Pepsi

https://lflank.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/when-pepsi-had-a-navy/ what the fuck am I reading.

In 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR, the Pepsi Company cut a deal with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev that left it with a fleet of Russian military ships, making PepsiCo temporarily the sixth-largest Navy in the world.

It went like clockwork. It was a hot July day in Moscow, and as the two toured the Exhibition, Nixon steered Krushchev towards Pepsi’s booth, where Kendall was waiting to offer him a nice cold Pepsi. As photographers flashed, the Soviet Premiere tried both the American and the Russian versions, and promptly announced that the Pepsi made with Moscow water was better. The photos of the communist Krushchev drinking capitalist Pepsi went around the world. It was an advertising coup.

One of the problems that had to be dealt with, though, was the issue of “money”. The Russian ruble was not convertible into foreign currency and was worthless outside of the USSR, and the Soviet Union had no supply of American dollars that it could pay with. So an elaborate process was worked out: the Americans would in effect barter their Pepsi products to the Russians in exchange for an equal value of Stolnichnaya Vodka (which was produced by the Soviet Government), and in turn the Pepsi Company would then have the exclusive right to sell Stoli in the USA.

The war that Pepsi really cared about, of course, was the Cola War with Coke. The new agreement once again gave Pepsi exclusive access to the Soviet market. Two Pizza Hut restaurants, owned by Pepsi, opened in Moscow, and more were planned. Things seemed good for Pepsi. Then it all ended. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and so did PepsiCo’s exclusive deal. Identified, perhaps unfairly, with the former Soviet regimes, Pepsi’s popularity within the former USSR fell, and Coca-Cola quickly moved in to dominate the new market.