Exactly 100 years ago, Emporia hit the pop charts.
Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of the first contract establishing Emporia as a Coca-Cola sales territory. The contract gave L.A. Newton & Son the right to sell Coke in an area stretching from Emporia to the city limits of Quenemo, Osage City, Council Grove, Burdick, Florence, Eureka, Quincy, Gridley, Burlington and Toronto.
Jeff DeBauge, the current head of Emporia’s Coca-Cola company, said a commemorative bottle might be created later this year. He also expected to hold a birthday celebration and open house sometime this summer.
“As you saw, today’s not the best day for that,” DeBauge said Tuesday, indicating the frozen parking lot just outside the building.
That first contract was part of a nationwide rush toward bottled Coca-Cola — a development that astounded the company bigwigs. After all, who would want bottled Coke when the fresh stuff could be bought at any drugstore in the country?
In 1899, Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead of Chattanooga, Tenn. bought the rights to bottle and distribute Coke nationally. It cost them all of one dollar.
“They were told ‘You’re crazy,’” DeBauge said.
Crazy like a fox, maybe. According to a company history, between 1899 and 1909 a total of 379 bottling plants were opened across the United States. The now-distinctive curved Coke bottle would not be created until 1915, as a way to make it stand out from a growing field of competitors.
The original Emporia contract called for the company to sell at least 750 gallons of Coca-Cola the first year and at least 1,000 gallons for every year after that. These days, the Emporia site is purely a warehousing facility, but in its last days as a bottling plant, around 1990, it would produce up to 3,000 bottles a day, three days a week, according to DeBauge.
Today, about 15 million eight-ounce drinks a year are sold from the Emporia site, including not just Coca-Cola but also a line of juices, waters and health drinks. All together, about 400 different product lines are sold by the Emporia company.
More of the company’s history will be related in The Gazette’s Profile edition, which will begin publication Feb. 12 and will take a look back at Emporia’s 150-year history.