Marchand bottler buys Pic-a-Pop retro soda

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This article was published 12/12/2014 (3935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pic-a-Pop is back. Again.

The retro soda brand, which originated in Winnipeg in 1971, went out of business in 1996 amid heavy competition from grocery stores and was brought back to life in 2005 before vanishing for a second time four years later, will be back on store shelves by the weekend.

Canadian Gold Beverages Inc., a bottler of water products in Marchand, has purchased the brand for an undisclosed sum.

Peter De Jong, owner of Canadian Gold, said five of Pic-a-Pop’s flavours are already in production — root beer, lime, cream soda, blue razzberry and grape.

Canadian Gold did a test run of Pic-a-Pop at the end of October and it sold out in less than a week at a number of local retailers, including Red River Co-op grocery stores.

If things go as well as hoped, orange and black cherry will be added in March as well as two flavours chosen by Pic-a-Pop patrons.

“People can phone in with which one they’d like. We have 20 formulas. We don’t know what the last two are going to be,” De Jong said, adding it will also be sold in Giant Tiger and Food Fare stores.

Pic-a-Pop had carved out a niche after its rebirth but it disappeared in 2009 after its bottler, Angostura Canada, shut down its Winnipeg plant four years ago.

Part of De Jong’s motivation to buy Pic-a-Pop was to diversify his business. Canadian Gold saw its water exports to Qatar and Dubai collapse recently due to political events.

“People aren’t buying Canadian Gold products over there anymore. It’s very political. We found it’s better to have a neutral name like Pic-a-Pop,” he said.

Bart Hruda, who resurrected Pic-a-Pop the first time, said he had mixed feelings about selling the company to De Jong.

” Any time you start a business, it’s a labour of love,” he said.

Hruda, a native Manitoban, has lived in Ottawa for the last several years.

His wife is a civil servant while he works in business development for Sugar Mountain candy stores.

De Jong will no doubt be counting on children of the ’70s looking to reclaim their youth to spur sales, but the experience won’t be 100 per cent the same. For example, Pic-a-Pop was a discount brand when it started, but it’s now positioned as a premium product selling for between 99 cents and $1.50 per bottle. You won’t need a bottle opener now either, as the metal cap has been replaced with a plastic one.

Canadian Gold makes its own branded sparkling, still and lemon water and it also does a brisk private-label business. It ships across Canada, the U.S. and overseas.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca