The “raspberry” went bad because it had no raspberry in it, but cheap chemical ethers. The main reason the bottler had such trouble, however, was the uncertain seal, a problem widely recognized within the industry, resulting in a scramble to patent a better stopper. The National Bottlers’ Gazette, a trade magazine, portrayed an amazing array of fifty stopper designs for patents issued in 1885, all purporting to solve the problem. The devices usually featured elaborate wire-and-cork contraptions, although a few elegant designs used internal balls, held in place by the pressure of the carbonation.
The industry standard throughout the late 1880s was the Hutchinson stopper, a cumbersome, unpredictable seal with an internal rubber disk pulled up into place by a wire loop. To open the bottle, a consumer knocked the loop down, releasing the pressure with a sudden “pop,” which gave soda pop its name. The Hutchinson stopper was relatively inexpensive, but workers or consumers often jarred the loop accidentally, spilling the bottle’s sticky contents. In addition, the Hutchinson bottles were difficult to clean because of their internal mechanism, and the acidified drinks ate away at the rubber gasket.
Nonetheless, by 1890, over three thousand American bottlers used Hutchinson stoppers. With an industry that large, the question isn’t why two lawyers got the notion to bottle Coca-Cola in 1899, but why no one had thought of it sooner. In fact, they had. Sam Dobbs remembered that there were at least a dozen pre-1899 Coca-Cola bottlers in Florida, Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, and New England. Two of those pre-1899 bottlers successfully continued into the twentieth century. Joe Biedenharn, a Vicksburg, Mississippi, candy manufacturer with a sideline in bottled pop, was one of the early jobbers for Coca-Cola syrup, which sold well at the city’s soda fountains. Biedenharn was convinced that it would do equally well in rural areas, which had no fountains. Consequently, in 1894, he began bottling carbonated Coca-Cola for sale to the country trade. As a courtesy, he sent one of the first cases to Asa Candler, who wrote back that it was “fine” and thought no more about it. The Biedenharn brothers—all seven of them—created a Coca-Cola bottling dynasty. Similarly, the Valdosta Bottling Works of Valdosta, Georgia, started selling bottled Coca-Cola in 1897. Describing their early Coca-Cola experience, a partner said that the Hutchinson bottles caused trouble: “The rubber washer on the stopper caused a not-too-wholesome odor in the drink after it had been bottled for a period of ten days. . . .”
In April of 1892, at exactly the same time as The Coca-Cola Company, the Crown Cork and Seal Company was incorporated. Though the crimped crown bottle cap solved all of the Hutchinson problems, its acceptance was glacially slow, because it required a new stock of bottles and a special machine to attach the crown caps. By 1900, however, the change was well under way. Thomas and Whitehead were entering the business at the right time. Other innovations in the next few years made mass-produced bottled soft drinks an increasingly attractive field.
CARVING UP THE U.S.
Thomas and Whitehead wasted no time in setting up their first plant in Chattanooga. Bottling in that era was a dangerous, makeshift affair that necessitated facemasks and heavy gauntlets. The foot-powered machines allowed only one bottle to be capped at a time. Recycled bottles were hand washed, with metal shot shaken inside in a vain attempt to flush out the accumulated crud. The ten-gallon syrup keg was hoisted aloft so that syrup could flow into bottles by gravity, but the hose often came loose, with sticky results. It is little wonder that Thomas and Whitehead quickly decided to leave the actual bottling to others.
On November 12, 1899, they placed their first small ad in the Chattanooga Times: “Drink a bottle of Coca-Cola, five cents at all stands, grocers and saloons.” The ad may have been short, but it spoke volumes for the future of the drink. The “stands, grocers and saloons” were revolutionary new outlets for Coca-Cola, allowing the drink to reach a completely different class of consumer. At the time, no one in Chattanooga paid much attention. An article running adjacent to that first ad carried a detailed account of business activity in town, including a section on various new companies and their products. The bottling concern wasn’t even mentioned. The partners officially incorporated as the Coca-Cola Bottling Company on December 9, 1899.
Within a year, the partnership shattered. Thomas and Whitehead disagreed about almost everything except the desirability of bottling the soft drink. Thomas wanted to use brown bottles, while Whitehead favored clear or light green. Thomas thought each bottle should contain eight ounces; Whitehead opted for a little over six ounces. But the more serious conflict began when the time came to execute additional contracts with other bottlers. Thomas believed in two-year contracts so that he could replace a poor bottler if there were problems. Whitehead wanted to give permanent contracts to reinforce loyalty and enthusiasm. Finally, the two men agreed to split their territory. To assure an equitable division, Whitehead created the two territories, while Thomas chose the one he wanted. He must have enjoyed a challenge, because he picked the heavily populated Eastern seaboard and the West Coast, in addition to Chattanooga and a fifty-mile radius around it. That left Whitehead with the Coca-Cola heartland of the South, plus much of the West.
Whitehead may have had the prime territory, but he had no money. Looking for capital, he found J. T. Lupton, who had married into the wealthy Patten family, owners of the Chattanooga Medicine Company. Lupton had given up his law practice to join the family business, helping the Pattens market their two popular proprietary medicines, Wine of Cardui and Black Draught. Lupton saw the future in bottled Coca-Cola and agreed to back Whitehead in return for half interest in his territory, paying him $2,500. Whitehead relocated to Atlanta and incorporated The Coca-Cola Bottling Company, using a capital T to differentiate his company from the Chattanooga concern. Because this led to inevitable confusion, the two firms were more commonly called the Thomas Company and the Southeastern Parent Bottler.
It was obvious from the beginning that neither concern had the money or manpower to open bottling plants all over the United States. Instead, both companies began looking for prospective bottlers with a little money and a lot of hustle. In those days, it cost a bit over $2,000 to buy the necessary bottling equipment, which included a carbonator, bottling table, washing machine, settling tanks, washing tubs, bottles, and cases. In addition, a horse and wagon were recommended, as well as $2,000 working capital. Thomas and Whitehead signed contracts with these bottlers to sell them syrup and provide an expert bottler, caps, and advertising. In return, they would garner half of the plant’s profits. Consequently, the Thomas and Whitehead/Lupton firms became known as the “parent bottlers,” while the manufacturing plants were called the “actual” or “first-line” bottlers.*
Whitehead ran the day-to-day side of his operation, aided by his young bookkeeper, Charles Veazey Rainwater. As Whitehead’s guardian angel, Lupton supplied about half of the start-up capital for most bottlers. Even with his help, however, a substantial number of early bottlers failed, and the partners had to find someone else to take over the territory, portraying a glorious future that, at the time, seemed highly unlikely. To induce the “right man” to tackle the business, Lupton would explain that, “while the business was new, the beverage was new, yet it was rapidly acquiring a good standing with the public, and that in the years to come there would be a large profit to be made out of it.”
Lupton was right, particularly with regard to himself. Because he wound up with a substantial investment in most of the bottling plants, he raked in fantastic amounts of money in the next few years, making him the wealthiest man in Chattanooga. “His entire business life,” Sam Dobbs later noted cynically, “has been spent in getting all that he could put his hands on. In a great many bottling plants, he has demanded certain interests for which he paid nothing and then as fast as they were able to make a little money he insisted on dividends.” In addition, Lupton installed many of his innumerable relations as bottlers all over the Whitehead/Lupton territory. They too became wealthy, e
stablishing the Lupton name as a fixture in the Coca-Cola bottling firmament.
Ben Thomas didn’t have the Lupton resources and had more difficulty contracting bottlers, but he was also to become a wealthy man. In the process, he and Lupton transformed Chattanooga into as much of a Coca-Cola town as Atlanta. In seeking bottlers, Thomas often relied on city acquaintances, later joking that he had single-handedly depopulated Chattanooga of its young men.
Particularly in the Northern territories, Thomas had a hard time finding and keeping bottlers. His contract specified that bottlers should only use crown caps and should handle Coca-Cola exclusively, giving up other soft drinks. But he really couldn’t stick to those provisions and was forced to grant contracts to veterans who kept using their Hutchinsons and pushing their old line of flavors. Many of these older bottlers were men of limited vision and capital, putting out a shoddy fruit drink on a seasonal basis for the local market. In Big Beverage, a thinly fictionalized narrative of the early days of Coca-Cola bottling, William T. Campbell portrayed one such bottler, Pop Butts, a Coca-Cola millionaire despite himself.* Butts resented the incursion of Coca-Cola on his own drinks. He knew what was in his own mix, although the mysterious syrup from Atlanta came ready-made in barrels. Besides, he objected to the higher price of Coca-Cola, which ran nearly twice what it cost him to produce his own drinks.
Describing Butts and his kind, a Big Beverage salesman gives one intriguing explanation for Candler’s doubts about bottling:
Those are the kind of men who got the Coca-Cola franchises—little guys that thought little, and still think little. . . . They were the only ones Thomas and Whitehead could get—they didn’t know any better! Mr. Candler told me that he couldn’t find a real business man who would even consider bottling Coca-Cola, and he was afraid the pop bottlers would ruin his product. That’s why he waited over ten years before he let the bottle franchise. He knew the average druggist was sanitary and careful, but he was scared to death of the pop bottler.
Although there were many who resembled Pop Butts in the early industry, there were an equal number of bright men who saw the future in Coca-Cola and fought hard for their franchise. Even for them, it was not an easy task. Take, for instance, the cases of William Heck and Arthur Pratt.
HECK AND PRATT: GERMAN TURNCOAT AND CONVERTED SINNER
Thomas had high hopes for the Nashville trade, telling Candler in 1900 that William Heck was a “sober, honest, hard-working, economical German who has had a long experience in the bottling business.” Based on that experience, Heck insisted on using an eight-ounce bottle, even though Candler and Whitehead wanted a six-ounce size. Thomas supported him, pointing out that soda pop was “almost universally” sold in eight-ounce bottles. Although Whitehead might be content with a smaller bottle in Atlanta, where demand for Coca-Cola was higher, Thomas and Heck were dealing with a highly competitive situation. They were not primarily trying to sell to the “high-class” establishments where dainty sips would do. Many of their consumers were blacks, who demanded volume. “We have a customer—a firm composed of two negros who run a barber shop in a small town near here—who sold 27 cases of Coca-Cola last week,” Thomas wrote. Another outlet on the road to Nashville sold eighteen cases to black factory workers. During the same period, Thomas said, the high-tone local saloon sold only three cases.
Regardless of the bottle size, Heck’s main headache was Celery Cola, one of J. C. Mayfield’s drinks. Thomas advised Heck that “an effectual way to kill [Celery Cola] off” was to prompt a local consumer “to talk it among the people that it was nothing but a cheap rubbish and the only reason that the dealer had for wanting to foist it off on them was that he made more off of them every time he sold a bottle.” Although Thomas assured Heck that he was “absolutely certain” that he would eventually succeed, his lieutenant Henry Ewing, lacking the Thomas tact, bluntly wrote in the summer of 1901 that “we are not doing this thing for pleasure; we want some profit.”
In desperation, Heck sold out, only to bottle his own ersatz version of Coca-Cola, using surplus labels he had taken with him. By the end of 1903, Thomas reported with considerable satisfaction on Heck’s demise. Undaunted, Heck surfaced the next year in Indiana, marketing Heck’s Cola as a suitable substitute for the real thing. Thomas wrote to the Evansville, Indiana, bottler to assure him that Heck was ultimately harmless. “Heck’s Cola is not Coca-Cola and all the lying that the man who puts it up can do will not convince anyone that it is.”
Although the case of William Heck was not an isolated incident, the majority of Coca-Cola bottling plants eventually flourished, although it was never an easy proposition, especially in the North. Arthur Pratt, who was to become a legendary Coca-Cola bottler, reversed the Heck pattern. Pratt began as an unsuccessful Coca-Cola imitator in Huntsville, Alabama. Failing to unseat the genuine drink, he and his brother Russ bought out the local Coca-Cola operator in 1901 and built a thriving business, operating four simultaneous bottling machines, each capable of producing fourteen cases an hour.
Reasoning that he could do “big things if we had more people,” Arthur Pratt tried to persuade Ben Thomas to give him the New York City territory. Thomas told him he was reserving that “golden nugget” for whoever proved to be his most successful bottler, but he offered him Newark, New Jersey, instead, where Pratt’s 1902 plant was uncomfortably wedged between a saloon and a Woman’s Christian Temperance Union fanatic. “It was no easy job to start from scratch and introduce a new drink in this hard-boiled territory.”
Despite some hard-earned sales, Pratt found that the Northern winters killed his trade: “Nobody thought very much of selling soft drinks during zero weather.” He swung a deal with a local jam-maker to promote their products along with Coca-Cola, hoping to supplement the winter trade. It drove Pratt crazy that a ten-million-person market lay fallow in nearby New York City. He developed a single outlet there at a downtown Broadway cigar stand, delivering two dozen bottles at a time in an old suitcase. Telling the Thomas board of directors that he was already servicing the New York market (but neglecting to inform them of his single cigar store outlet), Pratt bluffed his way into the entire New York City territory, opening a plant there in 1904. Despite the enormous potential, Pratt didn’t make much headway in the big city until he broke into the Italian neighborhoods, where he was at first mystified by the large turnover at vegetable stores, barbershops, undertaking establishments, and harness makers. He soon discovered that all of these stores were fronts for illegal gambling tables in the rear. The Italians had found that by mixing Coca-Cola with their Chianti wine, they could drink all night—taking longer to get drunk and keeping alert with caffeine.
EARLY STRATEGIES
With enterprising bottlers like Arthur Pratt, as well as a ready-made Southern market, the parent bottlers realized that soon they would be overseeing a huge business. In the spring of 1901, Thomas wrote to Whitehead to congratulate him on his “phenomenal” sales, at the same time reporting that the Thomas territory would soon reach three thousand cases a month. Shortly after that, the Louisville, Kentucky, plant opened with a distribution of ten thousand tickets for free drinks. It soon showed a healthy profit.
Thomas was convinced that offering free coupons was the fastest way to build trade, but to hold it he needed massive advertising, including streetcar placards, calendars, change plates, trays, posters, and steel, muslin, and oilcloth signs. Pleading with Frank Robinson for more point-of-sale advertising for Louisville, Thomas wrote that “this is the first real large city that we have operated in.” The hundred signs he had were inadequate, because “we expect to have 400 or 500 places started up there within a very short time.” After all, he already had two hundred stands in Chattanooga, which was less than a sixth as large as Louisville.
Thomas was equally enterprising during the slower winter months, when he urged his bottlers to infiltrate elementary schools and hand out free blotters as the children were dismissed. Thomas also advertised extensively in newspaper
s, after bottlers informed him which local paper had the highest circulation. Finally, the parent bottler solicited testimonials from major outlets, explaining that “an expression favorable to Coca-Cola’s selling qualities will be of great assistance in a new field.” Although they did not agree on everything, Whitehead and Thomas kept in touch, sharing strategies. Both men sought out railway employees, hiring them on commission as part-time Coca-Cola salesmen. Cases of bottled Coca-Cola were thus sold on trains and at depots before the advent of the delivery truck.
AMENDING THE CONTRACT
In 1901, Thomas sold his plants in order to concentrate on administering his growing bottling empire. Whitehead followed suit two years later by selling a third of his Atlanta plant to Arthur Montgomery, a railroad express agent impressed with the amount of Coca-Cola he was shipping. Montgomery took over the plant management. By that fall, the original 1899 contract was already causing problems for the bottlers as well as The Coca-Cola Company. Candler regretted his promise to provide free advertising, because Frank Robinson was deluged with requests for streetcar signs, expensive German lithography, blotters, novelties, and all the other available items. At the same time, the parent bottlers were frustrated by delayed shipments from the Company. In a testy letter to Atlanta in June of 1901, Henry Ewing complained that “we have to do business with you, certainly for this summer,” adding that “I do not need to explain how a business like ours with established customers will suffer if we cannot supply them. . . . We are in a fair way to do a very large business and make you valuable customers.”
For God, Country, and Coca-Cola Page 12
