnering with Johnson & Johnson on a new sweetener
and a national ad campaign centered on medical marketing. AdAge reported
that RC's diet soda didn't even make the top 10 best-selling diet drinks.
According to Royal Crown Cola International, in a mishmash of crisscrossing acquisitions, by 2000,
the RC Cola brand was acquired by Cadbury Schweppes, then moved to
the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, which itself is now called Keurig Dr Pepper. In 2001,
the Cott Corporation acquired the rights to the international side of RC Cola sales.
Columbus, Georgia is the birthplace of RC Cola, and in many ways, the soft drink industry. It's
inevitable, then, that the fountain beverage would enjoy some sort of historical tribute.
According to WRBL, if you venture to River Market Antiques on Hamilton Road,
you'll find the RC Cola Museum showcasing rare memorabilia and knick-knacks related to the drink,
including a syrup dispenser that's the only one of its kind.
The museum, which opened in 2021, has been a hit with visitors. Owner Allen Woodall
told WRBL that the museum is dedicated to the locals who built RC Cola from the ground up,
either working in its bottling plants or selling it in mom-and-pop stores around
town. Speaking about the museum Woodall said -
"It's affected many, many, thousands of lives in Columbus and the surrounding
areas. We're just proud that we can have this museum for all the former
employees and the people that love these museums."
Of course, Coca-Cola would go on to steal the spotlight from RC Cola,
reducing it to a minor footnote in the history books. Regardless of that, RC Cola has a history,
and it's one worth preserving behind glass so soda fans can explore its past and present.
In addition to the RC Cola Museum, the building houses other museums including
The Nehi Drink Museum, The Lunchbox Museum, and the Georgia Radio and Hall of Fame Museum.
"These are memory capsules is what these museums are."
According to Contagious, Royal Crown's dirt-cheap pricing helped it stay competitive
with Coke and Pepsi in the Philippines. But when a government-backed sugar tax
caused soda prices to soar in 2018, RC Cola lost its economic advantage on the market.
Rather than settle for sluggish profits, the brand decided to make waves through the power
of advertising, and the result was a series of mind-bending commercials whose method to
success may as well have been operating under the strategy of the weirder the ad, the better.
The 'Basta' campaign, which means 'whatever' in Tagalog, consisted of seemingly mundane
scenarios that all took unexpected turns that, somehow, led directly to drinking RC Cola.
Unsurprisingly, the ads quickly went viral: Ad Age reported that there were over a million
views on launch day, with 51 million accrued over months following its premiere. The U.S. couldn't
get enough of them either, between trending on Twitter and getting a shout-out on The Ellen Show.
Gigil, the creative firm behind it, intended to cause a stir by going big,
with managing partner Jake Yrastorza telling Contagious:
"I always say that it is more expensive to be safe than it is to be brave. Because when
you play things safe, your ideas are not going to travel as far."
Clearly, the strategy worked because according to Business World, RC Cola's sales spiked 67%.
Underground art shows or dance clubs seem to always take place in warehouses. One of Florida's
top venues, RC Cola Plant, was, believe it or not, a former bottling plant for Royal Crown Cola.
A major fixture in the Wynwood Arts District, it's a colorful, graffiti-plastered hub that hosts
every big event imaginable, from music festivals and DJ sets to globe-spanning art exhibits.
Imagining the facility's dramatic transformation into an edgy,
envelope-pushing locale feels almost absurd to think about. At the same time,
its origin story is actually pretty clear-cut. After Posner obtained RC Cola in the 1980s, the
brand shifted the site of its company headquarters from Atlanta to the sun-drenched coasts of Miami.
As Abandoned Florida explains, the plant chugged along for the next decade until
shutting down in 1993 following Posner's financial schemes. From there, the building stood empty,
and served as a blank canvas for local graffiti artists. Thierry Isambert reports
that the venue was eventually being repurposed into a public art space.
Mana Public Arts, which owns the venue, has facilitated an array of
projects celebrating street art in all its forms. According to Street Art NYC, in 2016,
artists from Florida and New York gathered during Miami Art Week to deck out the venue
in expansive murals as part of a team-up between the organization and The Bushwick Collective.
In 2017, RC Cola made headlines when a Twitter post mocked President Donald
Trump's now-infamous "covfefe" typo, tweeting -
"We have no plans to release any covfefe flavored cola. If you want
the taste of incompetence there are other sodas more readily available."
Business Insider reports however that the account that wrote the tweet, @OfficialRCCola,
wasn't actually official at all. A random internet user had created the account,
and prior to the above commotion had been tweeting from it for two months.
Predictably, RC Cola's parent company was not pleased by the antics. Keurig Dr. Pepper
immediately denounced the post on Twitter, and attempted to get the profile taken down.
Within days, The Comeback confirmed that the account had been suspended.
All publicity is good publicity, as the old refrain goes, and this was probably the first
time in years the soda company was front and center of a viral kerfuffle. And after years
of being off the social media grid, the real RC Cola even got a Twitter account.
Today, Cott Beverages boasts that its version of Royal Crown is made with pure cane sugar. The diet
alternative, Royal Crown Cola Slim, blends in some stevia for 50% fewer calories. Keurig Dr Pepper,
meanwhile, oversees a slew of soft drinks in its portfolio — including RC Cola.
Mental Floss explained in 2015 that no RC Cola product was close to the top of soda
sales charts despite its dedicated fans in the South, presence in Chicago pizzerias,
and even an old-timey Southern song that pairs it up with Moon Pies. Its multi-year sponsorship of
race car driver Marco Andretti, inked in 2013, also didn't do much to change RC's fortunes.
RC Cola is sold in 67 countries around the world — and remains a top seller
in the Philippines. Stateside, it remains a beloved Southern underdog that's worth sipping.