CCOKECoca-Cola Consolidated, Inc.

Coca-Cola Consolidated bottles Coca-Cola products under licence — a bottler, not the brand owner.

The industry's division of labour works like this: the brand owner makes the concentrate and does the marketing, while the bottler buys the concentrate, fills, packages and delivers to shops in an assigned territory. It is a capital-intensive business with far thinner margins than the formula owner's.

The territory is contractually assigned and not open to competition from other bottlers of the same brand — hence predictability. Profit is set by logistics, line utilisation and the prices of aluminium, plastic and sugar rather than by brand strength, which is another company's responsibility.

Such companies were long overlooked by the market, but beverage price increases and cost discipline have visibly improved their results. The company pays a dividend and periodically makes large special distributions.