
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 11, 1995                   TAG: 9501110052
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SHAPELY AS EVER, COKE'S CONTAINER IS A NEW WRINKLE

It may be a plastic world, but some of the old ways are worth preserving, especially if they increase sales.

Don't believe it? Just ask the local Coca-Cola bottling company, which this week brought back the soft drink's familiar old shape, the contour bottle - only this time in plastic.

Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, the Charlotte, N.C., parent of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Roanoke, began stocking grocery store shelves this week with a new 20-ounce plastic bottle of Coke that is reminiscent of the 6.5-ounce. and 10-ounce returnable bottles of decades past.

The original green coke bottle with its long rippled contours dated to the early 1900s when the first Coke was bottled in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Coke has test-marketed the new plastic version. "Where it's been introduced in other parts of the country, it's been an incredible success," said Don Doolittle, vice president of Coca-Cola Consolidated's Virginia region.

The Coke bottle has been the subject of Andy Warhol paintings and once was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Ken Black, the bottler's general manager in Roanoke, described the original Coke bottle "the best known package since the egg."

The benefit of switching to plastic bottles of the old shape would be in making the Coke product relatively easier to recognize, said David Brinberg, chairman of the marketing department at Virginia Tech. The bottle shape is "clearly very distinctive," he said.

Randy Dooley, manager of the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of Roanoke at Hollins, said Pepsi has similar plans. Probably within six months it will switch to a plastic bottle with the swirled design of glass Pepsi bottles of the past.

Coca-Cola Consolidated turns out a limited number of the small glass bottles now, at one plant in North Carolina. Both a 6.5-ounce returnable bottle and an 8-ounce nonreturnable version are bottled there.

Coca-Cola Consolidated is the nation's second-largest Coca-Cola bottler and has operations in nine states. In Virginia, its plants are in Roanoke, Bristol, Clifton Forge, Danville, Martinsville, Dublin, Vansant, Bluefield and Norton.

by CNB