A package protects, promotes, and sets a product apart. This series looks at how iconic packages took shape.

Coke bottle

• Introduced: 1916
• Design concept: the Root Glass Company
• Material: Glass

Fountains of wane: For over a decade after Coca-Cola was introduced, it never saw the inside of a bottle. First produced by John Stith Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, in 1886 as a syrup, it was named for ingredients coca leaf (cocaine was removed around 1905) and kola nut. It was sold to local soda fountains, where a soda jerk added carbonated water and served it in a glass.

In 1899, Chattanooga lawyers Joseph Whitehead and Benjamin Thomas won the rights to bottle Coke, forming the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, according to the company’s account.

Bottling cola was lucrative, and other companies began doing it too. Along with selling soda in the same standard straight-sided bottles, they chose such doppelganger brand names as Koka-Nola, Toka-Cola, and Koke.

By 1915, the company decided that the way to foil the knock-offs was to develop and patent an inimitable bottle. They sent a design brief to around 10 glass companies across the country, with a simply worded challenge for a complicated task: develop a “bottle so distinct that you would recognize it by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground.”

Ahead of the curve: When the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, got the brief, it was perhaps when searching for images of the coca plant that they stumbled on the cocoa bean, which has grooves that run along its length. They knew that the cola didn’t contain cocoa, a Coke spokesperson told Quartz in 2005, but the designers still liked the pod, and that was their inspiration as they went about making sketches for the design.

Keep reading here.—AAN

If you stopped by Google’s booth at NRF’s Big Show earlier this month, you probably had the same experience we did: a space so packed it was hard to get near the shelves! Retailers and reporters () were there to check out Google’s newly unveiled in-store tool: a camera-enabled, AI-powered shelf checker solution.

The retailer-focused AI pulls from Google’s giant database—billions of items—to identify products and shelf space, feeding retailers with real-time visibility into where restocks are needed and what shelves look like.

• If you’re envisioning a retrofitted grocery store with thousands of cameras to make this work, think again. Google says implementation is a light lift, as retailers can use visual inputs from existing ceiling-mounted cameras (such as security cameras) from a mobile phone (operated by an associate) or from a store-roaming robot (...if you have one).
• The shelf-checking AI uses two machine-learning models—a product recognizer, and a tag recognizer—to identify products and empty shelf space from “different angles and vantage points,” according to a release. So, yes, it can still identify that knocked-over box of Cheerios. And it knows you put that candy bar back in the wrong spot.

AI IRL

AI is something of a buzzword at the moment, with tools like ChatGPT and digital image generator DALL-E making headlines in just about every industry. But the managing director of retail industry solutions at Google, Amy Eschliman, says the shelf-checking AI has something the others don’t: immediate impact on the bottom line.

“Retail is, in many ways, at an inflection point with their use of AI,” Eschliman told Retail Brew at NRF. “We’re seeing retailers increasingly look towards, ‘How can I make a near-term impact with AI?’ How can I really either drive and improve customer experience, or think about my operations in a different way where I can make an impact this fiscal year?”

Keep reading here.—MA

“Brands have taken note of the [Dry January] trend in their product development and marketing, and many small businesses and restaurants have leaned into low-alcohol and alcohol-free alternatives in January and beyond,” writes Marketing Brew’s Alyssa Meyers:

Ron Alvarado, co-founder of Ficks Beverage Co., said when Dry January first came on his radar a few years ago, he assumed it was something of a Covid fad. Instead, it became “a mainstay” of the month.

Dry January cocktails became a feature on the menus of all the restaurants in hospitality group JF Restaurants’s portfolio last year.

Meanwhile, some companies in the alcohol category are gently poking fun at the trend. In a Dry January campaign for Tito’s, Martha Stewart presents some “alternative” uses for the vodka, but signs off by saying, “Ah, f*ck it, Martha needs a drink.”

Read the whole story here on Marketing Brew.

Today’s top retail reads.

Infinite possibilities: From writing personalized marketing copy to online customer service, ChatGPT may hold enormous potential for use in the fashion realm. (Business of Fashion)

Quick and easy: Designers at Fashion Week seem to be going for bite-size viral TikTok videos more and more. (Elle)

Preserve and protect: Ralph Lauren’s latest recycling program offers renewed hope for your old and otherwise forgotten cashmere sweaters. (the New York Times)

Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake?

1. A McDonald’s customer found $5,000 in cash alongside a sausage McMuffin in his drive-thru order.
2. A restaurant in Los Angeles is having its waiters compete against robots to determine who should be laid off.
3. Pizza Hut has created a 13,990-square-foot pizza, breaking the world record for the largest pizza.
4. An Illinois woman is suing Fireball Whiskey’s maker for fraud, claiming it misled customers with its Fireball Cinnamon mini bottles that don’t contain whiskey.

Keep reading for the answer.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• Hershey’s Kristen Riggs gets a taste of new responsibility
• How Cole Haan created its performance category
• What NRF participants are expecting in the coming months