Kofola
Take a walk through the drinks aisle of any Czech supermarket and you’ll see the distinctive orange and brown packaging. More disturbing is that you’ll see it being served from the tap in many pubs. This is Kofola, a drink with many ingredients but largely combining caffeine and cola, hence the name.
Kofola in Development
As with many drinks here, the story starts with a chemist (Gustav Hell) who, in the late 19th Century, produced something called Syrupus Colae or an extract of cola seeds.
Out of Gustav Hell’s work came a company called Galena Opava formed in 1952 to make syrup based medicines and tinctures. By 1957 Galena Opava had been absorbed into an entity called the National Pharmaceutical Works under the control of the communists. An instruction was sent to this company to develop a wholly-owned Czech drinks product that could compete with cola drinks from western nations. Two years later in 1959 the recipe for Kofola had been perfected.
Kofola Post Communism
You have to imagine that Kofola was a state-owned product and as well as in shops you would find it in state institutions, factories, town halls, schools and post offices. It really was the only alternative to Pepsi and Coca Cola until 1989.
With the end of communism and the opening of the borders, Czechs found other alternatives to Kofola and the brand declined.
Step forward Kostas Samaras who in 1993 bought a factory in the Czech town of Krnov and began producing carbonated drinks. In the year 2000 Kofola was added to the products from Krnov under licence. In 2003 the original recipe and trademark were bought by the Samaras family for CZK215 Million and it is still a family-owned company.
Weird Stuff
An advert for Kofola first-aired at Christmas in 2003 became so popular that the original advert has run every Christmas holiday season since then. This is why on the packaging picture at the top of this post you can see wild pigs!
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