Tap water part 2: H2NO

These days Coke is reaping huge profits from selling tap water (which they process and then label "Dasani").  But that doesn't mean they want you drinking it.  A few years ago a Coke "tap water reduction campaign" surfaced, with the snappy moniker of H2NO.  It was designed to overcome the alarming "high water incidence rate" suffered by restaurants--in particular, the Olive Garden.  But let's let Coke pick up the story with this excerpt from its (now-removed) H2NO web pages:

H2NO is a crew education kit containing information about beverage suggestive selling techniques (a technique used when a server suggests a profitable beverage in place of water to the customer during the ordering process). It matched perfectly with what Olive Garden had envisioned. Restaurant managers and servers use the kit to emphasize the wide range of beverage selections available, including soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages and alcohol. As a side effect, overall check averages should increase, and remember, increased check averages mean higher profits for the restaurant and more cash in servers' pockets.

Not that anything so crass as "higher profits for the restaurant and more cash in servers' pockets" was the goal, of course--that was just a side effect (and of course another side effect that Coke somehow neglected to mention is higher profits for Coke itself).  Rather, the H2NO program was fueled by a selfless desire by Coke and restaurant chains to save us all from a drab, dull dining experience fueled by our own failure to grasp the exciting world of potables outside our own plodding daily existence:

Water. It's necessary to sustain life, but to many Casual Dining restaurant chains it contributes to a dull dining experience for the customer. Many customers choose tap water not because they enjoy it, but because it is what they always have drunk in the past.

And it was a resounding success!

Almost all participating restaurants realized significant increases in beverage sales and reduced levels of tap water incidence - a strong indication that Olive Garden restaurants succeeded in enhancing the customer's dining experience.

Doesn't it make you feel all gooey inside to know that Coke is so concerned about the quality of your dining experience?

(More information here.)

My own soft drink story: for most of my life, I was addicted to soft drinks and their oral dose of caffeine.  Literally: if I hadn't had one by about 1pm, I'd start getting a brutal caffeine withdrawal headache.  No matter where I was or what I was doing--on a trip, on a hike, camping, anywhere--I'd have to make sure that I'd had my daily hit before too long after noon, or there'd be hell to pay.  I actually brought caffeine pills with me on one vacation just in case I couldn't get my fix, so it wouldn't end up ruining the trip.

Then one day I took stock of this situation.  I was drinking a beverage that's nothing more than a can of sugar, but which was sold at a higher price per gallon than gasoline.  Huge, murderous corporations were spiking this sugar water with an addictive drug in order to make me physically dependent on it.  As a side benefit, in addition to destroying my teeth it was turning them from a garish white to a much more natural earth tone.  And if I'd kept at it long enough maybe I could have managed to put on a few dozen pounds and get diabetes too.

That was it.  I quit soft drinks cold turkey, suffered through the week-long withdrawal headache, and I was finally clean.  I've been drinking water instead of soda ever since.  Take that, Coke.

Comments

[Save the Oocytes]

My mother always bought caffeine-free soft drinks, so I never had that problem. I don't drink anything manufactured by Coke anymore, but I still haven't quit the soda pop. Maybe it's because I crave sugar.

[John Caruso]

I still like my sugar, but I have it in dessert form, preferably delivered via nutella.

[Thomas Daulton]

I was going to post this on my own site eventually, but now that you mention it: I have a scan of the label of one of those "zero calorie fruit flavored water" bottles, I forget the brand. The label jauntily asks us, "Are you looking for the benefits of water, but don't want to give up taste?"

Contemplating the idea that that advertising message might actually resonate with any significant number of Americans, I swear I was _that_ close to sticking a pistol in my mouth, I just didn't pull the trigger... brought me back immediately to the plot of the film, Idiocracy, where a company obviously meant to satirize Gatorade, is only a few steps away from destroying the world...