Grapette is an American brand of a grape flavored soft drink. It has been in the market for about 70 years. It was first developed by Mr. Benjamin Tyndle Fooks. He created the empire of Grapette International. The drink is sold all over United States today through Wal-Mart.

Mr. Fooks used to work as a salesman earlier and he used to sell a drink called Fooks Flavors. It during this time, that he noticed the rage for grape flavored drinks. He knew that there was a lot of scope for a better grape flavored drink. Therefore he began to develop a new grape soda. After about two years and thousands of taste tests, he finally came out with an exquisite grape flavored soft drink which he believed was better than all the other grape flavored soft drinks.

Hubert Owen was Mr. Fook’s assistant. Therefore Mr. Fooks asked Owen to come up with a name for the drink. Owen ran a local contest. But this did not yield good names. So Owen went Washington D.C. and researched in the Patent Office of United States. He discovered Rube Goldstein owned a trademark for the names Grapette, Orangette and Lemonette. Since Goldstein had never used these names, Owen and Mr. Fooks journeyed to Illinois in Chicago to buy the trademarked names of Grapette, Orangette and Lemonette. They bought these names for 500$.

In 1949, Mr. Fooks bought his soft drink into the market. He started from Camden (which is located in Arkansas). Grapette had a unique packaging style. Most other drinks of that time used to sell in 12 ounce bottles. But Grapette came in small six ounce glass bottles. Since the drink came in glass bottles, it showed off the brilliant purple color of the drink. Its slogan was “Thirsty or Not”. Due to the huge success of Grapette, Mr. Fooks developed a unique Orange and Lemon soda too. He used a lot of natural lemon and orange juice in his sodas.

Grapette was one of the few drinks that survived the shortage of supplies in World War II. Mr. Fooks had to discontinue other brands like Botl-O and SunBurst but not Grapette. Looking at the tremendous success of Grapette, Mr. R. Paul May requested Mr. Benjamin Tyndle Fooks to let him market Grapette in Latin America. Grapette built a good reputation for itself over there. Soon Orangette and Lemonette too were marketed in Latin America.

Mr. Fooks later sold Grapette to Rheingold Corporation. Rheingold completely changed the packaging and the slogan of the soda and its advertising totally depended on the distributers. This led to the decline of Grapette. Rheingold was then purchased by PepsiCo; which then sold off Grapette to Monarch Beverage Company. Monarch already had a Grape soda so it fired the Grapette team. Grapette went out of market. But later in 1986, May gave the ownership to Mr. Brooks Rice. Rice sold Grapette’s flavor to Sam Walton (the owner of Wal-Mart). At first it was marketed under the name of Ozark farms. As Sam Walton died, David Glass the CEO of Wal-Mart renamed Ozark Farms as Sam’s Choice. And Grapette was again launched as Sam’s Choice Grape. This soda still contained the same original flavor of Mr. Fooks. Under the name of Sam’s Choice Grape, the drink began to grow popular again and in late 2004 it has been renamed as Grapette with the original logotypes. And therefore, the true splendor and glory of Grapette has been restored.

- Seema Khinnavar