Midway to Main Street | The Origins of Beverly: The Soda People Love To Hate @MidwaytoMainStreet | Uploaded September 2018 | Updated October 2024, 6 hours ago.
Why does the Beverly soda taste so bad? Is it an Italian thing? Do they just like awful soda over there? Where did it come from? Where is it now? Why do die-hard Disney World fans love, or love to hate, Beverly?
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Part of the answer is actually spelled out for us right at Club Cool. It’s not a matter of Americans just having a different palette, it’s admittedly a bitter drink on purpose. The description posted above the Beverly soda fountain reads “Beverly, with its bitter flavor, is a popular non-alcoholic aperitif that is a traditional part of Italian refreshment culture.” The key word there is aperitif, because that alone changes the way a drink like Beverly is meant to be consumed.
Most popular in France and Italy, the aperitif is a bitter cocktail that’s consumed shortly before a meal as a way of aiding the digestive process and preventing future issues such as indigestion. On top that the bitter taste supposedly helps in preparing your palette for the food you’re about enjoy. So with that in mind, the aperitif was not consumed in large quantities nor was it quickly consumed. It was a modest cocktail you’d casually have before dinner, and it was most of time, an alcoholic beverage.
However in 1969 at the Fiera di Milano, (or Milan Fair) Coca-Cola would introduce a non-alcoholic aperitif to the Italian market, and it was called Beverly. Bottled in Monza, Italy, Beverly was advertised to be “cold as Helsinki, sparkling as Rio” and “dry as El Paso”
It was originally sold in small 3 and 6 ounce bottles, which was fitting considering it was intended to be enjoyed as an aperitif. And while it was originally a darker drink, very visually similar to Coca-Cola, the company would eventually introduce a clear version in 1978. Considering its purpose and taste, and considering we don’t typically partake in aperitifs here, the drink was never brought over to the United States beyond the fun marketing gimmick.
It was introduced to the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, and in 1998 a Coca-Cola sponsored attraction called Ice Station Cool, later Club Cool, would open in Future World. It would offer Americans a free taste of various sodas from around the world, including Beverly. And while it didn’t happen right away, the popularization of vlogging combined with Beverly being this unexpected and unpleasant experience for many, lead to a cult following around the practice of getting your unaware friends and family to try the drinks so that you could capture their reaction on camera. It would eventually become popular enough that the Coca-Cola Rooftop Bar in Disney Springs would offer a mixed drink called Beverly’s Revenge, which features the soda along with gin and blood orange liqueur. There are even fan made t-shirts for the soda.
As for Beverly, the drink was eventually discontinued in 2009 and the only real explanation offered by Coca-Cola was that it was a part of “ongoing product consolidation”. Personally that sounds like PR speak for “it stopped selling well enough”. I couldn’t find any Beverly or even Italian specific figures, but I did find that Coca-Cola’s European market as a whole experienced a nearly half billion dollar drop in revenue that year, so perhaps that played a part in the decision to end the production. Or perhaps the competition was too much for a market too small. By that point both Campari and San Pellegrino, two major Italian aperitif brands, had their own non-alcoholic offerings as well, and while here in the United States Coca-Cola is one of the most popular brands ever, soda consumption is much lower over in Italy, meaning it wouldn’t be as easy of a market for Coca-Cola to dominate. So today our, uh, enjoyment of Beverly is limited to these taste test stations at various spots across the country.
Why does the Beverly soda taste so bad? Is it an Italian thing? Do they just like awful soda over there? Where did it come from? Where is it now? Why do die-hard Disney World fans love, or love to hate, Beverly?
New here? Be sure to subscribe!
🔷goo.gl/x17zTL
My Patreon!
❤patreon.com/RobPlays
My Disney History Book List!
📚robplays.com/books
My Disney Podcast!
🎧ttapodcast.com
Follow me on Twitter!
📱Twitter.com/RobPlays
An additional thanks to my Patrons!
Allison Ganzhorn 🏆 Andres Gutierrez 🏆 Braden Foster 🏆 Christine Mahin 🏆 Deborah Malcolm 🏆 Don Duncan 🏆 Heath Farrell 🏆 Jesse Taylor 🏆 John Gundlach 🏆 John Shoemaker 🏆 Joshua Sheha 🏆 Juan Sepulveda 🏆 Kevin Hitchcock 🏆 Mallory Craig 🏆 Marc DiFilippo 🏆 Marcus Beard 🏆 Martin Lohr 🏆 Matthew Hyndman 🏆 Michael Gorzkowski 🏆 Nathan Peschke 🏆 Rafael Gorrochotegui 🏆 Ross Kratter 🏆 Samantha Silverstein 🏆 Scott Robertson 🏆 Shawndelle Young 🏆 Thomas 🏆 Tracy Funk 🏆 Troy Krupinski 🏆 Tyler Abbott 🏆 Victoria Luu 🏆Michael Ford 🏆 Brian Bugert 🏆David Durham 🏆 Edward Simmons 🏆 Daniel Harwell 🏆Mark Benthien 🏆Jon Sturrock 🏆 Nick Lydecker 🏆 James Fowler 🏆 Justin Reyes 🏆 Delaney Nevins 🏆 Emmet Brady 🏆
Part of the answer is actually spelled out for us right at Club Cool. It’s not a matter of Americans just having a different palette, it’s admittedly a bitter drink on purpose. The description posted above the Beverly soda fountain reads “Beverly, with its bitter flavor, is a popular non-alcoholic aperitif that is a traditional part of Italian refreshment culture.” The key word there is aperitif, because that alone changes the way a drink like Beverly is meant to be consumed.
Most popular in France and Italy, the aperitif is a bitter cocktail that’s consumed shortly before a meal as a way of aiding the digestive process and preventing future issues such as indigestion. On top that the bitter taste supposedly helps in preparing your palette for the food you’re about enjoy. So with that in mind, the aperitif was not consumed in large quantities nor was it quickly consumed. It was a modest cocktail you’d casually have before dinner, and it was most of time, an alcoholic beverage.
However in 1969 at the Fiera di Milano, (or Milan Fair) Coca-Cola would introduce a non-alcoholic aperitif to the Italian market, and it was called Beverly. Bottled in Monza, Italy, Beverly was advertised to be “cold as Helsinki, sparkling as Rio” and “dry as El Paso”
It was originally sold in small 3 and 6 ounce bottles, which was fitting considering it was intended to be enjoyed as an aperitif. And while it was originally a darker drink, very visually similar to Coca-Cola, the company would eventually introduce a clear version in 1978. Considering its purpose and taste, and considering we don’t typically partake in aperitifs here, the drink was never brought over to the United States beyond the fun marketing gimmick.
It was introduced to the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, and in 1998 a Coca-Cola sponsored attraction called Ice Station Cool, later Club Cool, would open in Future World. It would offer Americans a free taste of various sodas from around the world, including Beverly. And while it didn’t happen right away, the popularization of vlogging combined with Beverly being this unexpected and unpleasant experience for many, lead to a cult following around the practice of getting your unaware friends and family to try the drinks so that you could capture their reaction on camera. It would eventually become popular enough that the Coca-Cola Rooftop Bar in Disney Springs would offer a mixed drink called Beverly’s Revenge, which features the soda along with gin and blood orange liqueur. There are even fan made t-shirts for the soda.
As for Beverly, the drink was eventually discontinued in 2009 and the only real explanation offered by Coca-Cola was that it was a part of “ongoing product consolidation”. Personally that sounds like PR speak for “it stopped selling well enough”. I couldn’t find any Beverly or even Italian specific figures, but I did find that Coca-Cola’s European market as a whole experienced a nearly half billion dollar drop in revenue that year, so perhaps that played a part in the decision to end the production. Or perhaps the competition was too much for a market too small. By that point both Campari and San Pellegrino, two major Italian aperitif brands, had their own non-alcoholic offerings as well, and while here in the United States Coca-Cola is one of the most popular brands ever, soda consumption is much lower over in Italy, meaning it wouldn’t be as easy of a market for Coca-Cola to dominate. So today our, uh, enjoyment of Beverly is limited to these taste test stations at various spots across the country.
