| The company now known as DPS has evolved from a combination of discovery, invention and collaboration. This rich history includes the very birth of the soft drink in 1783, when Jean Jacob Schweppe perfected the process for carbonating water and created the world’s first carbonated mineral water. Dr Pepper and Snapple, the flagship brands of DPS, have origins that share Schweppe’s entrepreneurial spirit. Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist in Waco, Texas, invented Dr Pepper in 1885. It was served at the drug store where Alderton worked and the first Dr Pepper fans asked for a ”Waco”. The oldest soft drink in the United States, it was later named Dr Pepper, according to legend, after Dr. Charles Pepper, a friend of the drug store owner. Nearly 100 years later, three New York-area health food storeowners created a unique apple soda they named Snapple. They began selling the original Snapple in health clubs in 1973. Throughout the 1970s, the company that owned Snapple was known as The Unadulterated Food Corporation, later becoming Snapple Beverage Corp. |
