Local burger place claims they serve Coca-Cola but they don't, do I have a legal case against them?

Cafe Society
121

If it says that on the menu board that customers order from, then and it’s not the genuine Coca-Cola product, then it’s wrong. But I doubt that it’s so wrong that the state Attorney General is going to take them to court for fraud.

Step 1 - You tell the manager it doesn’t taste right, and ask (preferably with a bewildered expression) if it’s really Coca Cola. As others have noted, fountain drinks often taste different.
Step 2 - If you aren’t satisfied with the answer, call the Coca Cola customer service number, tell them the burger joint’s fountain Coke doesn’t taste like Coca Cola and the manager doesn’t seem to care.
Step 3 - Coca Cola will verify whether the restaurant is a customer.
Step 4 - Either a Coca Cola service person will come to check the fountain and verify that it’s poorly mixed, or the Cola police will come and reclaim their signage..

122

We’ve already established that it’s “cola cops”.

123

Yeah, exactly. Not to mention, the “little guy” here isn’t just fucking over Coca Cola; he’s also fucking with his customers, in some small way (charging them for a premium product and delivering generic) and his competition of fellow little guys (by cheating for an unfair advantage).

124

Is the generic name for all soda servicemen “Fizz Fuzz”, or “Pop Patrol”?

125

They ain’t got squat on the Pommac Police.

Burn them!

While I whole-heartedly agree with that reasoned response approach, this isn’t a townhall meeting, it’s just a few folks on a message board engaged in a little group tête-à-tête, with maybe a bit of good natured RO tossed in. It’s what we do here.

This misses the point entirely. You go there for the burgers, but you don’t want to pay namebrand prices for offbrand cola while you are there.

126

I don’t know if the price of a fountain soda is going to change much based on the brand. As I understand it, a cup filled with Coca-Cola or Pepsi is insanely cheap for the restaurant and the amount of profit made is so high they can afford to just give you free refills. The part of this that bothers me is a business lying about what they’re selling.

127

As I see it, a big part of what people are (rightly) objecting to is that it looks like these are your only two reasons, and you’re setting up a false dichotomy.

You can also tell “an adult” something in order to address a situation in which someone is, or is in danger of being, defrauded or stolen from or taken advantage of, and you want to prevent this.

And wanting someone to be punished isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At the risk of bringing politics into a non-political discussion, I can think of some national figures that I’d like to see punished for things they’ve done…

128

But…to get the syrup delivered by Coca-Cola you have to have a contract with them.
That bill would not be negligible, monthly.
If the restaurant owner is having financial problems they start by cutting the things that don’t impact the actual food prep.
That will be next.

Then closure.

129

If their back is to the wall, they’re going down anyhow. At most the OP blowing the whistle hastens the inevitable by a week or three.

If, as is far more likely, the owner is just a crooked ripoff artist raising his already adequate profits by illicit means, that deserves to be squashed. With prejudice.

130

A lot of little mom-and-pop restaurants, like the one the OP describes, were hit very hard by what COVID did to dining out, and many of those restaurants didn’t survive it. Now, with costs like food ingredients, rent, energy, and wages going up substantially in the years since, a lot of those that remain have had to figure out how to make ends meet, without raising their prices so high that they chase away customers.

According to the OP, they already had made a switch from Coke to RC products (which are made by Keurig Dr Pepper, which also owns 7-Up, Sunkist orange soda, Diet Rite, etc.) even before the pandemic, almost undoubtedly due to lower costs. (There are two mom-and-pop hot dog / Italian beef / pizza places near me that have the RC / 7-Up products, likely for that very reason.)

If the restaurant in the OP actually did switch from RC to an even lower-cost “generic” cola recently, that may be why.

131

This is kind of a hijack, but one random detail I noticed in the montage at the beginning of The Bear episode “Review” is that the guy scrubbing the windows of the Italian beef shop at 1:31 is scrubbing an RC Cola sign. That kind of made me wonder if RC was a Chicago thing. But it sounds like it’s not, just a mom & pop cost savings thing.

132

AFAIK / IIRC / IME the RC Cola brand is highly regional. Not so much back in the 1950s when it was a nearly national brand. But they’ve been perpetually shrinking to a defensible perimeter they can’t quite defend.

133

Those Bag-In-Box syrups can be shipped anywhere and there are places who ship it for free. Regional distribution isn’t really a thing anymore, nor are the reusable kegs.

134

Disclosure: I had what was then known as Dr Pepper / 7Up (now known as Keurig Dr Pepper) as a client for several years, back in the early 2000s.

Coca-Cola and Pepsico both have nationwide networks of bottlers / distributors; in any given market / city, there’s a (usually independent) bottler of Coke products, and a similar bottler for Pepsi products. Those bottlers are responsible for manufacturing and distributing Coke’s or Pepsi’s canned and bottled products in retail locations (grocery stores, convenience stores, etc)., as well as providing the syrups and equipment for fountain service in restaurants, cafeterias, etc.

Keurig Dr Pepper doesn’t have a national network like Coke and Pepsi do. In some markets, there is, in fact, a third bottler/distributor, which handles their sodas (Dr Pepper, 7Up, RC, Diet Rite, Sunkist orange soda, Canada Dry, etc.). However, in most markets, Keurig Dr Pepper has a contract with either a Coke bottler, or a Pepsi bottler, to distribute their products, both at retail, and at fountains.

The big reason why either a Coke or a Pepsi bottler enters into that arrangement is for Dr Pepper: Mr. Pibb aside, Dr Pepper has a large following, and is sort of its own thing, flavor-wise – and that’s why you’ll see Dr Pepper on a fountain machine which otherwise is Coke products, or Pepsi products.

But, such a Coke bottler is going to (and may be obligated to) preferentially feature Coke’s products, beyond Dr Pepper, on fountains. So, they’ll offer Sprite rather than 7Up, Fanta rather than Sunkist…and, obviously, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero rather than RC Cola or Diet Rite.

In those areas where RC (and that company’s other brands) still has a stronger following – and where you can find those flavors on restaurant menus and fountains – it’s undoubtedly because there is a third bottler in that market, which focuses on the Keurig Dr Pepper brands.

135

That’s probably accurate.

I’d like to learn if the Coca-Cola Company offers a “bounty” of any kind to people who go to the trouble of dropping a dime on these criminal scum.

136

or even [shudder] the ginger ale gendarmerie

137

You didn’t ask me specifically, but I prefer the kind of community where people see me as a neighbor, rather than as a customer. I’m happy to confine my customer-ing to a district set up for commerce.

So I understand. I’m still a little salty about the confusion that caused me 59 years ago when 4th-grade me started learning about coal mining and the by-products of the steel industry.

138

I find that “definition” to be deficient. It might be better stated: to characterize a violation of a promulgated rule as wrongdoing, and then to report it to an authority figure.

Of course, you might have been consulting a paperback dictionary, in which space is at a premium.

Pretty much my approach. I tend to ask for iced tea, anyway.

I’d expect a millionaire with a mansion and a yacht to have that kind of free time.

Don’t worry. You’re probably not.

139

sounds like a call to action to me. I’m glad you didn’t post Coca-Cola’s phone number

140

Indeed, down South—think Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida—“Coke” is shorthand for any kind of soft drink.

“You want a Coke?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“Dr. Pepper.”

I hear this type of banter all the time in the South.

“Coke” is a registered trademark of Coca-Cola, and yes, the company would definitely prefer if that name stayed exclusive. But the way people talk (including owners of non-chain restaurants in certain locations)? That doesn’t always line up with what the legal team had in mind.

Unless you work for Coca Cola, I wouldn’t sue or make a fuss, unless you had a bad reaction to an ingredient in the non-Coca Cola “Coke”—(‘I don’t like the taste’ doesn’t rise to my level of “damages” enough to take drastic action). Especially if it’s in the South, and most especially if it’s a mom and pop shop. If you just don’t like it, I’d just ask for something else (real Coca Cola if they have it), or a refund.