Local Drinks Bring The Battle To Global Soda Makers

In nearly every Berlin café, currywurrst house, grocery store and restaurant we went to, one drink brand stood proudly on counters, in refrigerators and on menus. Bionade was launched 12 years ago by a private Bavarian brewer in the Biosphere Reserve “Hohe Rhön”. They claim that the drink is the world’s first and only unique non-alcoholic organically produced refreshment drink, produced through an organic fermentation process.

Flavors include Elderberry, Lychee, Herb and Ginger-Orange and by the look of the places we visited, it seems to have gone down a treat with the locals.

Another brand to note is Hamburg’s Premium-Cola. They take the fight to the big global brands so much that they proudly print their secret ingredients brightly on the label of their products. A slightly one-sided Wikipedia entry gives some insight into the company:

Premium-Cola is not a company, since profit is not a goal of the collective. There is no office, no salaries and no actual boss. All members of the collective make a living by other jobs and build up Premium-Cola as sort of a hobby. All issues are decided on collectively, there is hardly any advertising - instead, art pictures are printed on the inside of the bottles’ labels.

We were told that Premium Cola has been such a hit that Coke reacted by running an ad campaign to squash the upstart leaving protests and resentment in their core market.

Fritz-Kola was another Hamburg brand offering an alternative to global sodas. Fritz was founded only a few years ago by two environmentally conscious graduates dissatisfied with the soft drinks on offer, the range, which now includes a variety of flavoured fizzy drinks. Fritz is named after the common German moniker and is sold across the EU.

Do trends in soda consumption in Germany reflect a bigger move away from global brands to local brands with personality and good values? Sales of CocaCola are still strong in Germany, but our recent trip to Berlin and Hamburg made us wonder how long for..,