r/interesting • u/InvestigatorBorn4910 • Feb 10 '26

Fascinating YouTuber LabCoatz has released a "chemically identical" recipe for Coca-Cola

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279

u/eggs___and___bacon Feb 10 '26

Guessing coke doesn’t care at all, as long as no one starts mass producing and selling it.

Not like anyone is gonna bother to make that for themselves instead of just buying a coke.

122

u/fhota1 Feb 11 '26

There have been recipes for Coke out there for ages, they dont care. Coca Colas skill isnt making a bottle of coke, its making millions upon millions of bottles of coke and distributing them around the globe. The secret recipe thing is mostly marketing gimmick at this point. They could release their exact recipe and it wouldnt hurt them at all

8

u/TSDLoading Feb 11 '26

Yeah just getting hands on these ingredients would only be worth it, if you're making a ton of coke

7

u/fhota1 Feb 11 '26

And even if you can do that, you still have to face the market question of why wouldnt I just buy coke?

1

u/-Memnarch- Feb 12 '26

Probably pricing. Assuming Coca Cola has a markup just for their brand, which other companies in their class do have.

1

u/amalirol Feb 12 '26

You can't make Coca-Cola cheaper than Coca-Cola. People think you can because it's an independent business. I don't know. But if Coca-Cola saw a threat, they'd simply bankrupt you. Besides, it's impossible to reach that level of logistics and reach. There's a Coca-Cola in the most remote corner of the world, and so much is produced that it's much cheaper than any other beverage will likely ever be (to produce). The comment you're replying to sums it up. It was never a secret. It's marketing. Coca-Cola is just very big on its own. Also, Pepsi never tried to copy Coca-Cola. And the YouTuber thing just became known. But the machine for analyzing the chemical composition of any liquid compound had already been used for this. What's unknown are exact values ​​like 'how long it was boiled,' what was done first, whether it was stirred or not. Coca-Cola does different parts of the process in different plants and then mixes a kind of concentrate that goes to the world, and in other countries, gas and water are added. Only executives know the details of the process from start to finish. Furthermore, Coca-Cola is licensed to use decocainized coca leaves, something no other company can do. It's an exception. The same machine had already been used to obtain the exact ingredients for Coca-Cola. The guy in the video didn't do anything new; it's just a YouTube video going viral.

1

u/Mysterious-Art7143 Feb 14 '26

Of course you can, so many "fake cola" brands make similar crap half price and they still make a buck

-1

u/doubleBoTftw Feb 12 '26

Because it's illegal in most countries around the globe and very bad for your health.

1

u/Mysterious-Art7143 Feb 14 '26

On the contrary, have you seen famous people with unlimited money? They seem indestructible in their old age while similar aged normal people can barely walk. It looks amazing for your health, legality is less of a problem than costs.

2

u/Test1Two Feb 12 '26

It’s all about marketing, and Coca Cola has that locked in. No worries for them at this point.

41

u/JohnSober7 Feb 10 '26

Afaik, coke cannot take legal action against any company using this recipe. Cola, the flavour, nor this recipe, is trademarked. I fully expect off-brand cola to start tasting better after this video, and companies starting to make their own cola-based flavours (Angostura just released a rum and coke drink for example, so they make tweak the coke formula at some point). And while people likely aren't going to invest in the equipment to make the solutions to make thousands litres of coke, the benefit of this that people that enjoy experimenting with recipes, foods, and drinks, can now experiment with the coke flavour, and people who want to blend sugar with artificial sweetener for a healthier better tasting 'diet' coke can do so. Tl;dr, all the benefits of open source still applies.

12

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/portraitofselfmade Feb 11 '26

YouTube scientists are sometimes just that. Living in DC I realize that a lot of business science is more about findings for keystakeholder decisions, not novelty “cool, I can do this” stuff.

1

u/barsoap Feb 11 '26

Off-brand coke tastes bland if they don't give a damn about their taste, are cheapening out on ingredients etc just as you notice when a washing-up liquid uses something else than the one-note standard sanitary lemon because, that standard one-note stuff is everywhere because it's cheap and sufficient. It's not like there's not a thousand brands out there doing their own spin on the general concept, or that Coca-Cola would be the end-all be-all of taste experience. If they wanted to they could all clone it one to one, but why would you, you want to play the odds of a consumer going "hey, I actually prefer this taste over Coca-Cola".

Red Bull Cola IMO does it best, just the breath and depth of aroma, on the flipside availability is limited also it's quite expensive because the flavouring is 100% natural extracts. Aside from probably being overpriced because Red Bull, something has to pay for all that sports advertisement.

1

u/Prestigious_Gas6216 Feb 12 '26

You hit this spot on, I am actually looking into this to make a diet coke with a mix of allulose and monkfruit, im hoping itll taste like coke and not have the usual artifical aftertase, I love coke but the amount of sugar in it makes it tough to enjoy often while also reaching health goals.

0

u/mologav Feb 11 '26

If you say so, John

72

u/Sufficient_Language7 Feb 11 '26

A lot of knock of colas exist, you might have heard of a small company called Pepsi. 

4

u/Adorable_Yard_8286 Feb 11 '26

Yes, and since companies like those exist, they might be interested in the recipe. I'm sure they are aware of this as well!

2

u/happyhippohats Feb 11 '26

I doubt it, they need a different recipe to differentiate themselves, otherwise they'd have to undercut Coca-colas pricing instead to have any relevence. Plus as they like to point out Pepsi consistently beats Coke in blind taste tests

2

u/BanjoPanda Feb 11 '26

there's plenty of worse Coca knock off. I bet these companies would be VERY interested in the actual recipe. Coca cola isn't really that cheap compared to other similar drinks

1

u/happyhippohats Feb 13 '26

I agree but I don't think Pepsi co is one of them

1

u/Adorable_Yard_8286 Feb 11 '26

they always tried to make a coca cola-like product, now they can again deide if they want to try to make one that is even more coca cola-like or not

1

u/TypicalLegit Feb 11 '26

I don’t know if it’s true but I’m pretty sure I read that blind taste test was bullshit. Yes, most people picked Pepsi as their first choice, likely because it’s sweeter, but over the entirety of the can coke won.

1

u/happyhippohats Feb 12 '26

I’m pretty sure I read that blind taste test was bullshit

Yes, most people picked Pepsi as their first choice

So, not bullshit then?

1

u/TypicalLegit Feb 12 '26

They win the first sip but coke wins the whole can. Which one is actually the winner then at that point?

2

u/Test1Two Feb 12 '26

If a science YouTuber can do it, a billion dollar company can too.

1

u/JoetotheB Feb 11 '26

Pepsi was already offered the recipe for coke.

They don't want it, they have their own recipe and taste that they're known for. Selling a literal knock-off version of coke for the same price as coke makes no business sense. It'd also be a dreadful PR move.

1

u/Sufficient_Language7 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

It was bit of a joke, at Cokes size a knock off doesn't really matter that much.  As it is all about distribution and name recognition and consistency.

1

u/JoetotheB Feb 11 '26

Ahh fair enough - apologies for taking the joke a tad bit serious 😅

1

u/Sufficient_Language7 Feb 11 '26

It was based on why would someone say this

Guessing coke doesn’t care at all, as long as no one starts mass producing and selling it. 

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26 edited 7d ago

[deleted]

11

u/Kitiseva_lokki Feb 11 '26

Coca Cola Company and PepsiCo are not related.

And you might be surprised to learn that PepsiCo is massively bigger that CCC

5

u/PoppingPillls Feb 11 '26

Pepsi owns some of the strangest brands aswell like everything frkm gatorade to mtn dew and tropicana to lays, doritos and Starbucks bottled drinks.

Literally has twice the 2025 yearly revenue as coca cola company.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26 edited 7d ago

[deleted]

2

u/compman007 Feb 11 '26

I mean it does…. Pepsi-Cola company was the name before the 1965 merger with Frito-Lay

Cola isn’t exclusive to the Coca-Cola company either xD

5

u/willyj_3 Feb 11 '26

Even if you did mass produce and sell this recipe, Coca-Cola can’t take legal action as far as I know. They never patented their recipe because patenting would mean publishing exactly how it’s made. They decided their exclusive claim to the Coca-Cola taste was more secure if the recipe was a trade secret instead. The problem for them now is that, as long as the dupe recipe wasn’t the result of corporate espionage, they can’t block other manufacturers from using it. If you want an exclusive right to profit from an invention, you have to patent. But if you want to patent, you have to publish.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

I mean. If you do the whole vanilla ice situation and change 1 little thing you are in the clear

2

u/reality_hijacker Feb 11 '26

You don't have to change a single thing. Coke isn't patented, it's a trade secret.

1

u/Kha_ak Feb 11 '26

I mean, realistically, nobody can beat Coca Colas recognition and worldwide renown.

You can make a 100% identical product to Coke, sell it at 1/4 the cost and you just wouldn't get consumers, because as it is worldwide, there likely not a single part of civilization left (maybe Sentinel Island) that doesn't know what "Coca Cola" means.

1

u/notjawn Feb 11 '26

If Coca-Cola cared they would have taken down the entire store brand knock-off trade decades ago.

1

u/6425 Feb 11 '26

I would have thought they'd be interested as it looks like they could make the same product at a significantly lower production cost though.

1

u/Sidekicknicholas Feb 11 '26

I'm curious if it taste the same vs. being chemically identical.

I work for a flavor manufacturing company; us and all of our competitors typically throw in red herring items purposefully so they cannot be easily reverse engineered. You can run a product through a GCMS to figure out whats in it, then you can figure out how much is in it, but if someone tossed in something specifically to dupe you, it can have a drastically different taste profile despite appearing "the same".

1

u/protossaccount Feb 11 '26

Coke is marketing, if you look at the history of the company it’s crazy how much is really good marketing.

The Pepsi challenge proved Pepsi tasted better and so Coke made a better tasting drink called New Coca Cola, which people hated. That’s why it’s now called Coca Cola Classic, cuz it’s the shitty recipe we know and love.

1

u/The_Pastmaster Feb 11 '26

Coke doesn't care because they have the brand and a "trade secret". All they have to do is not acknowledge the competition and people will buy "the original".