Ben Gilbert

I didn't know Dr. Pepper was that old.

Except in the 1880s, it's really legal and really broadly encouraged.

Certainly there's no FDA or anything to make it illegal, but society's posture toward cocaine wasn't bad.

Right.

They did not really discover the addictive nature of it or demonize the addictive nature of it yet.

Feels like a thing I would be swearing by and endorsing too.

I imagine once you start, it's the best thing ever.

Which we should say is the first introduction of the word cola.

Period.

In the American lexicon, cola drinks were not a thing.

Which makes sense.

People are drinking it for its drug-like medicinal qualities, not that it's in any way refreshing.

Party's over.

Yes.

And so the question is, how does he arrive at this formula?

The book I was reading, which is called Secret Formula, it's a great book on the history of Coca-Cola that had access to all the corporate archives, really describes Pemberton in this phase as,

As finding his capitalist streak as sort of realizing okay take a step back patent medicines are sold for 75 cents a dollar it serves a crowd of people when they're looking to recover from some ailment or really at this point probably serve an addiction.

Is there a product that I can make that people can afford anytime they want that's not a medicine, that's just a refreshment, and has all these other great properties using some of the ingredients that we've been using?

So he kind of comes up with this idea of a five-cent, again, because the ingredients cost so little, these extracts, it's a super high-margin product, a five-cent thing that anybody can have just to have a little pick-me-up, a little treat when they're at the soda fountain.

When they're sitting down in the social gathering space, because drugstores at that time were sort of the Starbucks of this time.