Keurig Dr Pepper has agreed to acquire Tucson, Arizona-based Kalil Bottling as KDP continues to bolster its company-owned direct-store-delivery (DSD) operation in the western US. The announcement Friday came weeks after KDP disclosed in a Texas lawsuit that it will not renew a franchise agreement with Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling to distribute Dr Pepper products in California, effective Oct. 27, 2025. Reyes, citing California franchise laws, has asked a California judge to force a renewal unless KDP can show cause for ending the franchise arrangement. That has sent some Dr Pepper bottlers into their contracts to assess termination risk. KDP’s aggressive new stance with Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling has raised industry questions about whether more such moves are planned by KDP as part of a strategy to take back Dr Pepper territory from Coke and Pepsi bottlers. Or, is the Reyes non-renewal simply a special and opportunistic circumstance driven by geography and existing synergies?
In today’s newsletter on page 11, you’ll note the newest territory change within Coca-Cola’s US bottling system, this time in Missouri. The news gives me a chance to remind you of an important resource that we’ve just updated: The Coke and Pepsi Systems book.
Among the reference guide’s standout features are franchise territory maps covering every Coca-Cola and Pepsi system bottler in the US — 138 bottlers in all. We also provide top-10 lists of the largest US Coke and Pepsi bottlers, measured by the percentage of bottle and can volume they distribute. The book provides per capita heat maps, legacy maps of territories dating back to 1983, and maps pinpointing manufacturing plants for both systems. For those who need a crash course on the origins and evolution of the Coke and Pepsi bottling systems, we provide that, too.
I noted at the start that we just updated the Coke and Pepsi Systems book. We did that to reflect the newest Coke system territory change involving ...
