Protecting Coke's secret formula from WikiLeaks

The world’s largest soft-drink maker’s efforts to keep the formula secret are a matter of legend. Kent said Coke’s recipe was known to only a few people and kept in a vault in Atlanta, Georgia, where the company has its headquarters. He said he wouldn’t know what to make of it even if he were to try to figure it out.        

“It’s on a piece of paper,” Kent said. “I’m not a food scientist or an engineer — and I wouldn’t know what all those letters meant.”  Coke, meantime, is riding high.

The maker of Sprite, Fanta, Minute Maid and vitaminwater said volume in its once-ailing North America market rose 2 percent in the third quarter. That follows a 2 percent rise in the second quarter, which was its first increase in more than two years.

Kent waxed enthusiastic about Coke’s next big thing — an eventual nationwide rollout of its ”Free Style” fountain dispenser, capable of dispensing more than 100 different combinations of Coca-Cola beverages from a single gizmo.

“We believe it is going to be a game-changer for us. It gives consumers more choice. It gives us real-time data about consumer preferences,” he said.

The new machines have built-in technology and a Microsoft operating system that give the company up-to-date information on who’s drinking what — and where . In other words, at least on one level, nothing will be secret — not even your choice of soft drink.
Source: Reuters