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Regional soft drinks grab loyal fans
By Jim Auchmutey

China Grove, N.C. - If you think a certain soft drink company has painted Atlanta red this summer, you haven't seen Gary's Bar-B-Q. In its small way, the drive-in restaurant north of Charlotte has fashioned an extravaganza as impressive as the amusement park Coca-Cola erected for the Olympics.

Every wall inside Gary's is covered with soft drink advertising, the kind of tin signs and thermometers that used to hang around country stores like jowly dogs and old men in overalls. The whole fizzy family is here: Dr Pepper, NuGrape, Nehi, Barq's, Pepsi, Royal Crown, Grapette, Cheerwine. More than a barbecue joint, Gary's is an all-faiths chapel to thirst.

What these brands have in common a besides being sugar water a is their raising. They're all from the South.

What beer is to Germany and wine is to France, the soft drink is to the southern United States. Three of the world's best-selling drinks a Coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper a were formulated in the former Confederacy more than a century ago by pharmacists (indeed, two of them were named for pharmacists, considering that Pepsi was originally called Brad's Drink, after the druggist who created it as a digestive aid).

When Southerners aren't inventing or selling soft drinks, they're drinking them. According to Beverage Marketing, a New York research firm, Southerners consume 62 gallons of soft drinks per capita a year, one- fifth more than the U.S. average. The epicenter of all this pop may be Rome, Ga., which Coca-Cola credits with buying more of its product per person than any other market in the world. Rome outguzzles (and presumably outbelches) Atlanta by more than 2-to-1.

Clearly, as the New Orleans-reared writer Nancy Lemann put it, "Southerners need carbonation."

The question is why?

Sociological explanations could be poured out: the Bible Belt's preference for nonalcoholic beverages, a historically poor populace's need for cheap indulgences a that sort of thing. But such factors pale before the one that's as plain as the sweat on your nose.

"Not to state the obvious, but it's hot down here," says Frederick Allen, author of "Secret Formula," a history of Coca-Cola.

Soft drinks weren't actually originated in the Southern swelter. Philadelphia probably produced the first commercial label, Hire's Root Beer, which appeared at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. What's notable is the way Southern sodas came to dominate the market a and the way a handful of local brands have lingered like old country music stars with small but loyal followings. Each state seems to have one.

In Kentucky, it's Ale-8-One, a ginger-citrus drink that outsells colas 10-to-1 in a Foodmart near the Winchester bottling plant.

In Texas, it's Big Red, a bubblegum-tasting elixir that has inspired songs and comes, like Lone Star beer, in long-neck bottles.

In South Carolina, it's Blenheim, a spicy ginger ale that's bottled at the famously tacky South of the Border tourist attraction. Management pursues a hit-'em-high, hit-'em-low marketing strategy, running mail- order ads in The New Yorker magazine even as Pedro, their cartoon Mexican mascot, appears on billboards with a bellyache of a pun: "Blenheim eeees good for what ales you."

And in North Carolina, as any Tar Heel knows, the local drink is Cheerwine, a wild cherry soda that for some people evokes the state as much as stock-car racing, tobacco fields and textile mills. The brand's new slogan, seen along highways from Raleigh to Gastonia: "It's a Carolina Thing."

Cheerwine traces its roots, as many labels do, to a Coca-Cola imitator before World War I. L.D. Peeler, a grocer in Salisbury, N.C., held the local franchise for a Kentucky drink called Mint Cola. With wartime sugar shortages, he began trying other naturally sweet flavors like cherry. In 1917, working in the basement of his store, he came up with Cheerwine a cheer for cherry, wine for its effervescence.

None of this wine imagery confused Carolinians. But when the company started expanding its market in the 1980s, some people who didn't know Cheerwine mistook it for a wine cooler. The Wall Street Journal quoted a drunken-driving activist as condemning the drink.

It's probably a good thing the company didn't use its first name for the Cool Moon citrus drink it introduced in 1975. "We wanted to call it Moonshine," says president Mark Ritchie, the great-grandson of the founder.

Since Ritchie and his brother, Cliff, took over the family-owned company in 1980, Cheerwine has more than doubled its business and annexed markets in several states. Ritchie eventually wants to sell across the Southeast. But you won't find it in Atlanta yet. Nor will you find many of the other smaller regional soft drinks.

Even Double Cola, a widely distributed brand just up I-75 from Atlanta in Chattanooga, didn't show the flag during the Olympics. Asked why, marketing executive Gil Thomas reveals the strategic thinking behind his company's decision to stay out of the South's largest market:

"What, and get sued by Coke?"

Service at Gary's Bar-B-Q in China Grove, N.C., comes with a smile as Sandra Tomlin takes orders from Wilie Beaver (in baseball cap) and Glenn Tyson Jr. Dave Davenport forgoes cola for coffee.(Photo by Donna Bise)

A history of soft drinks.

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