Coca-Cola Marketing and the Pursuit of an Even Better Cola (Part 2 of 2)

Passover Coke has been around for a while now in Canadian markets but despite being somewhat of a Coke connoisseur, even I had not heard of it until this year. If you have read my previous post in praise of the Coke marketing people, one might be lead to believe that this was somewhat of an oversight on their part, though this isn't the case.

Passover Coke is released as a service to the Jewish community. It is also more expensive to produce. To keep costs down and product available to the Jewish community, they don’t advertise. Made with real sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, it is in fact the Coca-Cola of yesteryear. Coke changed the original recipe in 1985 from sugar to corn syrup to save on manufacturing costs. Corn is on the list of grains avoided by those observant of the traditional Jewish Passover. For that reason, it’s only available during the Passover Season, and usually only in specific, predominantly Jewish markets.

I discovered Passover Coke far too late this year to act accordingly. Immediately after reading the Winnipeg Free Press article, I exhausted every avenue. I used my Coca-Cola connections, sale representatives and product merchandisers, to obtain the locations where the product had been sent, where it was sighted and where I could find it available for sale. They no longer sport the distinctive yellow caps of the past, making them more difficult to distinguish. I still am not entirely sure what the bottles looked like this year, but a Coke merchandiser I spoke to informed me that that they did in fact say “Passover,” and that at a quick glance, they look very similar to the regular recipe variety.    

I drove all over the Winnipeg to no avail.

The nostalgia of the old recipe and the limited edition nature of such a product surely inspires hoarding. Next year, I will be more proactive in my pursuit.

The reason I’m excited about this product has a lot to do with a product I purchased in the United States a year or two ago. I bought a few bottles of Coke in glass bottles to bring back for friends and family as a souvenir. This was before such glass bottles were so readily available here in Canada. The bottles available here, at grocers such as Superstore, are not the same.

The Cokes I had purchased in North Dakota tasted better. Sweeter and with smaller bubbles, I believed it had something to do with the bottling process for glass being different than the process for plastic. When the glass bottles became available here, I jumped on the opportunity to try it again, albeit at 3 or 4 times the price. I was seriously disappointed.

I believe the glass bottled Coke I had stumbled on was in fact the original sugar recipe. I don’t know for sure, but one thing I do know is that to find out, I’ll be starting my search early next year.