Inka Kola

When you travel and talk to locals, sooner or later they will always ask you if you have eaten their national dish or already tried that special wine they have in their region. Exchange students in the Netherlands get stroopwafels, tourists on Crete need to taste Gyros or drink Ouzo (like we don’t have that) and Japanese businessmen in München just need to try Weisswurst. It’s no different in Peru. In the series of symbols of Peruvian national pride: Inca Kola.

So let’s think about Inka Kola. Why would someone make a beverage and call it Inka Kola? Not actually knowing anything about it, I can imagine that Peruvians feel proud to have a national brand that has a larger market share than any of the international brands that are available in the country. Coca Cola is the biggest competitor with a quarter of the market, but Inka Kola has a third. Other brands can only dream of such numbers. The name ‘Inka’ gives the brand its connotation of Peruvianity, making it almost sound as if this beverage had been in the country for thousands and thousands of years. That certainly appeals to the strong feelings of nationalism that are vivid in almost every Latin American country. In the modern globalizing world, Inka Kola can be a symbol for resisting pressures of multinational corporations with planetary dominance. This too might appeal to popular sentiment, that has fuelled the rise of the Left in many countries on the continent.

So let’s put the needle in the balloon. Even though the brand was founded in Rímac about a hundred years ago and the drink is made of Peruvian ingredients, the founder was an Englishman setting up the company with English capital. Second, about a decade ago Coca Cola bought 50% of the brand and merged its operations in Peru with the bottler of Inka Cola. So far for a national beverage resisting multinational corporations. Finally, it just tastes awful. If you ever feel like having a drink that really tastes like it was developed in some laboratory and reminds you of the most awful bubblegum you ever had, then Inka Cola is the right product for you. If the nerves to your tongue are still operational though, you will agree with me that there are few things that make Peru look worse than this drink.