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| 08.10.04 | |
| more German stories? |
East German brand icon reborn
'Ostalgia' prompts makers of
Quick cola to put the drink back into production.
| When the former states of eastern Germany merged with
their western counterparts in 1989, many products familiar to consumers in the
communist-run state disappeared. Since then, however, wave of 'ostalgia' (nostalgia for the east, or 'ost') has grown up and many brands once familiar to eastern Germans have gone back into production. The latest of these is Quick cola, whose 25cl bottles may soon become a familiar sight to German consumers, says the newspaper Die Presse. |
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| Quick has not been made for the past 15 years, Die Presse says, but is now reappearing with exactly the same taste as before - "the taste of the east". The production site is at Calbe an der Saale, between Magdeburg and Leipzig, where a certain August Duphorn first set up a factory in 1880 to produce rum, liqueur and other alcoholic drinks. It remained a small company until 1910, when Duphorn's son Hans took over and switched production to mineral water and beer, sold locally by horse-drawn cart. Hans steered the company through both world wars before eventually handing over to the current owner, his grandchild Hans Franke. Now named Duphorn Franke, the company survived - untypically - nationalisation under the comunist regime and was re-privatised in 1990. It went on to win many fans across the states of the former GDR, though its ambition remained modest. "With seven delivery trucks and three transporters, we have to stick to a pretty defined delivery plan", the company tells Die Presse. Indeed, the company itself remains known only locally, although its Duponia brand of mineral water is familiar to a wider geographic base. The 'rebirth' of Quick cola could change all this, however. It is currenttly being promoted as a 'nostalgia drink' through specialists in products from the former East Germany - such as 'Kaufhalle des Ostens' and 'osthits.de' - at the price of €0.80 per bottle. Of course, on a wider market it will have to compete with the giants of the cola market, as well as other colas such as Vita and Club, both also from eastern Germany but since acquired by the giant Bielefeld-based Oetker group. These, so far, have had the market for 'ostalgia' colas pretty much to themselves, but Duphorn Franke says it has one advantage that they can't match. "Many east German manufacturers could not or would not use the original recipe for their product. That's not the case with Quick Cola", the company stresses. |
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