Linked by Matt on July 19 2010:
Sweetened with organic cane sugar? No. No fake stuff? No.
Neat story of a company taking a stand and sticking to it. Chronicles the back and forth between Honest Tea and Coca-Cola, its biggest investor. Coke executives asked Honest Tea to remove the words “no high fructose corn syrup” from its juice pouches because the execs considered them an implicit attack on Coke products that do contain the syrup. Honest Tea refused to cave and the product continues to proclaim, “no high fructose corn syrup.”
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7 comments so far
scotts 19 Jul 10
The obvious question, if Honest Tea is so principled, is why they allowed the biggest corporate consumer of high fructose corn syrup to invest in them?
Anonymous Coward 19 Jul 10
Pecunia non olet and if they say/write that you’re free to drive your business as before (at least until you don’t disturb them too much :-)), well, why not?
ML 19 Jul 10
@scotts: A followup Q&A with the company founder touches on this. “We entered the deal with the goal of expanding the availability and the impact of our brand, and we’re making that happen in a way that we could never do on our own. We want to be the first mainstream organic beverage. No one can help us do this better than Coke.”
David Andersen 19 Jul 10
@scotts – I’d say their principles show in the agreement, which stipulates Coke doesn’t have control over the product as a condition of investment. The people at HT are far more savvy than those at Coke.
The more interesting question is why Coke would invest in HT and then try to change the brand and what clearly makes it successful. People drink the two for different reasons. I don’t think Coke is less drinkable because some health-juice doesn’t have Coke’s ingredients.
I can imagine Coke buying all the milk distributors, adding high fructose corn syrup, then putting a label on milk stating 'Same healthy ingredients as Coke!'sebastian 19 Jul 10
Observe how interesting is to be without too much stakeholders over your head. Is exactly that what makes you truly free.
If you sold a part of your company plus control, details aside, you can’t deny you are that % less free and that you have that % more bosses than before (signing).
mj1531 19 Jul 10
If Coke can buy Honest Tea completely next year, why wouldn’t they cave in for now? Just wait until next year, buy Honest Tea completely, and then you can change the label (and maybe the ingredients) to whatever they want.
Chad Garrett 20 Jul 10
In other news, a Mexican grocery store opened up in my town. I can get a 22.5 oz. glass bottle of imported Coke with real sugar for only $1. Wish I could go into any store and buy that. How long until we move back to sugar? I hope the day is coming. I don’t like the taste of corn syrup that much.
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