Country of origin United States | Introduced 1916 | |
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Distributor Dr Pepper Snapple Group Related products | ||
Crush is a carbonated soft drink brand, originally marketed as an orange soda. Crush competes with Coca-Cola's Fanta. It was invented by California beverage and extract chemist Neil C. Ward. Most flavors of Crush are caffeine-free.
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History
In 1911, Clayton J. Howel, president and founder of the Orange Crush Company, partnered with Neil C. Ward and incorporated the company. Ward made the recipe for Orange Crush. Howel was not new to the soft drink business, having earlier introduced Howel’s Orange Julep. Soft drinks of the time often carried the surname of the inventor along with the product name. Howel sold the rights to use his name in conjunction with his first brand; therefore, Ward was given the honors: Crush was first premiered as Ward's Orange Crush. Originally, Orange Crush included orange pulp in the bottles, giving it a "fresh squeezed" illusion even though the pulp was added rather than remaining from squeezed oranges. Pulp has not been in the bottles for decades.
Crush was purchased by Procter & Gamble in 1980 (with the exception of the Canadian rights, which were purchased in 1984). Procter & Gamble only manufactured "bottler's base," which was a concentrate consisting of flavor and color. 1 milliliter of bottler's base was combined with syrup and carbonated water to create a 12-ounce bottle of Crush. In 1989, Cadbury Schweppes acquired Crush USA from Procter & Gamble Co. Cadbury Schweppes spun off its United States beverage business as Dr Pepper Snapple Group in 2008.
The Crush brand and trademark are currently owned by Dr Pepper Snapple Group of Plano, Texas. Crush is also popular in Canada, where it is distributed by subsidiary Canada Dry Motts. It is distributed by various Pepsi bottlers, the biggest being the Pepsi Bottling Group Canada.
Other countries where Crush is sold are Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, Lebanon, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Syria, Uruguay and at one time Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Bolivia. In some countries of Latin America the Crush brand is distributed by The Coca-Cola Company, using the same colors and bottles as Fanta.
Several flavors (Orange, Diet Orange, Grape, Strawberry, Cherry) are available at most stores throughout North America; however, others are distributed only within small markets. Pineapple Crush and Birch Beer Crush, for instance, are found in both can and single serving bottle in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and in Fort McMurray, Alberta. From 2009, changes in bottling rights allowed many of these regional flavors to be distributed by the Pepsi Bottling Group in a majority of their territory in the United States, and for PepsiAmerica to distribute Crush in most of their territory.