Indianapolis, and RC Cola.
I live in England too and I’ve never even seen Barr’s for sale. Is it regional?
In London, apart from the various store brands it just seems to be the 47 different varieties of Coke and Pepsi. I mean, personally I find the mere idea of “Exotic Mango Diet Coke” revolting but apparently someone’s buying it.
I was gonna say that- I used to get Barrs when I lived in Lancashire, but I’ve not seen it since I moved away over a decade ago.
Fentimans would be the closest I can think of to a widely available cola that isn’t the big 2, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
I think the third cola in a lot of the Northeastern US has been superseded by store brands. RC and others exist, but in a dwindling capacity,
In the 70s RC was 3rd in NJ.
In the 80s & 90s it was probably Jolt Cola
Since then, probably a store brand is the third choice if taken together.
Or higher-end brands. Boylan’s Cane Cola. Or Mexican Coke – lots of people search it out in NYC. Whole Foods carries it. Cane sugar vs. corn syrup.
When I was stationed in Hawai`i I made my drinks with Jolt and Bacardi 151.
Here in Perú, the third cola is Pepsi.
The first one is our “national” cola, Inca Kola. Number two is Coke.
I remember that brand! You could get it in New York City. Not everywhere, but in the neighborhood where I grew up. Probably still can.
They definitely have it here in Chicago. I’ve had it a few times. It’s not really what we think of as a “cola” though. It’s a yellow-green color, and the flavor is on the fruity side – something like bubblegum, although lemon verbana seems to be the major flavoring component. I’m not sure it has any connection to US cola-type drinks (which originally derived from the kola nut, but no longer do.)
We call that type of soda, at least here in Peru, “yellow cola.”( By the way, Inca Kola goes great with Chinese food)
Going for a more “black cola” thingy, it’d be Big Cola.
Still, I think Peru is one of the very, very few countries (maybe the only one) in which the #1 soda is not Coke nor Pepsi.
According to Wikipedia, in 2012, Thums Up was the market leader in India (although it’s a Coca-Cola subsidiary).
And Cuba. Because sanctions.
I remember Coca-Cola being all over the place in Cuba when I was there (mid-nineties). I’m sure they got it from a bottler outside of the US.
Interesting. I was there in 2014 and there was no Coke to be found. But there was tuKola.
https://cubanews.de/en/tukola-the-cuban-cola-with-or-without-rum/
I was there in 2015 and the aforementioned Tukola was everywhere, but no Coke or Pepsi to be found.
If there was Coke there in the 1990s maybe it was Mexican Coke? No restrictions on trade between Mexico and Cuba, so maybe it was allowed for Mexican bottlers to export to Cuba.
Although Cubans do seem to have ways of getting things from the US. At one restaurant we noticed all the condiments on the table were Kirkland (Costco brand). The owner said his relitives in Miami have a Costco membership, and they bring him supplies once a month. Although that was a much smaller scale than importing Coke.
Lots of options vying for#3 when I was younger (there was Sun•Drop Cola, but that didn’t count, since it wasn’t brown, though it had more caffeine); nowadays it’s just the top two.
BUT, there are more gourmet/small batch soda pops than ever before. For people like me, who only drink one or two a week, it’s fun to try different colas. Especially as mixers.
…
By the way, any Milwaukee natives remember JoJo Cola? My parents never bought ANY brand name anything for us kids. So “No Coke, No Pepsi”, but every couple of months Dad would take us down to a tiny, really sketchy bottling “plant” where a huge guy named “Joe-Joe” would tell us bad jokes as we filled a returnable wooden flat with colas and their other “fruit flavors”… (well, not really flavors, but different colors).
*I really didn’t think it’d still be standing, but I think I found it! An old unmarked brick building at 6830 State St.
(Looks abandoned now, but there could be conveyor belts and dusty bottles in there… and maybe a mummified Joe-Joe).
I don’t live in Seattle, but if I had to guess I would suspect it’s Jones Cola there. I remember back in the late 2000s they tried to expand and position themselves as a high-end, real cane sugar alternative to Coke and Pepsi, selling 12-packs at retailers like Target. Alaska Airlines even served it on their flights for a while instead of Coke.
I wanted to say that “in places where both are available”, but yes. Cuba.
Your mileage may vary, but I’ve lived in the Midlands, the North West and the South West, and in my experience Barr cola is what you most often find in convenience stores that don’t have their own branded cola, if you don’t want to pay premium prices for Coke. (I personally find Pepsi to be inferior to most supermarket brands whilst retaining the premium price.)