I spent 33 years working for The Coca-Cola Company. I fully retired in 2020. I had an amazing and incredible career with Coke. They sent me all over the world on different projects and jobs. I was an expat for almost 10 years living overseas directly out of college. Below are just some of the things that I did during my 33 years. I hope you enjoy experiencing Coca-Cola through my eyes starting out as a young engineer at 20 years old until I retired at 53.
INTERN / CO-OP. (1987 – 1990)
I started my work as an intern/co-op while I was still at Georgia Tech studying engineering. I worked for Coca-Cola USA Engineering in their Fountain Department. My first ever business trip was to Oshkosh Wisconsin Airshow where we showed off new fountain dispensing equipment. My last year I became the chief engineer for fountain dispensing at the World of Coca-Cola museum located at Underground Atlanta and included the “Tastes of the World” and the “Shooting Fountain” exhibits. Below are pictures taken during the Grand Opening of the Museum in 1990.
GERMANY / EUROPE / AFRICA (1991-1996)
I was asked to move to Coca-Cola Germany and moved to ESSEN to help Germany expand their Coca-Cola business. The Berlin Wall had recently come down and West and East Germany were reuniting. I moved to Germany in 1991 as the youngest EXPAT ever at Coca-Cola. I was only 23 years old. After 2 years of working for Coca-Cola Deutschland GmbH, I transferred to a new department called the Global Development Center – Europe. Despite my boss being located in Brussels, Coca-Cola kept me in Essen for 3 additional years. In that time was was traveling all of Africa and Europe designing new Coca-Cola Glass Door Coolers that didn’t use electricity (they used paraffin wax) and also helped roll out REFPET (Refillable PET) bottling lines across Europe. Other notable projects I worked during this time on was the conversion of the older Figal (5 gal) system containers over to the much more efficient KEG container system with one of the largest bottlers in Germany located in Frankfurt. My first ever company car was the puke green Mercedes Benz pictured below. I didn’t mind the color – I was happy I was given a car. During my last 2 years – I went to night school and successfully completed my MBA Degree. (Master of Business Administration).
INTERNATIONAL AUDIT (1996-1997)
During my 5 years in Germany, I met and became good friends with many of the INTERNAL AUDIT members who came to Germany to review all expenses and finances that were flowing into East Germany. I was jealous of their traveling jobs and pursued joining their team. With my luck, The Chief of Internal Audit invited me to join without having a true CFA (Certified Public Accountant) degree. She thought she would send me to all of our concentrate plants around the world to look at engineering efficiencies. In the meantime, I would learn on the fly from the other auditors and I quickly grew up in the ranks. This job entailed 100% travel and I ended up living out of 2 suitcases for over 700+ days. I was sent all over the world some of which included, Drogheda-Ireland, Casablanca-Morroco, Signe-France, Amsterdam-Netherlands, San Juan-Puerto Rico, Rio de Janiero-Brazil, Vladivostok-Russia, St. Petersburg & Moscow-Russia, Lima & Cuzco-Peru, Johannesburg-South Africa, Maputo-Kingdom of Swaziland and Harare, Zimbabwe. These audits were generally 2-4 weeks with some lasting 2 months. This was before digital cameras so here are just a few of my pics during that time. I need to scan more.
COCA-COLA IRELAND / BALLINA BEVERAGES (1997-2000)
In 1997 I moved to both Dublin and Ballina (Co. Mayo) on the west coast of Ireland. Coca-Cola had decided to build their largest ever plant. It was a capital project of more than $340 Million ($661MM in 2025 money) The plant was supposed to be a fully automated lights out concentrate factory with minimal people. Due to my engineering background and my recent audit experience, I became both the Finance Manager and Controller of the project. This put me directly responsible for $70 Million in operating expenses and the $340 Million in Capital Expenses. As the first team member to arrive – I moved to Ireland to a greenfield site while there were still cows on the property. I had to set up everything from scratch. To this day, this remains the largest concentrate plant Coca-Cola has ever constructed and it pumps out almost HALF of the world’s Coca-Cola concentrate supply today.
SABBATICAL (2000-2001)
After I left Ireland in 2000 – I decided to take a 1.5 year sabbatical and solo backpack around the SE Asia & Pacific. I spent almost 20 months traveling through Australia, New Zealand, India, Nepal (hiked to Everest Basecamp), Singapore, Brunei, Borneo, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, China, and finally Tibet. I crossed back into Nepal on Sept 11, 2001 just as the World Trade Center towers were falling. Here are just a few of those pictures. This was my first ever digital camera.
USA ENGINEERING (2001-2006)
After traveling around the world – I rejoined Coca-Cola in their USA Engineering Department – I spent the next 5 years as a consultant helping various engineers complete their projects which include iFountain and Georgia Coffee machines.
NEW WORLD OF COCA-COLA MUSEUM (2006-2007)
In 2006, I was asked to take over head of engineering for the new Coca-Cola Museum that was being moved from Underground Atlanta over to near Centennial Olympic Park and the new GA Aquarium. We kept and expanded the hugely popular exhibit – The “Tastes of the World”. This allowed customers to sample over a 100 flavors & brands from around the world including the most popular or most hated beverage called “BEVERLY” coming from Italy. I was directly responsible for choosing all of those flavors that you may have sampled. We also engineered a real bottling line that customers could walk through and take a fresh bottle home. Sadly in 2025 – that line was removed to allow for another exhibit and no longer exists. 🙁
COCA-COLA FREESTYLE (2007-2020)
The day after the museum opened – I joined “Project Jet” – a top secret engineering project that eventually became known as Coca-Cola Freestyle. You know – the machine with 100+ Coca-Cola products – all dispensed out of one nozzle. In the early years, I spent many hours in the lab mostly doing quality & dispense testing. I was also responsible for translating R&D recipes into machine usable XML recipes. I then spent a lot of time up in Wisconsin during the initial production run and helped produce the very first unit that came off the production line. I then spent the next 10 years taking that machine around the world at different Coca-Cola sponsored events. Starting with consumer testing down at Universal Studios, to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, to all the global corporate meetings, and my final ever business trip – the Players Championship 2020 – I had the most FASCINATING and FUN job a person could have. Below are just a few of the many events that I got to attend and be a part of.
Wow!! What a way to finish my amazing career at Coca-Cola.
Note: The following events are NOT in chronological order.
