"cocacola" news and stories

Three people were charged yesterday by federal prosecutors for stealing confidential information from the Coca-Cola Company's Atlanta Headquarters. Joya Williams, administrative assistant to a top executive, Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney "were arrested on charges of wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling Coke trade secrets," federal prosecutors said. Specifically, they stole insider documents and a bottled sample of one of Coke's newest, unreleased products and were planning to sell them to Coke rival, PepsiCo.

Dimson contacted Pepsi via a letter, mailed in an official Coca-Cola envelope, and asked for more than $80,000 for the stolen documents and drink sample. Pepsi contacted Coke and the authorities were brought in. The investigation culminated when an undercover FBI agent offered to pay $1.5 million for other trade secrets from Coke.

Both Coke and Pepsi complied with and assisted the FBI and other authorities during their investigation. Coke says that it will be difficult to overcome this "breach of trust" from Williams, who "[rifled] through corporate files and [stuffed] documents and a new Coca-Cola product into a personal bag" - actions which were caught on the company surveillance videos - and that they will review its "review its information protection policies, procedures and practices."

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Coca Cola is now selling 12-ounce plastic bottles of its products, the same size as the classic cans, but conveniently resealable. I have heard heated debates whether the soda tastes better in bottles or cans. I usually prefer Coke in cans to Coke in bottles, because I can't drink the whole bottle before the soda becomes flat. 20-ounces of soda are too much for me most of the time.  If you like the convenience (or flavor) of bottled Coke, but find that the 20-ounce size is too large for you to finish or too difficult to cram in your lunchbox, keep an eye out for these little guys at supermarkets and superstores in your area.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Today's Wall Street Journal featured a front-page article about the demand for Mexican-made Coca Cola in the U.S. Mexican Coke is made with cane sugar, unlike American Coke, which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. While some soda aficionados like Mexican Coke for its supposedly cleaner taste and better mouth feel, its main market in the U.S. is to Mexican immigrants. While Coca Cola authorizes several bottlers to distribute its products in Mexico, the company is continually trying to stop the importation of those soft drinks into the U.S. for fear that they'll compete with the sodas bottled here. Since the bottles aren't actually counterfeit, they're still legal to import. The results are slightly covert networks of distributors that import Mexican Coke to the U.S. and then distribute it throughout the country. The WSJ traces a few bottles from Mexico to Georgia.