With the company's sales director, H. Mott, now at the helm, sales figures started to improve for the company. A "shrewd businessman," Mott nixed production of the worst soda sellers and in brought Chero-Cola back as a plain not cherry-flavored cola called Royal Crown, in honor of the line's origins. Over the next decade, sales would jump tenfold, and the Nehi Corporation was back in the game.
According to Dr Pepper Snapple Group, the new Royal Crown cola was perfected over six months by a chemist, but the work paid off as the soda became an "instant sensation.
Overall, the '40s were a very successful decade for Royal Crown. In , the company innovated to hold "publicly performed blind taste tests" versus competitors — and won. Meanwhile, a judge ruled in 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 within the soda scene. According to New Georgia Encyclopedia , the company manufactured the first nationally-available canned sodas in , then created bigger ounce bottles in Royal Crown was also the first company to unleash diet soda on the masses, called Diet Rite, later following with a caffeine-free version called RC , and a cherry-flavored variety, Diet Cherry RC. The diet sodas were created for diabetics, but they proved to be a hit with weight-watchers, too via Our Everyday Life.
Though Dr Pepper Snapple Group hails Diet Rite as "the first diet soft drink," released in , there had been other diet sodas before — but none on a national scale, as Diet Rite achieved by via Culinary Lore. In , Nehi changed its name to match its bestselling product, becoming the Royal Crown Cola Company. But while Royal Crown had made significant progress, it would continue to trail Coke and Pepsi so long as it continued to sell a similar product.
What it needed was something new. What it needed was a game changer. In , the founder of a sanitarium in Williamsburg, Brooklyn named Hyman Kirsch invented a sugar-free soda called No-Cal. Available in ginger ale and black cherry, No-Cal was made specifically for patients in Kirsch's sanitarium who were either diabetic or suffering from heart ailments. Kirsch quickly discovered that his drink had a much wider appeal, and along with his son began making other flavors, like chocolate, root beer, and cherry.
The two sold No-Cal to local stores and quickly built up a distribution network that extended throughout New York and the northeast. He also continued marketing No-Cal mainly toward diabetic customers, further limiting his reach. In the mid '50s, it began secretly developing its own diet soft drink—one that would appeal not just to diabetics, but to an entire nation of increasingly calorie-conscious consumers.
While other food and beverage companies continued to push everything sweet, salty, and delicious, RC recognized a budding demand for healthier choices. After a few years RC came out with Diet Rite, a drink that the company believed would be the breakthrough it so desperately needed.
Test markets had emphatically confirmed its appeal. One, in South Carolina, saw supermarket managers clamoring for the product. What could cause such a reaction?
The key ingredient—the one Kirsch had first used in No-Cal—was an alternative sweetener called cyclamate that was 30 times sweeter than sugar. First developed by a student at the University of Illinois in , it was initially sold as a tabletop sweetener. In , the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval, paving the way for its use as a mass-market ingredient.
In a particularly shrewd bit of marketing, the company made sure to sell Diet Rite just like real cola: In the same slender bottles for a nickel each, or as a six pack. Consumers wanted something different, RC executives figured, but not too different. When Diet Rite hit shelves in , it was a smashing success.
Within a year and a half of its release, it had rocketed up to number four on the sales chart, behind Coke, Pepsi, and regular RC Cola. America, it turned out, was ready for what had for years seemed oxymoronic: a healthy soda. The rest of the industry was in something close to a state of shock. Coke and Pepsi were caught completely off guard. Within a year, Coke would scramble to release TaB, which it also sweetened with cyclamate. Pepsi responded with Patio Cola, a diet soda aimed at women that also contained cyclamate, and which it would soon rebrand as Diet Pepsi.
There were, predictably, numerous other fast followers to the market, including long-forgotten brands like LoLo, Coolo-Coolo, and Bubble-Up. In , Coke came out with a citrus-flavored diet soda called Fresca. None of them, however, could catch Diet Rite, which continued to build market share for Royal Crown Cola. By the late '60s, Royal Crown owned 10 percent of the soda market. That was far from dominating, but it was still a very respectable figure, and the company was poised for further growth.
By all accounts, the company that started in the basement of a small town grocery store was positioned to become a major player in the soda industry. The rise of diet soda may have delighted soft drink manufacturers and American consumers, but it downright frightened the sugar industry.
After decades of pumping its signature product into sodas, here was a comparable beverage that did away with sugar entirely. What if diet sodas continued to grow?
What if all sodas became diet sodas? Ever resourceful, the industry searched for legal channels to undermine diet drinks. In the mid-'60s, it began : the slow trickle of studies suggesting that cyclamate was hazardous. In , a study linked cyclamate to cancer in animals, and raised the possibility that it could have adverse effects on humans.
But the authors stopped short of linking the sweetener to specific conditions like cancer or birth defects. Royal Crown president W. As the decade wore on, however, studies made more specific claims.
In Australia, it is marketed by Australian Pure Fruits. Today, RC Cola is the third top-selling cola brand in the Philippines, and is the second largest cola brand in Israel, after Coca-Cola, but ahead of Pepsi.
The Soda Wiki Explore. The Flavors. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Royal Crown Cola. Edit source History Talk 0. Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki.
0コメント