Bec Cola facts for kids
Type | Cola |
---|---|
Manufacturer | Bec Soda Inc. |
Distributor | Horizon Nature |
Country of origin | Canada |
Introduced | 2014 |
Flavour | Cola |
Bec Cola is a fizzy drink, like soda, that gets its sweet taste from real maple syrup. It is mostly sold in Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland.
How Bec Cola Started
In 2012, three friends, Olivier Dionne, Gwendal Creuer, and Kevin Creuer, had an idea. They wanted to make a soda that didn't use any fake ingredients. They noticed that many other cola drinks had lots of chemicals in them. So, they decided to create a natural soda.
It took them two years of hard work to figure out how to replace all the chemical stuff in regular cola with natural ingredients. They even worked with the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers to get their maple syrup. This new drink is made with a lot of maple syrup, about 88% of it!
Bec Soda Inc., the company that makes Bec Cola, started making the drink in August 2014. The friends invested $140,000 of their own money to get started. Just two months after it launched, the drink began to be bottled in Rougemont, Quebec.
Bec Cola's Early Success
In its first year, Bec Cola sold 50,000 bottles. By the first half of 2016, they had sold 500,000 bottles! That's a lot of cola. In June 2016, they even introduced new flavors: lime and cranberry. They made 100,000 bottles of these new flavors, and they were all sold before they even finished making them.
In March 2020, a very big company, Coca-Cola, launched its own cola drink that also used maple flavors. This was a challenge for Bec Cola, which was the main company selling maple-based cola.
What's in Bec Cola?
Bec Cola is made by Bec Soda Inc. It has several ingredients that make it taste good and fizzy. These include:
- Filtered carbonated water (that's the bubbly water)
- Organic maple syrup
- Organic beet sugar
- Citric acid (which gives it a little tartness)
- Organic caramel colour (for its brown color)
- Organic cola flavor
To make 500,000 bottles of Bec Cola, the company needs about 20 tons of maple syrup! That's a huge amount of syrup.
Where to Find Bec Cola
As of 2016, Bec Cola was sold in many places. It had 1,200 stores in Quebec, Canada, where you could buy it. It was also sold in 1,000 stores combined in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. You can also find Bec Cola in Ontario, another part of Canada.
At first, the labels on the bottles were only in French. But now, they are also printed in English so more people can understand them.