PARKS & RECREATION
Key Assets: Craven County’s seat, New Bern, is genuinely and famously the BIRTHPLACE OF PEPSI-COLA, one of the most recognized consumer brands on Earth; the story begins in 1893 (some sources cite 1898 as the year of the drink’s actual formulation), when local pharmacist Caleb Davis Bradham – a North Carolina native who had attended the University of North Carolina before completing his pharmacy education at the University of Maryland – opened a drugstore on the corner of Middle and Pollock Streets in downtown New Bern; like most drugstores of that era, Bradham’s shop featured a popular soda fountain, where he enjoyed experimenting with concoctions for his customers; wanting to create a soft drink that would genuinely aid digestion – without the narcotics commonly used in other patent remedies of the day – Bradham mixed together sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, kola nut extract, nutmeg, vanilla, and other flavorings into a formula his delighted customers nicknamed “Brad’s Drink”; on August 28, 1898, sensing the growing popularity of his creation, Bradham officially renamed it “Pepsi-Cola,” likely inspired by the digestive enzyme pepsin that the drink was believed to help stimulate; he incorporated the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1902 with himself as president, registered one of the earliest trademarks in the history of the U.S. Patent Office in 1903, and by 1905 had begun bottling and selling the beverage in six-ounce bottles through the company’s first two franchise bottlers, based in Charlotte and Durham, NC; the business grew rapidly over the following decade, and by 1907 Bradham was selling over 100,000 gallons of Pepsi syrup annually through a network of 40 bottling franchises; beyond his beverage empire, Bradham was also a genuinely prominent local civic figure, serving as president of the People’s Bank of New Bern and chairman of the Craven County Board of Commissioners, and was at one point even floated as a possible candidate for Governor of North Carolina; though a risky bet on sugar prices during World War I ultimately bankrupted Bradham’s original company in 1923, the Pepsi-Cola trademark and formula were purchased and relaunched, eventually growing into the massive multinational PepsiCo that exists today; visitors to New Bern can still stop by “The Birthplace of Pepsi,” a working recreation of Bradham’s original pharmacy soda fountain built on the exact original flooring and foundation of his 1890s drugstore, where they can order an authentic fountain Pepsi, a Pepsi float, or a classic glass bottle in the very spot where the drink was first mixed
Notes: New Bern’s genuine, extensively documented status as the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola – invented by a local pharmacist experimenting behind his own soda fountain – is one of the most globally recognized brand origin stories found anywhere in this project.
