Thirty-six years ago this week, a group of businesspeople sat in the executive offices of a skyscraper in downtown Atlanta for a brainstorming session.
“I’ve got a great idea!” one person blurted out.
“Let’s hear it,” the others said.
“Let’s take the best-selling soft drink in the world, perhaps the world’s most recognizable brand,” the person said, “and let’s completely change the way it tastes.”
Heads around the table nodded in agreement.
“It’s ingenious,” one person said.
“We’ll make millions,” another said.
And thus was born New Coke. It was not ingenious, and I doubt it made millions for anyone. Truth be told, it was one of the biggest marketing blunders in American business history, and I’m not sure my grandmother ever forgave the Coca-Cola Co. for New Coke.
Coca-Colas — or, more appropriately, Co-Colas, which is the way the name comes out of the mouths of most Southerners — played an important role in many rituals in my grandmother’s life.
I remember vividly how angry she was some 24 years ago when the Co-Cola Co. decided their tried-and-true soft drink formula needed to be changed. My grandmother thought Coca-Cola was perfect just like it was.
Our whole family did, really. Coca-Cola is sort of the official soft drink of our family. I don’t have any way to prove this, but I suspect my family has drunk more Coca-Colas than any family in America not named Candler or Woodruff.
My grandmother started nearly every day of her life with one of those six-and-a-half-ounce jewels. As soon as her feet hit the floor in the morning, she headed straight for the refrigerator.
I don’t really know for how long my grandmother started each morning with a Co-Cola, but I suspect it was for as long as she smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes because I rarely saw her doing one without the other.
Going to my grandmother’s house in Cordele was a special thing. There was just one rule at my grandmother’s house: Don’t drink the last Coca-Cola. That’s because she wanted to be sure there was at least one Coke in the refrigerator when she woke up in the morning.
I don’t know what would have happened if someone drank the last Coke because, to my knowledge, no one was ever brave enough to try it. I suppose, though, that it’s possible I have a long-lost cousin who "disappeared" after failing to heed the Last Coke Warning.
There were other Cokes during the day, too. At 10:30 every morning, she and a group of friends met at a local drug store for a Coke and a pack of cheese crackers. By the evening, there was usually a little adult beverage mixed with the Coke.
She never drank Coca-Cola out of anything other than those six-and-a-half-ounce bottles. She preferred the older bottles with the raised glass lettering, not the newer bottles with the painted white lettering. She said the Coke tasted better.
My grandmother luckily didn’t have to drink much New Coke. I remember visiting her from college shortly after the news broke that Coke was changing its formula. She and I went to the store and bought as many cartons of Cokes as we could fit in her Buick so she could hold out for as long as possible.
Fortunately, the Co-Cola she loved was soon brought back.
And if heaven has a drug store, she’s probably sitting with her friends enjoying one right now.
