Week 27 ELA - A North Carolina Inventor

A North Carolina Inventor

1 Can you imagine a time when there were no soft drinks of any kind? Thanks to a native North Carolinian, Caleb Bradham, we can all sit back and enjoy an ice cold Pepsi on a hot summer day because he invented it!

2 Bradham grew up in Duplin County and, in 1886, enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He later went to the University of Maryland and studied to become a pharmacist. When he graduated, he opened his own drug store and named it “Bradham’s Pharmacy.” It was located in New Bern, North Carolina.

3 Back then, pharmacies often had soda fountains in them to keep the customers coming back to the store. Bradham had a deep interest in medicine, and he wanted to make a healthy drink for the people who came to his store. He experimented with different combinations of syrups, spices, and juices. The drink people liked best was a mixture of vanilla, pepsin, rare oils, and kola nuts. The people of New Bern soon started calling it Brad’s Drink.

4 Brad’s Drink was later renamed Pepsi Cola after the pepsin and kola nuts he used in the recipe. It sold so well that Bradham began working full time trying to sell his new beverage. He set up shop in the back of his drug store and worked there while he was selling it as a syrup. Later, he was selling so much he decided to bottle the product and sell the new drink to more people.

5 Bradham eventually helped operate 300 bottling companies in twenty-four states. His neighbor designed Pepsi’s first logo. Throughout Pepsi’s history, the logo has changed many times.

6 However, in 1917 when the United States entered World War I, the cost of producing the drink changed drastically. Sugar was a main ingredient in the product, and the cost of sugar changed day-by-day, from record highs to disastrous lows. It made it hard to stay in business.

7 In 1923 Bradham lost his company and returned to work at his pharmacy. His trademark, Pepsi-Cola, and the recipe were sold to several other companies. Under one of the new owners, Charles Guth, Pepsi would make over one million dollars within two years. Today the Pepsi Company is a $29 billion company and has expanded to become one of the best-known and well-loved products throughout the world.