In this age of branding, big ad campaigns and celebrity endorsements, an extreme lack of advertising has left tap water vulnerable to aggressive competitors like Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola began their battle plan against tap water in an article on one of it’s Web sites that headlined, "The Olive Garden Targets Tap Water and Wins," targeted at restaurants selling the company’s fountain drinks. The article featured Coke’s anti-water campaign for the Olive Garden chain as a "success story" for others to follow.

The article went unnoticed for about three years and upon discovery Coca-Cola decided to take the entire site down. A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola said that Coca-Cola was concerned that the consumers might misinterpret the site.

Even though water is needed to sustain life, it is looked upon to many casual dining restaurant chains as a dull dining experience for the customer. Since several customers drink tap water simply because they have done it in the past, not because they necessarily enjoy it, some restaurant chains are training their staff to offer alternatives to tap water such as soft-drinks and non-carbonated beverages to increase customer satisfaction.

The Olive Garden’s goal was to get their customers to abandon their choice of tap water and experience other beverage choices to improve their dining experience. The Olive Garden then brought their beverage plan to Coca-Cola, which accepted the challenge and referred to the plan as H2NO, a tap water reduction program.

H2NO consisted of an education kit containing beverage suggestion selling tactics that promoted sales of soft drinks, non-carbonated and alcoholic beverages. This program matched exactly what the Olive Garden envisioned. Also, overall check averages increased which equaled more cash in the wait staff’s pockets.

Olive Garden restaurants liked the program so much they took it to the next level by scheduling monthly skill training sessions and creating incentive contests for the employees when they sold any beverage alternatives to tap water. Prizes included Coca-Cola merchandise and all-expense-paid trips to Atlanta.

After the contest was over, almost all Olive Garden restaurants experienced a significant increase in beverage sales and a reduction in tap water incidence.

Another study found that consumers chose tap water because they weren’t given any other choice of beverages. Another anti-water strategy, the conversion strategy, centers on encouraging servers to make customers more aware of their beverage options.

New York Times September 1, 2001

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

As every schoolchild knows, the ingredients of Coca-Cola are one of the world’s best-kept secrets. In order to protect the mystique of The Real Thing, even subcontractors who bottle the stuff are kept in the dark, however their bottled water, Dasani, is The Real Thing. It is pure and simple tap water. To be fair to Coca-Cola, their water is cleaned as it is first passed through three filters intended to extract particles, organic debris and chlorine before a final reverse osmosis stage. Don’t let this fool you. If you are going to pay the price for bottled water, you might as well get bottled spring water, not the filtered tap water Coke is selling called Dasani. Because it is a major challenge for the environment, bottled water is definitely not the best long-term choice. I came up with the solution of purchasing a quart Lexan bottle. This virtually indestructible plastic container is available in a variety of colors and is sold in nearly all camping or sports stores. I take it and fill it with clean filtered water from home and bring it to restaurants with me. The Nalgene bottles are far superior to using recycled bottles because they have a wide cap, which allows you to regularly clean it and keep it from becoming contaminated with mold that happens on a regular basis when you use disposable water bottles. Related Articles: Is Your Bottled Water Really Clean? Bottled Water Report Americans Don't Drink Enough Water Warning! That Glass of Drinking Water Is Recycled Drugs In Our Drinking Water and Rivers America’s Water Resources are Under Attack!