In 1888, Asa Candler, an Atlanta pharmacist, made one of the best business decisions in history. Candler bought the rights to the Coca-Cola (Coke) formula for $2,300 (about $73,000 in 2023.) While it is one of the best business decisions in history, Candler later made a key blunder that would cost himself and his heirs billions down the road.
Under Candler, Coca-Cola was only sold as concentrated syrup to soda fountains. Almost equivalent to how it’s sold today to fast-food restaurants. In other parts of the world, carbonated fruit drinks were sold in bottles, but these items had not yet caught on in the United States.
Candler was against the idea of bottling Coke. He thought it was best served at soda fountains, fresh mixed on the spot (some people still feel this way). Candler’s nephew advised him that selling Coke in a bottle could increase the sales of Coke, but Candler was still not moved by the idea.
Joseph A. Biedenharn, a candy store owner, first put Coke in Hutchinson bottles (no semblance to the modern Coke bottle.) Hutchinson saw the sales boost he got from the bottles and sent a case to Candler, but Candler would not budge on his anti-bottling stance.
Finally, in 1899, Candler relented to the pleas to bottle Coke and sold the bottling rights for Coke to Ben Thomas and Joseph Whitehead. Thomas and Whitehead received the rights to bottle Coke everywhere except Texas, Mississippi and New England in exchange for one dollar (they later added Texas and Mississippi to the deal.) Candler thought the idea of bottled Coke becoming a hit was so low that he sold it off for a dollar. Legend has it he may not have even collected that dollar.
The contract also stipulated that a bottle of Coke could cost only 5 cents with no end date for the price. The price of a bottle of Coke remained 5 cents until 1959. The sale of Coke bottles took off. As of the 1960s, Coca-Cola had created more millionaires than any company before that because of its unique independent bottling system.
The Coca-Cola company, eventually bought the Coca-Cola Bottling Company (Thomas’s company,) from Thomas heirs for $35 million in 1974 ($224 million in 2023.) In 1986, Coca-Cola paid the heirs of Whiteheads bottling partnerships $1.4 billion to acquire its bottling operations(8.9 billion in 2023.)
Today, the Coca-Cola corporation is worth over 274 billion dollars. Coke has bought up most of the independent bottling companies since the infamous one dollar bottling contract. Candler would become a millionaire and future mayor of Atlanta, but his inability to listen to alternative viewpoints on how to best sell Coke cost him and his heirs a few billion dollars.
The Coke bottle is a pop culture and business icon across the globe, but if it was left up to Candler, it would have never come to be. Candler came up with one life altering brilliant business decision but gave away another based on his inability to adjust his thinking and the inability to listen to others on the matter on the best way to sell Coca-Cola.
