What is the stuff they sell now, then? I drink Safeway store brand cola all the time, and I am fine with it. Mostly I find it just as good as Coke or Pepsi (though their quality control seems a bit iffy: just occasionally I get a nasty-tasting bottle). I can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, but I don’t care much.
On the other hand, I do not at all like the store brand at my other main local supermarket chain, Ralphs (Kroger). I rather fancy it is like RC Cola, but it is so long since I have touched real RC that I cannot be sure.
[Full disclosure: I almost always drink (and prefer the flavor of) the diet (aspartame) versions of colas rather than the regular (which I find too syrupy), so this may factor into my relative brand preferences. But in any case, I am sure Safeway sell a lot of both their regular and their diet store brand colas (though they have recently rebranded all their sodas for some reason). They are certainly not “off the market.” I bought some yesterday.]
But anyway, I was under the impression that most store brand stuff is made by the same companies in the same factories (but maybe at lower quality standards) that make the name brands? I seem to remember Cecil did a column on this. My guess was that Ralphs got their stuff made for them by RC, and Safeways probably by Coke, since it seems more Cokeish than Pepsiish to me (a bit less sweet than Pepsi).
In answer to your question, note my post #39 above.
Way back when, I understand that it was the intent of Safeway and K-Mart to take on “Coca Cola” and take a chunk of their market share. For this reason, they specifically used the faux “Coca Cola” syrup to make their home brands.
However, when it became apparent that the consumers preferred brand “Coke” to their home brands, and when they did buy the home brands they didn’t care so much for the taste as they did for the price, the retailers conceded defeat.
Subsequently, they then took whatever syrup was on special at the time, and used that to fill their home brand bottles.
This is why one week the home brand will taste like “the real thing”, the next week it may taste like “Pepsi”, and the week after it may taste like soapy water.
While some retailers are fussy about what syrup is used in their home brands, and like to stick to a specific formulation, most are not too concerned and will take whatever the bottler has on hand at the time.
This is also why you can buy two different home brands, and find that they taste exactly the same: they came from the same batch from the same bottler.
For what it’s worth, I can pinpoint pretty well when my memories come from. I remember which Safeway I was shopping at, and I know that I lived in that neighborhood from 1989-91, so it must have been around 1989-90 that I discovered Safeway Cola was “good”, and around 1990-91 that it stopped being consistently good so I topped buying it. That fits your “late 1980’s or early 1990’s” time frame–which doesn’t prove that I wasn’t just crazy, but at least it makes it possible.
Anyway, I don’t remember Safeway doing anything to convince me that it tasted just like Coke. No ads about “new better-tasting Safeway Cola tastes just like Coke”, no free samples in the supermarket, nothing. I was just a poor college student who decided to try the cheap stuff and got lucky. And most of my friends didn’t believe me, which means they presumably hadn’t heard that it was supposed to taste like Coke.
Also, across the country in LA, the Safeway near my mother’s house didn’t even sell Safeway-branded cola; they had some other brand (I forget the name) that was shared between Safeway and Vons. I guess there’s a decent chance it was the same stuff I was getting back east, but I didn’t even think of the possibility (and besides, when I was home visiting, mom was paying for the soda), so I never tried it.
If my experience was at all typical, it’s no wonder they failed.
