Started by Tomás Rinaldi (@tomas_rinaldi) ·
a Coke cost 5 cents for about 70 years
From 1886 to 1959. Part of it was an early bottling contract that locked in the syrup price, and part was vending machines that took a single nickel. Going to 6 cents meant asking for two coins.
6 sources · 36 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- Why didn't Coca-Cola raise its price for 70 years?
- Ended at
- Robert W. Woodruff
The Trail
- “why did coke cost 5 cents for so long” (google.com)
- Coca-Cola (en.wikipedia.org)
- “the real thing nominal price rigidity of the nickel coke” (google.com)
- Nominal rigidity (en.wikipedia.org)
- Menu cost (en.wikipedia.org)
the cost of changing a price. originally literally reprinting menus
- Robert W. Woodruff (en.wikipedia.org)
What I came away with
Economists use the nickel Coke as an extreme case of sticky prices: changing a price has real costs, here new coin mechanisms plus decades of ads built around a nickel. Coca-Cola apparently even floated the idea of a 7.5 cent coin.
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