Premium-Cola
Premium-Cola is a soft drink brand founded on November 23, 2001, in Hamburg, Germany, by a collective of fans of the German brand Afri-Cola, at the time reduced in caffeine. The collective (which named itself "Interessengruppe Premium") started by running a protest campaign for more than two years against recipe changes in Afri-Cola. This well-known German brand (founded 1931) had just been bought by Mineralbrunnen Überkingen-Teinach AG in 1999, which then secretly changed the recipe: the new Afri-cola contained a reduced amount of caffeine (the original Afri-cola contained 250 mg/L ), and the rather strong taste was significantly softened, in order to meet the taste of a wider variety of customers. The protests of the "Interessengruppe Premium" led to some public awareness, but remained unsuccessful as far as Afri-cola was concerned, so they started producing the original recipe cola on their own and named it Premium-Cola. To avoid legal issues with the Mineralbrunnen AG, one ingredient was changed: phosphoric acid instead of malic acid.