Big Red (soft drink) by mixing orange and lemon oils with the traditional vanilla used in other cream sodas. Big Red is produced and distributed by various independent soft drink bottlers including Keurig Dr Pepper, CCE, and Pepsi Bottling Group under license from Big Red, Inc., based in Austin, Texas. Big Red was the sixth-highest selling soft drink company in the United States from 2002–2004, after Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr Pepper/7Up, Cott and National Beverage Company. As a preeminent red creme soda in the South, it is a staple of many Juneteenth celebrations. In 2007 Big Red Ltd. was purchased by Gary Smith, with backing
No-Cal Soda No-Cal Soda No-Cal was the first zero-calorie soda. Marketed to diabetics, not dieters, in a number of flavors, the most popular being black cherry. Hyman Kirsch and his son Morris, both Russian immigrants living in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, began selling sodas in 1904. Their involvement with the Jewish Sanitarium for Chronic Disease (now known as Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center), led them to the invention of a sugar-free drink to meet the needs of the hospital’s diabetic patients. Hyman and Morris developed a line of carbonated, sugar-free, zero-calorie soft drinks which they called No-Cal, that they began