DUBLIN, Texas — For Dr Pepper drinkers, this is a mecca.
Tens of thousands of people trek to tiny Dublin in north-central Texas each year to buy cases of the popular soft drink from a bottling company that uses real sugar in its flagship product. No high-fructose corn syrup in sight.
It’s been that way since 1891, when Dublin Bottling Works became the world’s first bottler of soda pop and the first to distribute the fruit- and berry-flavored carbonated drink that had debuted six years earlier at Wade Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in downtown Waco, about 80 miles to the east.
Dublin Dr Pepper is not the only soft drink that uses sugar.
PepsiCo Inc. introduced limited-edition versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew this year that did, and in some markets Coca-Cola Co. offers a kosher version of Coke using sugar that is available in the weeks preceding Passover. There’s also a simmering U.S. demand for Mexican-made Coca-Cola, which uses real sugar.
But Dublin Dr Pepper’s signature product has become a favorite of bootleggers, who resell it elsewhere, and folks from around the world who buy it in person or online. What separates it from the more widely available version is the taste, said bottling company owner Bill Kloster.
“It tastes different. It doesn’t have the aftertaste,” Ralph Cherry, a retired teacher from Waco, said recently as he sipped a drink at Old Doc’s Soda Shop, the 1950s-style Dublin Dr Pepper store where visitors can tour the plant, get a bite to eat and take home up to 20 cases of 24 cans or bottles per person.
Resourceful drink lovers have found ways to circumvent the 20-case limit, imposed some years back by Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc., the brand’s Plano-based corporate owners, to protect other bottlers.
“A lot of them bring friends,” said Lori Dodd, the company’s creative services director.
Dodd, who cites “the passion and devotion and loyalty” Dublin Dr Pepper elicits, handles requests like providing the drink for weddings and dinners and even funerals. One woman asked for, and received, four Dublin Dr Pepper bottles to hold her cremated remains — one for each of her children.
Dublin Dr Pepper sold about half a million units last year. Within its distribution area, it also sells larger bottles and boxes of syrup for use in fountains.
“It’s the taste,” said Sarah Fox, who recently detoured from Dallas-Fort Worth, about an hour and a half to the northeast, on her way back home to Lubbock to pick up three cases.
