Kofola is a Czech non-alcoholic drink of the cola type and also the name of a group that produces other brands in Czechia and neighbouring states. Hospodářské noviny ranks it among the most important producers of non-alcoholic drinks in Europe.[2]
Origin of the drink
Czech Radio recalls that in the 1960s people could buy only red raspberry soda or yellow lemonade. Cola drinks were expensive and hard to obtain. An instruction therefore arrived at the Výzkumný ústav léčivých rostlin in Prague to create a socialist counterpart of foreign caffeinated cola drinks, using domestic raw materials or those imported from friendly countries.[3]
The assignment went to the institute's director Zdeněk Blažek, who invited the young technologist Jaroslav Knap. They agreed on a joint procedure in 1959, when the two met in Karlovy Vary at a congress of pharmacists. Blažek was to prepare the recipe and Knap to produce the drink. Blažek mixed a sweet-sour syrup of several ingredients called Kofo, on the basis of which Kofokola arose. The name was too long and threatened trademark problems, so it was shortened to kofola.[3]
Recipe and production
According to the radio, the exact composition is known to only five people, and the recipe is stored in several places, including an electronic form. It consists of fourteen items; the basis is raspberry syrup, to which are added leaves of three kinds of shrubs and plants (blackberry, strawberry, raspberry), cinnamon, liquorice, caramel, dried orange peel and extracts of apples, cherries and currants. The logo originally derived from the symbol of a coffee bean; today a liquorice leaf stands in its place.[3]
The radio gives further details. Kofola contains about a third less sugar than Coca-Cola and up to half less caffeine, and it contains no phosphoric acid. For production, herbs and orange peels were collected throughout the country. Demand was so high that at the end of the 1960s herbs ran out in Czechoslovakia and had to be imported. Soot from the chimney of coffee roasteries in Vysočany, from which this substance was extracted, sometimes served as a domestic source of caffeine.[3]
The Kofola group
According to Hospodářské noviny, the group has seven production plants located in five countries: Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. More than 2,100 people work for it, around 700 of them in Czechia. Besides Kofola it offers the brand Jupí (fruit drinks and syrups), Jupík for children and the energy drink Semtex, as well as Vinea, Chito, Top Topic and Citro Cola. It acquired the Polish company Premium Rosa, which makes fruit and herbal products, in 2017.[2]
On its website the company mentions an advertising campaign with a dog with an overbite and a lisp, which won the Golden Effie award in Czechia and Slovakia. Its shares were listed on the Prague stock exchange, and employees could become shareholders. The Slovenian mineral water producer Radenska joined the group, and the company began exclusively distributing Rauch products in Czechia and Slovakia. Kofola and Jupí were declared the most trusted brands in their categories on the Czech market.[1]
Acquisition of Leros
Hospodářské noviny reported that the group announced the takeover of the whole Czech producer of herbal teas Leros, with all its production capacities and more than ninety employees. The parties kept the price to themselves. Leros builds on the forty-year tradition of the state enterprise Léčivé rostliny Zbraslav, founded in the 1950s, which under the original name Kofole supplied herbs for the production of the drink.[2]