Over the weekend I dropped into the office to jot down some thoughts on a recent meal and checked out the #boycottdrpepper feed I've been keeping an eye on. This tweet popped up just as I was watching:
DrPepper @Galcos pulls all Dr. Pepper/Snapple products from shelves after @DublinDrPepper shut down.
#boycottdrpepper
I gave the soda shop associated with the @galcos twitter feed a call, and ended up talking to John Nese, owner of Galco's Soda Pop Stop, a temple built for bubbles in Los Angeles.
Nese is as passionate a soda man as there ever was, and he immediately jumped on the opportunity to trash big corporate soda bottlers. "They're just ogres," he told me as he described the mechanisms Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co. use to dominate and control their markets.
Nese is taking his ban seriously, removing all products the Dr. Pepper Snapple group (it's a long list) from his storefront and on-line operations.
Elsewhere on the internets, an online petition has garnered more than 18,000 signers willing to give up Dr Pepper and Snapple products until the bottling giant reverses its decision regarding the Dublin bottling plant. (Although it was a settlement, not a decision, so it's not quite that simple.)
Grassroots actions against corporations are common, but many of them lose steam quickly. A proposed ban on Anheuser Busch InBev did little to change the European takeover of Budweiser beer. Nese thinks this movement has legs, though, if only because soda is an everyman's beverage. "This one was big enough for people to notice," he said.
Check out this video, originally posted on Chowhound, which depicts Nese in his soda shop talking refill versus recycle, corn syrup versus cane sugar, and his childhood obsession with fizz -- the guy seems pretty cool.
