Who Was the Doctor Behind Dr Pepper?

Today on Weird History Food, we're getting our Ph.D. in the history of Dr. Pepper

Way back in 1885, just one year prior to the founding of Coca-Cola

Charles Alderton worked as a pharmacist at Morrison's Old Corner drugstore in Waco, Texas

When Alderton wasn't doling out morphine shots to clients, he was busy slinging sodas of all varieties

He apparently loved the way the different sodas smelled when they all mixed together into one fruity aroma

So he set out to capture that aroma in a single soda flavor. Keeping a journal of his experiments, he tested out different mixtures until he came up with one he liked

Alderton then gave some of his new concoction to the drugstore's owner, Wade Morrison

And he liked it too. So the pair decided to sell it at the soda fountain

Morrison had his business's special drink patented and changed its name to Dr. Pepper

although no one seems to know why he chose that name. It most likely comes from Morrison's former employer, Dr. Charles T. Pepper

It wasn't long after Dr. Pepper's initial introduction that other nearer, nearby soda fountain started buying up Charles Alderton's special syrup, and by the end of the

decade, Alderton and Morrison could no longer meet the high demand for their product

Enter Robert S. Lazenby, an up-and-coming beverage chemist. Laysenby was impressed by Alderton's concoction, and he suggested that Alderton and Morrison

start making Dr. Pepper at scale, which his fancy business talk for make a lot of it

But Alderton backed out insisting his place was in the pharmacy and he gave his blessing for Lazenby and Morrison to do whatever they wanted with his soft drink creation So in 1891 the two formed the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company

and Laysenby created the drink's final 23 ingredient form, the recipe for which remained secret and spread out between two separate Dallas Bank vaults to this day

In 1906, Laysenby and Morrison had made it big enough to purchase their very own bottling facility

By the end of the decade, Southern Americans identified Dr. Pepper with its self-proclaimed title of King of Beverages. In the 1950s, the company decided to change the entire brand. They dropped the period from their name, and they changed their tagline to the friendly Pepper Upper. In the early 1980s, the company became insolvent. Shortly thereafter, a group of private investors swooped in and bought Dr. Pepper outright. Seeing their chance to take out a particularly annoying competitor for good, Coca-Cola, a

attempted to buy Dr. Pepper off of these investors. At the same time, Pepsi just so happened to be bidding on 7-Up

and both sales were struck down by the FTC over concerns of monopolization

So, 7-Up and Dr. Pepper, back to being on their own, had a sort of rebound relationship and merged into one big company

Today, Dr. Pepper is bigger and better than ever before. In 2008, the company merged with Snapple to form the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group

And in 2018, that new company was bought by Currig Green Mountain to form Curig Dr. Pepper, a company worth over $40 billion