Coke doesn’t want people drinking tap water
By Andy Bellatti, Huffington Post
While public health advocates have sung the praises of tap water for years, Coca-Cola has been focusing on its own covert assault on the affordable, healthful, and refreshing beverage.
Unbeknownst to many in the nutrition and public health world, the soft drink giant launched a “Cap the Tap” program — aimed at restaurants — in 2010, described in the following manner on the Coke Solutions website:
Capture Lost Revenue By Turning Off the Tap
Every time your business fills a cup or glass with tap water, it pours potential profits down the drain. The good news: Cap the Tap — a program available through your Coca-Cola representative — changes these dynamics by teaching crew members or wait staff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages.
Coca-Cola cites a 2006 tap water usage study to point out the obvious — that consumers drink tap water because of habit, health concerns or price sensitivity.
In response to that, Coca-Cola suggests restaurant waitstaff “turn off the tap” and offers to teach servers how to suggest “profitable beverages” to consumers, citing free refills. For those who truly want tap water, Coca-Cola suggests that servers push bottled water (don’t forget that Coke owns the bottled water brand Dasani), diet sodas, iced teas, and smoothies.
Dasani is tap water, same water source as Northern Atlanta GA.
Bottled water is one of the biggest scams to ever dupe the American people. Paying 1,700 times the price for dirty, unregulated bottle water when our incredibly inexpensive tap water has the most strict drinking water standards in the world. Such a shame
Silly Americans will buy anything. Just need to tell them it’s from France.
I love the story about Cleveland’s water being cleaner than Fiji bottled water.
You gotta be kidding me. There is way better news out there.
Aaron . Yes, this has been a scam. Yes, the public has been duped. But when you consider that grown people are so easily scammed, you should be concerned that the same people vote, and influence our elections. People who buy bottled water are fools. And these fools vote.
Diet Coke has always been my soda of choice but there is nothing I would rather drink than TAHOE TAP. We fill bottles of it when we travel and when the last drip is consumed, we lament that fact.
That said, we can’t fault a corporation, like Coca Cola, from trying to increase their profits.
Coke’s campaign and some restaurant owners buying into it is completely understandable — it is in their interest. However, I disagree with CokeIsAJoke’s assertion that there is better news out there. The existence of this campaign is a very useful thing for consumers to know. I thank Lake Tahoe News for bringing it to our attention, as this is particularly relevant for for those of us who live in a place with world class water.
I can quick to criticize LTN, so I want to say I agree that actually this is an important item – yes Coke is within its rights to search for ways to make profit, but the rest of us are just as in our rights to realize this is corporate spin and most cities in the US offer safe tap water. This article certainly serves a legitimate public health interest.
Interesting to note that as their Marketing Dept. conjures up ways to extract even more profit from us Americans, Coke (& Pepsi, too) are scrambling elsewhere (India, Africa, probably China) in the world to conserve water sources as it is of course the prime ingredient in their concoction (sometimes forgotten)…
As they sell upwards of a quarter of a billion bottles a day around the world, all with their iconic red/white distinctive logo (never mind the language), they will soon be paying attention to other than their profits…
If memory serves, they also own Dasani – not to mention the immense waste that Americans already consume in their “cheap” supply: more water goes straight to the drain/sewer each year (800 billion gallons) than we ever learn to use correctly. . .or rightly pay for.
Water Corporations have taken that hint, and are going to vastly raise water rates, as they are buying up mismanaged municipal water companies as we speak. . .all across America.
STPUD is for sale? LOL.