Coca-Cola rethinks school contracts

By Tamara Henry, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola, weary of complaints of commercialism and peddling of unhealthy beverages to students, today will call on soft-drink bottlers to end exclusive sales deals with schools.

Jeffrey Dunn, president of Coca-Cola Americas, will outline today the company's new approach to educators. He says schools also will be given the choice of offering juices, water, tea, sugar-free and vitamin-enriched products inside Coke vending machines.

Ads will be removed from machines and replaced with "non-commercial graphics."

Soft drinks still will be available in schools, but the new approach discourages the exclusive deals many schools enter with soda bottlers that return a share of profits to the schools. As many as 240 school districts nationwide have contracts for a variety of brands, not just Coke.

Though the contracts provide needed funds to cash-strapped schools, critics attack the commercialization of schools and contribution of soda consumption to soaring obesity in young people. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., plan to introduce bills that would restrict sales of snacks and soft drinks and limit marketing in schools.

"Coke is not doing this because they think it's the right thing to do. It's a business decision based on the fact they want to stay in schools," says Andrew Hagelshaw of the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education.

Dunn estimates that Coke generates about $200 million for schools on sales that are less than 1% of Coke's U.S. market. Other soft-drink companies contribute less to schools. He says Coca-Cola will continue to return revenue from sales to support school programs.

Coca-Cola cannot dictate changes in contracts, which are with local bottlers. But Dunn says the company will strongly encourage bottlers not to require schools to sell a contractual amount of Coca-Cola products in return for support.

Laura Asman, spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Enterprises, which represents most of the bottlers, says bottlers will comply if schools stop putting out bids for exclusive contracts.

"I challenge Pepsi and Cadbury and other companies to follow suit," Dunn says.

Gerald Tirozzi of the National Association of Secondary School Principals welcomes Coke's effort. "This is a difficult situation for principals searching for dollars" for school programs, he says.