Posts
I went to a national fast-food restaurant and purchased a combo meal with a medium soft drink. When I drove around to the window, I was handed what appeared to me a very small cup of beverage. It caused me to recall my order – did I ask for a small drink?
There has been a lot of discussion when a major coffee house began measuring their sizes using unfamiliar terms to most consumers. When I was a young man, the largest soft drink bottle available was ten ounces. Today, most soft drinks are sold in individuals bottles holding twenty ounces. I know a few soft drink aficionados who insist that the six ounce Coke™ is the only acceptable soft drink. They insist there is a difference in flavor between the six-ounce bottle and other serving sizes.
When I was in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Texas area a couple of years ago, my oldest nephew, Brett, took me out to lunch. He chose a restaurant where we could purchase a Dublin Dr. Pepper. I have to admit that I had not heard of the Dublin Dr. Pepper. I could imagine a green cola or one with a distinctive Irish taste, but I was mistaken.
Dublin Dr Pepper has the distinction of being made and bottled with the original sweetener, Imperial Pure Cane Sugar, just like the original Dr Pepper formula. It is also the oldest Dr. Pepper bottler in the world in Dublin, Texas. In the 1970s the price of sugar rose and soft drink companies started panicking because it was getting too expensive to produce their drinks using sugar. Virtually everyone switched to high fructose corn syrup because it was much less expensive. The decision was made at that time to keep using the pure cane sugar, regardless of the extra expense. The Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Company is the only Dr Pepper bottler that has always used pure cane sugar to sweeten the drink.
The interesting history of Dr. Pepper is found on their website (http://www.dublindrpepper.com/) along with some other interesting tidbits of historical information. Today, Dublin Dr. Pepper has become a marketing tool, separating this soft drink from those sweetened with corn syrups.
What lesson can we learn from this soft drink story? It is important to consider the evidence we discover from different perspectives. In much the same way as we walk around a car, whose purchase we anticipate, we want to look at this item from every perspective. We will probably also take the car for a test drive. Are we overlooking some issue on this record? Are we seeing the entire picture as presented? Is there something missing? These questions and a different perspective will help us gather a more accurate picture of the record at hand.
Keep the story alive
Mark
