Coca Cola has an executive dedicated to McDonald's

[paxys]

In tech a customer with an annual contact value of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars will get a dedicated team of sales reps, account mangers, customer support, solutions architects, and definitely an executive point of contact. I'm sure the McDonald's-Coca Cola partnership is worth orders of magnitude more than that.

[makeitdouble]

> tens to hundreds of millions of dollars

That's usually not "a customer", it's either THE customer, or at least a strategic partner with which the company roadmap is discussed. I'm think bounds like Intel and Microsoft, or Apple and Foxconn.

[kamaal]

>>In tech a customer with an annual contact value of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars will get a dedicated team of sales reps

In many Indian outsourcing firms, they permanently place a 'program manager' at big client's offices. Like for eg- Bank of America.

These managers also get a unlimited American express card, to spend on lunches, outings etc. You are expected to build 'relationships' so that when a project is needed to be won, you are just a call away from making it happen.

This is because a good percentage of the sales, projects, staffing, profits come from these big clients.

[advisedwang]

Whenever I see "President" as a corporate title, I think "over inflated sales title to make clients feel like they are being taken serious and talking to actual leadership". I've seen "presidents" reporting to "vice-presidents"!

[parl_match]

googled it... some estimates put mcdonalds coca cola sales at over $1b usd a year

so maybe this one isnt so inflated lol

[yed]

This is a common convention in the financial sector and several others but not necessarily all industries. Companies that produce actual goods often have way less title inflation than others.

[nunez]

Very large customers will self-justify dedicated org charts to protect the revenue they bring in.

[mathgeek]

It’s layers, like an ogre. Vice presidents with multiple layers under them.

[blobbers]

Making sure coke gets sold at McDonald's is likely a huge driver of revenue.

They're in it together. McDonald's probably also wants Coke to tweak it's formula every now and then to induce hunger. They're trying to create the opposite of a GLP-1.

[morkalork]

Doubt they ever mess around with the formula since the New Coke fiasco

[rapatel0]

McDonalds has a franchise model and is in 100 markets. There are several thousand individually owned companies with various groupings of regional owners each of which needs to have delivery, logistics, costing negotiated and setup. There are also the compliance and trade aspects of being in basically every country.

Coke is a probably 90% margin product for macdonalds. Not sure i believe the 1B number. It's probably higher if you consider all the various coke products including and the juice that they sell.

Pepsi actually owns taco bell, burger king, etc which are direct competition. So the partnership with McDonalds is strategic.

It's easily worth having a top level exec.

[silisili]

At least in the US, Pepsi used to own Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and one or two others but that spun into its own company years ago(called Yum).

[arcanemachiner]

I'm guessing that whoever posted this recently listened to the Acquired podcast episode about Coca-Cola:

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/coca-cola

Great podcast BTW, lots of good stuff in the archives.

EDIT: Someone beat me to the comment, but leaving my comment here for the link.

[sbolt]

I did! The episode was great

[benrapscallion]

I came here to note the same.

[YesThatTom2]

Coke has a separate division for each continent and one of those continents is McDonald’s.

https://youtu.be/GA_OYUHYYMA?si=B-EXCoGyr9JGq87n

Coke tastes different at McDonald’s because they keep the syrup cold from the factory to the restaurant.

Why? Because it prevents the syrup from fermenting.

[joezydeco]

I worked McD in the 80s and the Coke syrup was in gallon jugs at ambient temp, then dumped into a large stainless steel holding tank at pressure. This was before bag-in-box. I've never heard of the cold temperature thing before.

My belief is that they just consume so much of it so fast that there's no time for the syrup to alter.

[FergusArgyll]

I'm assuming op just finished listening to Acquired's Coca Cola episode...

[sbolt]

Guilty as charged!

[AdmiralAsshat]

Not surprising. The old wisdom that "Coke tastes better at McDonald's" endures, and the strategic partnership is mutually beneficial for both companies.

[YesThatTom2]

Yup! https://youtu.be/GA_OYUHYYMA?si=B-EXCoGyr9JGq87n

[doe88]

How does it work? Coca-cola sells coke to a reduced price to McDonald to get the contract? Or McDonald wants to have the Coca-cola brand in its restaurants and is happy to buy coke to a premium price. I always wonder in parternership like this who is more benificial, who profits more of the brand of the other, and which one pays the other more.

[StephenHerlihyy]

McDonald's has an executive focused on beverages... which bringing it full circle is primarily Coke products.

[tptacek]

Just one?

[cl42]

Seems like this is the _President_ of the division, so sounds like there's a nontrivially-sized team to manage.

[nunez]

This is common with companies who support very large customers.

[kevinmchugh]

I went to Bentonville, Arkansas a few years ago. You'll see every major consumer packaged good company represented in the skyscrapers there, because Walmart is hq'd there. They want to have people close to Walmart, since Walmart is always a big part of their sales

[joezydeco]

I've seen a job listing from Levi Strauss to handle Kohl's Department Stores, and I've met the person at Hershey's that is the director for Target.

[OhMeadhbh]

And he's a Tech grad. Makes sense. Coke and Tech, two Atlanta institutions.

[michaelhoney]

turns out selling caffeinated sugar water is a lucrative business.

[blobbers]

something something addictive.

... but yes, I'm shocked more businesses don't try to put addictive substances into their food. Software learned from the food industry bliss point to try to use KPIs for 'engagement' aka addictiveness. Not trying to be holier than thou etc. but its some interesting stuff to consider; at the end of the day a lot of folks are trying to scramble to the top of their respective pile, and addiction is great driver of sales (gambling, food, video games, etc).

I hadn't really considered addiction as the ultimate form of marketing, but maybe it is?