The Evolution of Barq’s: A Soft Drink Legacy

Barq’s Bottling Company, established in 1890 in New Orleans, Louisiana, by Edward Charles Edmond Barq and his younger brother, Gaston, has a rich history that reflects the growth and transformation of the soft drink industry. Initially focused on bottling carbonated water and various soft drinks, the Barq brothers quickly became known for their innovation. Among their early successes was a popular orange-flavored soda known as Orangine, which set the stage for their future ventures.

In 1898, Edward Barq took a significant step by opening the Biloxi Artesian Bottling Works in Mississippi. Two years later, he introduced what would become their most famous product: Barq’s Root Beer. The drink's distinctive taste and effervescence quickly captured the public's imagination, leading to its rapid rise in popularity. By 1937, Barq’s had expanded to 62 bottling plants across 22 states, and by 1950, the number of plants had peaked at around 200.

However, this success was not without challenges. In 1938, the U.S. federal government banned caffeine in root beer, prompting Barq to adapt. He rebranded the drink as "Barq's Sr." and developed a caffeine-free version. When the caffeine ban was lifted in 1960, the original recipe returned, leading to some confusion over the product's name. While many referred to it as Barq's Root Beer, Edward Barq was known to correct them, emphasizing, "Barq's, son. Just Barq's."

In 1976, the Biloxi Company was acquired by entrepreneurs John Koerner and John Oudt, who began marketing Barq’s nationally. By this time, the brand had grown to be bottled in over 400 plants, solidifying its presence in the American beverage landscape. The culmination of Barq’s success came in 1988 when The Coca-Cola Company acquired The Biloxi Company, integrating Barq’s into its global portfolio.

Today, Barq’s remains a beloved soft drink, celebrated for its rich history and unique flavor. Its journey from a small family operation in New Orleans to a nationally recognized brand underlines the resilience and adaptability of the Barq family, whose legacy continues to fizz and refresh across the country.
The Evolution of Barq’s: A Soft Drink Legacy

History of beverages processing

Ovines – sheep and goats – were probably the first animals domesticated and the first animals milked. The earliest evidence of domesticated sheep comes from about 9000 BC in Iraq and Romania.

Ancient alcoholic fermented beverage such as beer origins may trace back to 10,000 BC in the Neolithic era. Its main ingredients are water, malted barley, yeast, and hops; however, other components may be used to increase its sensory properties and/or the amount of fermentable sugars, which are called adjuncts.

The breakthrough in the history of alcoholic beverages was the invention of the distillation process, which appeared in Mesopotamia around 4000 BC. Even though this process is primarily used in the perfume industry, distillation enables the concentration of alcohol produced by fermentation.

The first marketed soft drinks appeared in the 17th century as a mixture of water and lemon juice sweetened with honey. In 1676 the Compagnie de Limonadiers was formed in Paris and granted a monopoly for the sale of its products. Vendors carried tanks on their backs from which they dispensed cups of lemonade.

The development of pasteurization and other technologies greatly increased the safety of the beverage and allowed it to be marketed over a wider area. Before pasteurization milk consumption could transmit diseases, including cholera, polio, anthrax, scarlet fever, bovine tuberculosis and botulism.

Traditionally, beverages have been packaged in glass containers capped with a natural or plastic cork to limit oxygen intake and preserve the organoleptic quality of the beverage.

The crown cork evolved from the natural cork stopper. Cork stoppers were effective closures but did not meet the need to be applied at speed. The automatic production of glass bottles was perfected in the USA in 1903. This provided bottles with uniform dimensions at the neck that could take a standard closure.

Before bottling was introduced, milk was typically transported in containers which were open to debris and bacterial contamination. Material shortages during World War I helped to launch the use of paper cartons which, along with plastic jugs, remain popular today.

As early as the 1960s, most bottlers were producing beverages through machinery that ran at 150 bottles per minute. As product demand has continued to skyrocket, soft drink manufacturers have shifted to faster machinery.

Since the early 1900s beverage companies have evolved from regional firms that mainly produced goods for local markets, to today’s corporate giants that make products for international markets.
History of beverages processing

History of bottling technology

Around 1500 BC, the Egyptians were the first to create glass bottles by placing molten glass around a core of sand and clay. After this process was completed, the core was removed and the glass cooled.

The earliest bottle and glass making factory in the United States was established in Virginia in 1608.

The technique of carbonation was discovered by Dr Joseph Priestly in the late 1760s, a technique which turned out to be the spur to the creation of commercially manufactured soft drinks.

The glass bottle had begun to replace stoneware to contain wine and beer around the middle of the seventeenth century. The earliest wine bottles were curiously bulbous in shape but as the practice grew of ‘laying down’ wine, the bottles had to take on their familial parallel-side form by about 1750.

Glass bottling technology came of age in the early 1900s with the development of glassblowing machines. In 1891, Michael J. Owens patented a machine that automatically opened and closed the glass molds used to form bottles.

Bottling technology (including washing, filling, and capping) remained a manual operation in the late 19th century.

The carbonated drink bottling industry in the United States increased from 100 plants in the 1850s to more than 1400 by 1890. In 1915 the first soda pop bottle was introduce by the Coca-Cola Company. A unique shape of a bottle was followed by several other brands.

The first plastic bottle for carbonated beverages was brought forth by Andrew Wyth through the Du Pont Corporation.

Advances in battling technology during the late 19th century largely involved the slow shifts from hand and foot operated machines to power-operated machines. The 1892 patent of the crown cap closure was another important development for beer and soda bottlers.
History of bottling technology

History of coffee brewing

Research shows that perhaps as early as 800 AD, the practice of coffee consumption was started by crushing the whole ripe berries, beans and hulls, in mortars, mixing them with fats and rounding them into food balls.

The practice of making a beverage from coffee beans and boiling water began about 1200 AD. Even then, the beans were not roasted. The dried fruit, beans and hulls were boiled in stone or clay cauldron. Then about 1300 AD, men began the custom of removing the hulls, roasting them and grinding the beans to powder, this powdered was then mixed with boiling water.

Right from the beginning, coffee pots were used for brewing coffee. They had sharp pour spouts to block most of the coffee grounds from escaping, and a squat bottom for good heat absorbtion. There were the first coffee pots, and they have been evolving since the seventeenth century.

The common early method of preparation throughout the Levant was to keep the powder in water for a day, to boil with liquor half away, to staring it, and to keep it in earthen pots for use as wanted.

Then, evolution struck when someone poured hot water through sock containing ground coffee. This was the first known use of a filter. For quite some time, filters were made of cloth. Still today, in many parts of the not so civilized world, socks are still used to filter coffee.

Sugar seems to have been introduced into coffee in Cairo about 1625. Veslingius records that coffee drinker in Cairo’s three thousand coffee houses ‘did begin to put sugar in their coffee to correct the bitterness of it’.

About 1660, Nieuhoff the Dutch ambassador of China, was the first to make a trial of coffee with milk in imitation of tea with milk.

Around 1919, the infusion brewing process was introduced in France, Infusion called for enclosing the coffee ground in a linen bag called a ‘biggin’.

The filter evolved and it got a commercial name: “Mr. Biggin.” In 1780 “Biggin pots” appeared for the first time. A biggin brewed coffee by pouring water through a series of filters, metal and cloth, onto the coffee grounds. The system of filtering coffee produced a far smoother brew than the customary tradition of boiling the grounds and water together in a metal coffee pot.

 The coffee Biggin appeared in England about the year 1817. After the Biggin pot, there came the metal filter baskets with spreaders that would evenly distribute the coffee grounds and the water. The “water filter spreader coffee brewer” was used to spread the water evenly into the coffee while the coffee dripped through the filter.

In 1802, the metal coffee filter was patented in France. In the same year, Charles Wyatt obtained a patent in London on an apparatus for distilling coffee.

Many coffee brewing devices evolved after that. One of them was the vacuum pot, patented by Madame Vassieux of Lyons. Coffee percolators appeared around the same time. Percolator was developed in France in 1891 forced the hot water upwards through a tube, after which it dripped down through a filter or series of filters.

In 1901 Luigi Bezzera, invented the espresso machine because he wanted to make the time to brew coffee shorter, so that his employees would not spend as long on their coffee breaks.

During the 1930s, coffee makers were further revolutionized with the addition of electricity. One of the first electric coffee machines was made by Willy Brandl. The most innovative invention of the electric coffee maker was the switch that turned it off at the right time.

In 1945 Achille Gaggia developed a new type of espresso machine and spread to coffeehouses and restaurants across the rest of Europe and North America in the 1950s. By 1946 cappuccino (named after the color of the robes worn by Capuchin monks) was born. The scene was set for the growth of an edgy alternative culture based in the coffee bar.
History of coffee brewing

History of brewing

Brewing is the processes preparing beverages through steeping a starch source in water and then fermenting with yeast. The brewer begins with malted barley or another grain cereal. Malted barley is dried, sprouted or geminated barley which the brewer grinds and then heats with warm water.

Scientific and archaeological evidence, researchers strongly believe that beer was first produced in the late fourth millennium BC by the Sumerian in Southern Babylonia.

The world’s oldest recipe, written on Sumerian clay tablets is for the making beer. A number of vats also found and one of the vats contained a number of small bowls, which are said to have been used for brewing purposes. 

Brewing practices had spread to Rome during Caesar’s reign and into other parts of Europe. Brewing flourished in Egypt until the end of the eight century AD when Muslim Arabs invaded the region and the art of brewing had spread far beyond the confines of the Middle East.

A major leap forward in brewing came in the 11th century when hops were introduced to beer in Europe. Hops gave beer a more satisfying flavor. Hops have certain antibacterial qualities and with hops beer will last longer than the ancient beers.

All the beer brewed in the seventeenth century used top fermenting yeast. During the second half of the nineteenth century European breweries were experiencing a transitional phase from which the modern brewing industry emerged.

The Danish scientist Dr Emil Chr. Hansen’s method for pure cultivation of yeast, in 1883 applied for the first time at the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen.
History of brewing