if we ask what you think of when we say the name Jones you'd probably say something like James Earl or Indiana Indiana Jones but if you were thirsty you might think of Joan soda the craft soda that once seemed to be all the rage and then suddenly wasn't so what happened to those colorful little bottles well today we're popping the cap on whatever happened at Joan soda before we get started be sure to subscribe to the weird history Food Channel after that please leave a comment and let us know what other soft drinks you would
like to hear about okay this one is a limited edition so get it before it goes on eBay that's a good [Music] soda confusing though it may be a craft soda is not a soda made by The Craft Company or mac and cheese flavored soda although someone should get on that manufacturers of craft soda tend to be smaller sometimes even local businesses and they can't be affiliated with or owned by a major soda producer or they're not really craft sodas such soft drinks are typically made in small quantities and usually from natural ingredients they're manufacturers
oftenest choose sweeteners like sugar and high fructose corn syrup in favor of more creative flavorings all of that tends to make craft sodas costlier to make and more expensive to buy but customers who have a taste for such beverages don't seem to mind paying the higher prices because they believe it gets them a higher quality soda some of the most successful brands of craft sodas include Dr Browns Captain Eli sper boiler and of course Joan soda like Ryan Reynolds maple syrup and moose attacks Joan soda comes from Canada more specifically Vancouver British Columbia the company
was founded in 1995 by Peter Van stoke the name seems to be a reference to the slang term Jones meaning a strong desire or craving for something as in I'm really jonesing for a soda right about now the original vision for Jones Soda came from Van Stoke and photographer designer Victor John Penner who were looking to create an alternative to sodas like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and we assume make a few nickels in the process their creation hit shelves in 1996 and was first available in six flavors orange cherry lemon lime strawberry lime raspberry and grape
when it came to the product's image and marketing the original idea was to decorate the bottle with random photos taken by Penner but shortly after it launched the company began to be inundated by photos taken by customers who HED to see their own work on the bottles Ben Stoke quickly realized the value in what the company calls user sourced participation and soon they began featuring and submitted photos on the packaging labels in 1999 they even launched a then pioneering program called my Jones which allowed consumers to customize their bottles with their own pictures and messages
customers love the idea and the company quickly received over a million User submitted photos by 1999 over 85% of the company's revenues were coming from the soda in the beginning Janes soda started out small real small using what they called an alternative distribution strategy the company built its reputation by selling selling its beverages in places like record stores tattoo and piercing parlors clothing shops and sporting good stores but then in 2003 Jones made Headlines by releasing a limited edition turkey and gravy soda around Thanksgiving the unusual flavor completely sold out in less than 2 hours
that's actually not bad really I would take this over alcohol any day in fact it was such a success Jones would begin releasing weird holiday flavors and special limited edition sodas on a regular basis for example Jones had celebrated Halloween by releasing flavors like zombie juice which tastes like green apples blood sucker which is strawberry lime and werewolf piss which actually tastes like orange chocolate wait the soda or the P there's also s'more soda as well as key lime pie soda green bean casserole soda salmon pate soda and if that's not wacky enough for you
they also make sodas that taste like perspiration dirt and an acid like a boot leer at Hogwarts these flavors frequently sell out and become collector's items they're often ransomed on secondary markets like eBay for way way more than they're originally worth making Jon soda somewhat like the Beanie Babies of carbonated beverages the incredible success of Jones would soon catch the attention of some of the biggest corporate players in the beverage Market as we mentioned earlier a craft soda technically can't be made by a big Corporation but that doesn't mean it can't be distributed by one
and in 2004 Jones hooked up with the good people at Starbucks who apparently felt they needed yet another form of caffeine to sell their customers Jones Soda became available in nearly 4,000 Starbucks locations but that wasn't the only corporate partner they picked up because at the same time Jones made a deal with Target making the mega retail chain the exclusive distributor of their first ever line of canned sodas prior to this Jones was only available in colorful 12 O glass bottles that came with quirky fortunes written on the underside of bottle caps there were no
cans of Jones and Jones didn't flow from any tooda fountains in 2007 Jones became the official beverage of the Seattle Seahawks it's a bigger deal than you think because prior to that no NFL team had ever signed an exclusive beverage contract with any soft drink other than Coke for Pepsi and in 2008 both Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air started serving Jones Soda on their flights given all that you'd think Jones would be exploding like an overshake can of Duff and that was true for a while ail by the mids Joan SoDo was a media darling
success story making somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million a year in Revenue but then like a bottle of uncapped soda it went flat in 2007 the company lost nearly 12 million and in 2008 lost another $15 million and had to downsize its Workforce by a walloping 40% the struggles faced by the once rising star of bottled soda were the result of two factors the first was the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008 a worldwide economic depression put Millions out of work and like many other businesses Jones felt the sting as for the second Factor
well remember when we said Jones started selling their soda and cans they made that move because they were hoping it would help them compete with the big boys of their industry Coke and Pepsi instead it drove the company into a hole of debt it couldn't climb out of between 2007 and 2016 Jones Soda wouldn't have a single profitable year despite going through CEOs like relief pitchers in 2009 Jones partnered up with Bethesda softworks maker of the massively successful Fallout video game series to release nuc cacola and in 2010 they Inked a deal that finally made
the soda available in Walmarts across the country but the collaborations didn't seem to help in fact all those Partnerships might have been at the root of the problem according to former CEO Jennifer Q the success went to the company's head and it simply lost its Edge in her words we got two corporate we launched a lot of different products along the way and we lost our focus on jum soda getting too corporate is obviously going to be a problem for a company whose slogan is run with the little guy create some change for example one
problem Q cited was that she felt the company had started spending way too much on things like marketing and advertising whatever the case 10 years in the red didn't leave anyone feeling too bubbly about the future of Joan soda I declare bankruptcy after 34 consecutive Financial quarters spent flushing money down a toilet the company finally made it back into the black in the last quarter of 2015 the change was mostly a result of cuts made by Q which included reducing spending on advertising and marketing as well as drastic reductions in the salaries of the entire
board of directors including her own obviously Cuts will only do so much good if the company doesn't start earning a profit but in this case those cuts set the stage for a tasty Miracle because in the first quarter of 2016 Jan soda increased their sales volume in Revenue enough to actually make some money for the first time in years it was a modest profit of just $49,000 but after a decade of disappointing sales it was a cause for celebration according to Q the renewed success came from RE prioritizing their customers the company's website revamped in
a way that made it much easier for consumers to buy products and interact with Jan soda like they had been able to way back in the beginning and more recently the company has been selling its wees through wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam's Club they're also still doing their much-loved special releases which still generate a good amount of excitement each time a new one is announced the updated Jones product line now includes sugar-free sodas energy drinks juices and even enhanced water they've also experimented with new soda products like Mary Jones a cannabis infused soda that's
generated its fair share of controversy while Jones hasn't quite returned to the Apex of its success it has returned to profitability Under New Management in fact in 2021 the company reported revenues of nearly $15 million and that despite an overall dip in the soda Market unlike its large corporate competitors sales of craft sodas like Jones are currently up maybe it's because current CEO Mark Murray used to work for craft just make the mac and cheese soda already Jones you know you want to so what do you think what's your favorite Jon soda let us know
in the comments below and while you're at it check out some of these other weird history food videos [Music]
