OK, call me a dreamer, but why hasn’t anyone reverse-engineered Coca-Cola to reveal the secret recipe? I don’t have the means, but it seems like a chemist simply could use a combination of gas chromatgraphy, mass spectrometry, fractional distillation, etc…to reveal the formula with minimal trial and error.
With no patent on the formula, wouldn’t this be an incentive to some chemists out there??? Sounds easy enough…I mean, we’re not talking polymerization or catalyst cracking or anything really fancy here, Chem-folks!
I work at BBDO (in the IT department, I don’t do the ads, don’t blame me for what you don’t like to see on the teevee). One of the Pepsi account guys wrote a book several years back called The Other Guy Blinked or something like that, and in it he described their thinking back when Coke was doing New Coke. One of the things they played with was reverse-engineering the original Coke and producing it themselves and marketing it as something like Atlanta Cola. I’m pretty sure he describes them as having done the reverse-engineering portion of it although they (Pepsi) never decided to try to out-Coke Coke, which as everyone knows reversed course not too long after and came back with Classic Coke.
Of course if you want a decent cola, you should drink Jolt.
Ok, both Mr. Poundstone and his book must have been a BIG secret! For give me, but who is he? Did he found Pepsico? Or, maybe 6up, and missed by one? But seriously, please explain!
Nope, just a guy writing a book. The secret recipe for Coke isn’t that difficult to reverse-engineer. All the ingredients are known and it’s just minute adjustments in percentages.
If you think that all that goes into Coke are physical ingredients you are mistaken. The ads cost more than the soda. Look for the “Big Secrets” book and you’ll find the recipe. It’s just not that important for making “Coca-Cola”, which is image as much as it is soft drink.
Knowing how to make CocaCola or Pepsi or whatever other soft drink won’t get you anywhere. You won’t be able to sell the product as CocaCola. No one’s going to buy Joe Blogg’s Cola brand. I would rather just get the real thing.
I bet you can have a taste test between Joe Blogg’s and the real CocaCola and people will say CocaCola tastes better just because it has the big name behind it.
Note that Coca-Cola has a slightly different recipe in virtually every country in which is bottled, there being a wide range of different sweeteners used, yielding a beverage which tastes noticeably different from one country to the next. As Telemark and Gopher point out, it’s marketing that makes Coke the commercial juggernaut it is, not some specific flavor.
I don’t think the idea is to market the cussed stuff… The appeal is being able to have cola in the refridgerator without subsidizing all the marketing.
Sure, Mudd Cola™ is a non-starter as a business proposition, (for a variety of reasons ), but I read the recipe when it was still available online, and it seems like it would be a satisfying undertaking just to be able to show off. Not as hard as making your own beer, and much, much faster.
I think water quality (hard/soft water, ndifferent mineral content etc) explains a lot of the difference in taste between Coca-Colas. A lot of them are probably made from the same syrup sent from a factory in another country.
Although I way prefer the hard, harsher hit of Coca Cola, I’ve read that in the “Pepsi Taste Test” and other blind surveys, the majority of consumers do prefer the blander, sugarier taste of Pepsi Cola.
So I’m not surprised Pepsi don’t bother to imitate Coke any more closely.
I am surprised that the vast majority of supermarket cola brands (and Richard Branson’s “Virgin Cola”) taste so fucking awful though.
I don’t think that analysing the thing chemically would actually be reverse engineering in the purest sense; reverse engineering consists of mimicking the outputs of a system without necessarily copying or understanding the internal mechanisms, so reverse engineering a cola could consist of blind taste tests of various experimental blends (which AFAIK is how the non-brand colas do it already).
However, through usage the term has broadened somewhat.
There are always rumors that Pepsi was in fact created by reverse engineering Coke. If that’s true, answers the OP pretty effectively, yes you can do it and become rich.
In the marketing lessons I’ve had, we are told that in blind taste tests 1/3 (more or less) prefer Pepsi, 1/3 (more or less) prefer Coke and 1/3 (more or less) really can’t tell the difference.
I haven’t seen a “Pepsi Challenge” commercial in a long time but I’d bet that whenever you hear “more people prefer the taste of Pepsi” there’s a lot of little disclaimers going by real fast, including “of those who had a preference.”
Interesting; I personally find that Pepsi, while sweeter, has a much harsher and more acidic taste. I was told or read once that that was because Pepsi uses more lemon and less (if any) orange.
I can understand why neroli oil is no longer in Coke–it’s horrendously expensive!
According to page 48 of Big Secrets, "In 1981 [then company C.E.O.] W. W. Clements told a Los Angeles Times reporter that he used to fear theft of the Dr Pepper formula. ‘Then I got to thinking.’ recalled Clements. ‘Why would anyone go to all that trouble just to produce another Dr Pepper? Then I quit worrying’ "
), but I read the recipe when it was still available online, and it seems like it would be a satisfying undertaking just to be able to show off. Not as hard as making your own beer, and much, much faster.