Ben Gilbert

Don Keogh was Warren Buffett's old neighbor?

Crazy.

And so this is how the Berkshire Coca-Cola relationship starts.

And Warren reportedly drinks five Cherry Cokes a day.

While Roberto is sitting right there.

My opinion has always been that Coca-Cola is the type of business that can be run.

But maybe let's save this for the quintessence.

Like, we should finish the episode deciding if that is true about the Coca-Cola company or not.

You're a Diet Coke man, not a Coke Zero man.

I like Diet Coke.

And not just for men, but also the one that's closer to the original Coca-Cola formula.

Diet Coke is sort of meant to be its own thing.

So Diet Coke is fascinating because they did start work on it earlier in the 70s.

It didn't come out until 1982.

But they're kind of in the lab tinkering with the flavor because the Pepsi challenge has basically thrown down the gauntlet that Americans prefer the taste of Pepsi.

And they're starting to play with this idea of like –

okay, obviously we're not going to replace Coke, but like, is there a way that we can make something that does compete with Pepsi, that tastes a little bit more like Pepsi, that tastes...

lighter or sweeter or they're in the lab they're working on it and eventually they do land on this formula that they think is great and it's artificially sweetened as you're talking about it is a huge risk in two ways to release diet coke one is because of everything we talked about earlier you gotta be really careful with the coca-cola brand it's the sacred cow

But two, Tab is currently, in 1982, the best-selling diet drink in the world.

So why would you release another diet drink that risks dethroning the one that you have that is the clear winner?