David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…And Candler’s very anti-bottling, right? Yes. He is extremely skeptical. He’s like, yo, we’ve tried this before. I really don’t think the technology’s there. I’m not sure about this. Thomas and Whitehead, though, were very persistent. They say, well, totally get that, understand that. What if we do it at no risk to you? You let us buy Coca-Cola syrup from you, same as all the soda fountains are doing. We will bottle it and sell it at our own expense. If the product isn’t up to your standards, you can just pull our license and we’ll stop selling it. Candler thinks it over and he’s like, that’s a pretty good deal. I’ve got nothing to lose here. Why not? I’ll let you two young bucks have a go at this. So in July of 1899, the three of them sign a contract that includes the following terms. For a token contract price of $1, which Candler never collects, the Coca-Cola company will sell syrup to Thomas and Whitehead at a volume discount price of $1 per gallon, so even less than they are selling to the individual soda fountains out there because (I think) this is going to be a higher volume business. Thomas and Whitehead will have the exclusive, assignable right to market and sell bottled Coca-Cola for 5¢ per bottle, same price as at the soda fountains, across practically the entire United States. But this 5¢ per bottle, operating a bottle is a tougher business than operating the soda fountain in this respect because there is one meaningful additional cost: the bottle itself.…

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