History of Dr Pepper Snapple Group

From humble beginnings in Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store, the company Morrison and Lazenby started has become one of the largest beverage manufacturers in North America. They formed the Artesian Manufacturing & Bottling Company.

Lazenby moved the company from Waco to Dallas in 1923. The company merged with 7-Up became Dr Pepper/Seven UP Inc. on May 19, 1986.

Dr Pepper/Seven UP was purchased by Cadbury Schweppes in March 2, 1995 after the conglomerate became debt-ridden and insolvent. It sold for about US$1.7 billion, plus about US$870 million of Dr Pepper/Seven UP debt.

Cadbury Schweppes emerged in 1969 from the merger of Cadbury plc, a British confectionary and a soft drink company and Schweppes, an international beverage brand.

In 2000, Cadbury Schweppes acquired the Snapple Beverage Group (Snapple).

Three years after acquiring Snapple Cadbury Schweppes combined its four North American beverage companies – Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Snapple, Mott’s and Bebidas Mexico into Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages (CSAB).

In May 2008, under the direction of Larry Young, CSAB officially spun off from Cadbury’s confectionary manufacturing division and Dr Pepper brand became part of Dr Pepper Snapple Group, located in Plano Texas.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc. now is a major beverage company with an integrated business model including brand ownership, bottling, and distribution on nonalcoholic beverages in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
History of Dr Pepper Snapple Group

Business history of 7UP

Charles Leiper Grigg spent more than two years experimenting and perfecting his new drink all in search for lemon-flavored drinks before finalizing on Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.

Manufactured by Grigg’s Howdy Corporation, this soft drink appeared for sale in the fall of 1929 in St. Louis, Missouri, just two weeks before the great stock market crash. Shortly after its launched Grigg change the name to 7UP.

The drink was originally marketed as a hangover cure due to the inclusion of lithium citrate. It was release just a few years before the Wall Street crash of 1929.

It successfully promoted itself as a hangover cure, running a ‘7UP for hangovers’ campaign that pitched the drink as capable the effects, of overdrinking, over-smoking, under-drinking, mental lassitude, overwork, overeating and over worry.

7UP in can

The lithium citrate was abandoned in the drink in 1950, as lithium was found to cause side effects such as dizziness, nausea and thyroid problems.

In 1933 syrup sales topped 174,000gallons shooting up to 2,074,000 gallons a year by 1936, after Grigg’s post-Prohibition decision to start promotion his soda as a mixer that ‘tames whiskey’ and ‘glorifies gin’.

In the 1940s, 7-UP had successfully moved to the number three sales among soft drinks; only Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola outranked it.

In 1978, the drink was acquired by Philip Morris.

In 1979, a new advertising company campaign for the lemon-lime flavored 7UP shifted its ‘America’s Turning 7UP’ campaign to focus on a rational reason to buy product. Research had shown that consumers perceived colas as containing unhealthy ingredients.

In 1986 Philip Morris sold 7UP’s international operations to Pepsi and two years later offloaded the US business to Dr Pepper.  The merger between 7Up and Dr. Pepper Company, creating the world’s third largest soft drink company behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Dr Pepper and 7UP later were purchased by Cadbury Schweppes in 1995.
Business history of 7UP

The Early History of Dr Pepper Drinks

While working at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store, Dr Alderton noticed that customers quickly tired of the beverage flavors offered at the soda fountain.

Old Corner Drug Store was located in the ground floor of Waco’s McClelland Hotel.

He mixed a variety of fruit extracts from the fountain and through trial and error, eventually devised a distinct tasting that both he and store owner Morrison enjoyed.

They shared beverage with customers and soon people were coming to the drugstore to try ‘Doc Alderton’s drink.’ The two later renamed the drink Dr Pepper.

Created in 1885, in Waco Texas, it was sold as a ‘tonic, brain food, and exhilarant’.

Exactly how Alderton’s creation came to be called Dr Pepper is unknown. It might have been chosen by Morrison, who had once worked at a drug store, owned by Dr Charles T Pepper in Rural Retreat, Virginia. Dr Charles T Pepper was the father of the woman Morrison once hoped to marry.

Morrison would often talk of how his girlfriend’s father had come between them in Virginia. Alderton at the store mixed up the concoction of flavors as a beverage for his customers, and it hopes of helping out Morrison’s romance, named it after the girl’s father.

In the beginning, Morrison and Alderton worked in a backroom at the Old Corner Drug Store, mixing up batches of the syrup for sale at their fountain and a few others. When demand increased, they decided to expand and rented a building for that purpose.

Robert S. Lazenby, Morrison’s soda fountain patron studied Alderton’s mixture for two year and patented the formula that is still used today.
The Early History of Dr Pepper Drinks