Alum Beats Odds and Coca-Cola.

February 16th, 2011

By John DiCocco

If only you could bottle perseverance.

Aviad Meitar (MBA ’86), in his new book An Unimaginable Journey: How Pepsi Beat the Odds in Romania, describes what can happen when you put your mind to something.

Meitar had just joined a new investment firm, North America Resources, in 1988, when, in mid-1990, the company handed him a daunting assignment: establish a Pepsi bottling presence in Romania. Neither the company nor Meitar knew anything about the soft drink business or Romania, but they saw an opportunity and went for it.

Technically Pepsi had been available in Romania since 1967, but distribution was limited to the elite members of the ruling Communist Party. But the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu in late 1989 opened up the market. Meitar’s group assembled a team, did their research, drew up a plan, and convinced Pepsi they could make it a go. Pepsi gave them a $25 million investment, and the soda began being bottled for the masses in January 1992.

“We encountered significant challenges from the start,” says Meitar. “Setting up a business in a remote and unknown market, just coming out of almost 50 years of communism, would have made for a large enough task. But we were also faced with a much more daunting undertaking: going against Coke. It was truly a David versus Goliath match-up. We had no experience in the beverage industry, while Coke came into the market with three very experienced bottlers. We were mired with the old remains of the Pepsi presence during the previous regime—old logo bottles, multi-color crates—while Coke came in with a squeaky clean image. We had a very small budget, while they came in with deep pockets, ready to invest more than 50 times our budget. But we stayed the course and made our venture a success.”

According to Meitar, the new company experienced 48 consecutive months of increased sales, followed by a bleak 48-month period of shrinking market share and sales. After he retooled and downsized the firm, it took off for another seven straight years of significant growth. In the process, Pepsi became the No. 1 soft drink in the nation, beating out Coke. The company was eventually sold to PepsiCo’s second largest bottler worldwide, but not before earning recognition as Bottler of the Year by PepsiCo International.

Today Meitar is chairman of Quadrant European Beverages Limited, operating as Pepsi Bulgaria, and lives with his family in Israel. To read more about him and his book, visit http://www.aviadmeitar.com. (An Unimaginable Journey, BookSurge/ $15.99; ISBN: 4781439250501)