Just What IS Real Soda anyways?
“Take a look at this! This
whole empire started in a backpack!”… that’s
what an old high school friend of Real Soda’s
founder Danny Ginsburg said when he visited
the central warehouse with his wife and baby
recently. And in fact... what is today perhaps
unquestionably the most substantial purveyor
of glass-bottled soft drinks in the USA had
its origins with a bottle cap collection, a
dream, and a desire and drive of immense proportions
which all synergized to create the magic which
is REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES.
"Real Soda" is essentially a name
that was coined by original partakers. The concept
of Real Soda was conceived in the 1980's by
Ginsburg who had been collecting bottle caps
since he was four years old and who could not
accept the invasion of cans and plastic to the
detriment of all of the great sodas that had
once been available.
While in the 70's Danny was a
kid having to hunt around for whatever stores
still sold bottles. Before REAL SODA IN REAL
BOTTLES was a business entity, the backpack
was in fact the means of delivery when Danny
was a high school student and had started buying
sodas in glass returnable bottles in other cities
so that he could keep adding to his bottle cap
collection at a time when Los Angeles bottlers
had discontinued virtually everything in glass.
He started by bringing a few bottles along for
his own consumption and soon had an entourage
of friends and acquaintances who asked him to
provide them with these “old-fashioned” sodas
to the extent that the backpack would often
be filled with a dozen 16oz returnable bottles
and the books had to be carried by hand!
By his 16th birthday in 1980 he
got his driver's license just in time to buy
the last four cases of Diet Pepsi being sold
in L.A. Very quickly he started driving to other
cities where bottled sodas were still available,
and he would bring them back to his house for
his personal consumption. Because he desired
at least 100 bottle caps from each design, he
found himself buying more than he could drink
and at the same time, people would notice him
drinking from bottles and would ask him if he
could get them their favorite brands, which
he was only too happy to do.
The procurement of interesting
sodas was always in the forefront and the garage
at his home served as a “warehouse” of sorts.
Danny was often hired by people at school and
later at the university to serve beverages at
functions and to provide them to carnivals;
the caveat was always that the empty bottles
and bottle caps had to go back with Danny. Initially
people thought all of this to be an odd and
quirky thing and in fact many of the people
who would ask for the beverages outright admitted
that they were doing it “to be nice to Danny”.
Soon these folks became a sort
of "cargo cult" as virtually every weekend became
a soda-shopping trip. After graduating from
high school and working for a property management
company, Danny would bring bottles of soda to
work and one time a diabetic pool contractor
noticed Danny drinking a Diet Coke in the contour
glass returnable bottle. "Where did you get
that; I've only seen it like that on TV", exclaimed
the contractor to which Danny mentioned some
cities about 400 miles away. Needless to say,
this guy and his friends started giving Danny
lists of sodas to procure and as this contractor
was one of those people who always had a bunch
of people hanging around his residence, would
always exclaim upon seeing me arrive at the
door "Hey Look! It's Real Soda, in Real Bottles!!".
So when it was time to get a business license,
the idea was... why not call it what it is?
Toward the end of Danny’s university
days there were businesses asking him for products
and it became evident that this was getting
too big not to be an actual business entity;
it had grown way beyond people just ordering
as a favor to Danny. Therefore, in 1991 Danny
got a business license from the City Of Rancho
Palos Verdes, California. The corporation Real
Soda In Real Bottles, Ltd. was formed the following
year.
We all hear about businesses that
originated in a Volkswagen Van, and REAL SODA
IN REAL BOTTLES is no exception. The original
delivery vehicle was exactly that; a Volkswagen
Van with a Lenin-head gearshift. There were
days that Danny managed to cram 120 cases into
that van and get the drinks to the customers
on time. Soon the business expanded to where
it was necessary to get a larger van, and using
the garage at home (and the living room and
hallways) as a warehouse was just no longer
feasible. So a garage was rented behind a wax
company in Long Beach, CA where a 1953 manual-shift
Towmotor forklift was part of the deal. Less
than a year following this, REAL SODA IN REAL
BOTTLES had added on a bunch of brands from
companies who had not formerly had a distributor
in Los Angeles and it was necessary to move
to a 6400sqft warehouse in Torrance, CA in 1993.
By then REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES was in all
of the hip coffeehouses in L.A. and delivering
to movie studios and the homes of Hollywood
actors; also small soda sections were starting
to pop up in specialty grocery stores under
the care of REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES.
When the Torrance warehouse was
first set up, the complete inventory was able
to be stored against the back and side walls.
Having the extra space was just another excuse
to now stock more variety and Danny used his
contacts from his days of sending letters to
bottling companies all over the world to obtain
bottle caps to see which of these companies
were still making interesting beverages. He
set up a truck to go across country and get
an initial batch from North and South Carolina,
Kentucky, and Louisiana; these sodas really
took off and started finally forming what was
a unique collection of drinks that were not
easily procured by the competition. As much
fun as soda has always been to Danny, the realities
of the beverage industry: cutthroat competition
and using the “stepvan distributors” as stepping-stones
was (and still is) rampant. Perhaps the saving
grace for REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES was that
the logistics of procuring these obscure brands
were complex and the typical distributors of
soft drinks were heretofore the major “big Three”
(Coke/Pepsi/7up) for the common brands and beer,
wine, and foodservice distributors for the sparse
variety of specialty beverages available at
that time. None of the competition was very
knowledgeable about most of the beverages offered
by REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES, and they were
even less enthusiastic. Their chuckling at what
Real Soda was doing in the marketplace actually
kept them out of the way in the case of genuine
specialty drinks and independent retailers’
disdain for the establishment in the beverage
industry coupled with their excitement over
the aesthetics and quality of REAL SODA IN REAL
BOTTLES were the synergy that enabled Real Soda
to build its foundation. The workload became
so intense that Danny could no longer do it
on his own and thus a recommendation of a friend
produced the appearance of John the Driver Emeritus,
now a Real Soda Icon; certainly a chauffeur
par excellence and loved by Real Soda’s diverse
L.A. clientele.
Once REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES
was going strong in Los Angeles, it was no longer
necessary for Danny to “cold call” potential
customers. The word-of-mouth referrals were
keeping the growth between 25% and 70% per year,
so Real Soda’s main focus was to expand its
offerings and to get all of the things that
Danny knew of but did not have yet. Danny’s
time was best spent dealing with all of the
logistics while still providing attentive service
to the existing clientele and the referrals
and word-of-mouth business. Because REAL SODA
IN REAL BOTTLES had no official salesman, people
would often see bottled products and call the
phone numbers on the bottles to find out who
all of the distributors were so they could order
these drinks for their place. Usually all of
these calls led them straight to REAL SODA IN
REAL BOTTLES and when they heard the name, they’d
place their initial order right over the phone.
Among the people calling to get started were
people in other cities and sometimes in other
states. Initially Danny would load up the van
and drive these orders out to the “out-of-towners”
especially if there was something that could
be procured for the return trip to L.A. Some
people ordered mixed pallets which had to be
released to trucking companies and shipped.
But what finally occurred is that people from
neighboring cities started to appear, desirous
of being “sub-distributors” of Real Soda’s products
in their own locales. Hence the first “sodaphiliates”
appeared on the scene, in Orange County, California;
and Seattle, Washington. Gradually this has
grown to 16 sodaphiliates as well as a large
number of “sub-distributors” and other entities
primarily in the West.
The expansion into other cities
increased the volume of REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES
so much that it was necessary to move into a
much bigger warehouse; now the Real Soda warehouses
consist of 10 times the space once in that “big”
initial one. In addition to having the most
impressive amalgamation of specialty glass-bottled
sodas anywhere, REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES started
manufacturing its own beverages along with beverages
under license. The need to start this was mainly
derived from the lack of availability of some
of the beverages Danny felt REAL SODA IN REAL
BOTTLES needed to have; the manufacturers of
these beverages often were shipping the concentrate
to foreign countries but had lost their business
in the USA due to consolidation of the major
brand owners and bottlers. Conveniently, this
gave birth to the opportunity for Danny to “experiment”
with some of the beverages he had always dreamed
of making. Perhaps the most successful of these
“experiments” is the LENINADE whose label he
had drawn initially as a joke in his Russian
language class in 1987.
It is often said that imitation
is the highest form of flattery and in fact
REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES has its share of such
flattery. People who dabble with some of the
products sold by but not exclusive to REAL SODA
IN REAL BOTTLES have claimed to be the originators
of this concept, but in fact it would be hard
for them to provide anything comparable to the
photographs and newspaper articles which chronicle
REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES’ origins since the
early 1980’s. Nowadays, REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES’
specialty beverage sections are becoming more
a part of the mainstream, and this is what was
Danny’s dream in the beginning; a mission statement
even if not initially stated – that Americans
should be able to go to any supermarket, corner
store, or other place that sells soda and be
able to find there, a wide variety of delicious
beverages in glass bottles. This is what REAL
SODA IN REAL BOTTLES is providing for America
and whenever there is no “sodaphiliate” or “sub-distributor”
in an area, a store that wants to stock up on
great products and make delicious beverages
in glass bottles available to their clientele
can have us ship them what they need. While
some glass-bottled sodas are available in many
parts of the countries nowadays (thankfully!),
there is still no match for the variety of aesthetic
and delicious sodas that REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES
has to offer; and the knowledge, enthusiasm,
and genuine history that blend so well to make
REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES so special is surely
one of the unique wonders that makes life so
much better.
One of the things beyond the great
selection of wonderful beverages that has enabled
REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES’ success is that the
whole concept of offering this great variety
to the marketplace has been built with the understanding
that everyone from manufacturer to distributor
to retailer deserves to earn a margin which
is sufficient for them to be rewarded for their
efforts. While this may seem like an excuse
to justify higher prices, consider this: Because
the margins do not choke people into considering
lessened quality and aesthetics as is the case
with so much of the rest of the beverage industry,
the financial reward for providing this wonder
of effervescence excellence to the otherwise
deprived populace is such that it fuels the
enthusiasm which drives all involved to build
and expand their offerings of delicious beverages
in glass bottles. And certainly the price structure
of these beverages is superseded by the quality
and the pleasure that these beverages bring
to people because it is only in this manner
that the demand has been such that REAL SODA
IN REAL BOTTLES could grow as it has and spread
as it has and continue to do so. In other words,
REAL SODA IN REAL BOTTLES represents a variety
of beverages which are in a sense a “bargain”
in that they are so much better than those that
cost less that they are well worth any extra
expenditure. The proliferation of overpriced
thimble-can energy drinks and pricy plastic
teas only reveals the true value of a Real Soda
in a Real Bottle!
Back
to the top
