25. Coca-Cola’s German Branch Came Up With Fanta as an Improvisation
Max Keith’s efforts to keep up production in Germany during WWII hit a snag: some key ingredients for producing Coca-Cola syrup could only be obtained from overseas. That was a problem because Germany was cut off from overseas trade by the British Royal Navy. No Coca-Cola syrup meant no Coca-Cola, so production ground to a halt at the company’s bottling plants. The halt did not last long, as Coca-Cola Deutschland cast about for an alternative soft drink, using readily available domestic ingredients.
After some trial and error, they created a new soda from the odds and ends left over from other food industries, such as apple fiber from cider presses, and whey, a cheese byproduct. For sweetener, the company initially used saccharin, then secured the right to use 3.5 percent beet sugar in 1941. While the standard Fanta today is an orange drink, there was no standard flavor during WWII: the company used whichever fruits happened to be available at the time.
