The Pepsi and Coke Story

Bottle Law: Pepsi, Coke, and Their Customers:

Beverage Center Routes

Managing container returns is a major issue for soft-drink firms like Pepsi and Coke. When the bottle laws were enacted, these companies had to utilize delivery trucks to pick up empties when they made their regularly scheduled deliveries. Of course, this meant that the trucks could not carry as much product, since they had to save room for the empties.

The companies had another problem: Due to the use of an often inaccurate conversion rate, container returns were inconsistent--the standard bags that returned containers were kept in often contained fewer containers than expected. So the soft drink firms were losing money.

Hudson Baylor provided the solution. Hudson Baylor stepped in to collect returns from the soda distributors' clients, thus freeing up the trucks to distribute Pepsi and Coke products. We also solved the problem of inconsistent container returns by devising a new method for ensuring that returns are accurately counted and retailers and distributors receive payment based on these actual numbers.

Now the distributors did not have to worry about delivering empties, and Pepsi and Coke did not have to allocate warehouse space for returned containers. Our new counting method helps to streamline the accounting for deposits, and retailers can depend on our regular and timely pickups.