User:Mboverley/sandbox

Mitch's sandbox

To-do list

Good start. Now you need to post the division of labor—who will be writing what. Also, a few more sources should be in the mix, at least two for each member. Since this is a proposed new article, you should work on this page in a central location—here in the sandbox would be a good possibility—until it's ready for launch. Please have this info posted, and start your research, before class on Tues Mar 13.
Webster Newbold (talk) 19:52, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not entirely certain that these sources will be able to provide adequate information for a typical [full] Wikipedia page. As Steven Zhang said to Dr. Newbold and I, recipes aren't something that would be at home here, and the nutrition facts / ingredients list, etc. can be summed up in a single image or list. If Dr. Newbold hasn't already told you, Steve said he'd be able to help hook anyone up with database sources to help flesh things out. A Large Trout (talk) 15:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Division of work:

Casey- Marketting/Advertisement

Mitch- History

Tiffany- Other Recipes/Uses.......i went ahead and changed this section to nutritional facts i think its more appropriate...also finished up editing first portion of business

Sammi- Business

OFF TO A RUNNING START BUT MORE TO DO. REFERENCES NEED TO BE ADDED THROUGHOUT, AND CONTENT IS STILL EMERGING. ONE SERIOUS ISSUE TO WATCH OUT FOR IS THAT A NUMBER OF PASSAGES IN THE "MARKETING/ADVERTISEMENT" AND "BUSINESS" SECTIONS COME DIRECTLY FROM OTHER SOURCES, AND ARE NOT IN YOUR OWN WORDS. THIS WILL EVENTUALLY BE FLAGGED BY THE WIKIPEDIA COMMUNITY, AND THE ARTICLE WILL BE MARKED FOR DELETION. SO EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE SURE THAT HE/SHE REWORKS THE SOURCES AS YOU WOULD IN ANY ACADEMIC ESSAY. OTHERWISE, THINGS ARE COMING ALONG WELL. —Webster Newbold (talk) 03:42, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The recipes section really doesn't have a place in a typical Wikipedia article. Mentioning common recipes and perhaps naming a few in-context is fine, but dedicating a section to it is not in the scope of this page, nor would be providing full recipes with directions. --A Large Trout (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

_______________________

Final Instructor Comments

The article has a long way to go before it's publishable, and time is getting short. Here's the breakdown—

Marketing--this is in good shape, with content and references in place (although the final sentence needs a citation).

History--OK--however, references are not in place yet

Other Recipes—this section has problems--straight recipes probably aren't appropriate to Wikipedia, and these don't directly relate to A&W cream soda but rather to any brand. So this doesn't meet the Notability standard, nor are the sources (the ones at the bottom) reliable.

Business—Lots of content but too much is taken directly from sources as indicated in the text; and there are no references. This part will need to be revised heavily if is to be retained.

References—I've put in the References tag so that they should show up properly at the end after they are put in the text with the citation wizard (see the top pf the editing box). If you need help with the final form of referencing I can do that or Todd can help as well. —Webster Newbold (talk) 02:06, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

New A&W Cream Soda

History

A&W Cream Soda is a cream soda carbonated soft drink introduced by A&W Root Beer in 1986. A&W was established in 1922 by Frank Wright and Roy Allen. The first product they created was A&W Root Beer. It was not until 1986 that A&W came out with A&W Cream Soda and A&W Diet Cream Soda. Although cream soda had been created in 1852 by E.M. Sheldon, A&W was one of the first American companies to make it commercial. A&W is now one of the of the most widely producers of cream soda where it is sold nationally and in the restaurant chain. A&W Root Beer put A&W on the map but with the introduction of A&W Cream Soda, the company was able to continue to please the masses. In 1995 A&W Cadbury Schweppes purchased the Dr Pepper/Seven-Up Company which made A&W a part of the Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. This acquisition put A&W with in the same company as the top soda brand companies and made A&W Cream Soda the top brand in cream sodas.

Marketing/Advertisement

In 1991, A&W had its most popular cream soda campaign. They produced a summer advertisement with Snoopy and Woodstock displayed on the entire can. Snoopy and Woodstock are popular characters from the Peanuts Gang comic strips written by Charles M. Shultz . Snoopy can be seen playing baseball, having a cookout, lifting weights, surfing, walking the beach, riding a bike, jumping hurdles, and listening to music. These cans were very popular among buyers. These images can be seen on regular A&W cream soda as well as diet A&W cream soda cans.

Coca-Cola’s first polar bear print advertisement made it's debut in France in 1922, and for the next 70 years, polar bears appeared sporadically in print advertising. A&W, the leading root beer marketer filmed their own commercial using polar bears in the summer of 1992. In this commercial, a real polar bear is seen in contrast to a mechanical polar bear that is ice-skating in a fancy skirt. The commercial used the polar bears to distinguish a different between regular A&W cream soda and sparkling A&W cream soda. They use the real bear yawning to embody the regular cream soda, and they use the ice-skating polar bear to represent the sparkling cream soda. The polar bears are used as a marketing technique to appeal to a large audience. "They are white, which is the color of innocence, even though in this case it's 800 pounds of skin-ripping innocence," Mr. Gilbert said.

Also, in 1992 Pepsi-Cola international and A & W Brands Inc. worked together over a signed agreement to increase the spread of A & W's bottled products in Asia. The company anticipated to sell $500,000,000 of A & W soft drinks in Asia within the span 10 years to make the company's brands as prevalent as Pepsi, which was already distributed in Guam and Indonesia. In 1994 A&W put $7,000,000 into their marketing promotions. They partnered with the show Baywatch to produce greater sales for their product. Baywatch was ranked second among all of the popular TV shows, so they knew this was a great opportunity. In-show placement on four episodes of Baywatch appeared. The advertisement was shown as sponsors of a boogie board test during the episode. The winner of the boogie board contest on the television show would receive a year supply of A&W.

A&W cream soda also spent $1.5 million in ads commemorating "a little sparkle in a vanilla world." A new A&W campaign from New York, which featured regular people, kids to grandparents, all describing their satisfaction of A&W. The campaign took a different direction from A&W's common and past humorous ads, using sepia-toned images. Their new tag-line introduced: “authentic.”

In addition to making A&W well known in different countries, using Snoopy, making new marketing campaigns with polar bears, and using the hit TV show Baywatch, A&W cream soda has had a few commercials. Joe Isuzu appeared in cream soda commercials as well as William Sanderson and the Sumangala Band.

Nutritional Facts

A&W Cream Soda

Serving Size 8fl. oz. (240mL). Amount Per Serving Calories: 120 Total Fat: 0g Sodium: 45mg Total Carb: 31g Caffine: 20mg Sugars: 30g Protein: 0g

Ingredients: Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, sodium benzoate (preservative), natural and artificial flavors, carmel color,citric acid, flavored with vanilla extract, caffine

A&W Diet Cream Soda

Serving Size 8fl. oz. (240mL). Amount Per Serving Calories: 0 Total Fat: 0g Sodium: 65mg Total Carb: 0g Caffine: 15mg Sugars: NA Protein: 0g

Ingredients: Carbonated water, sodium benzoate (preservative),aspatame, natural and artificial flavors, carmel color,citric acid, flavored with vanilla extract, caffine,Phenylketonurics: contains Phenylalanine

A&W Business

Roy Allen founded A&W June of 1919 in Lodi California. In 1923, he partnered with Frank Wright, and created the name A&W. Because of its popularity and the support Wrights drive in outlet contribution made to the business, Allen bought Wrights share of this business from him in 1924. The business became a franchise in 1925, and by 1933 the A&W Company had over 170 units in the mid-western United States.

A&W has gone through many changes in ownership throughout the years of the well-known beverage, and the franchise restaurants that serve it. Cadbury Schweppes PLC, a company in Great Britain, purchased A&W Brands, Inc. in an attempt to strengthen its growing presence in the United States and international beverage markets. In 1995, a business man named Sid Feltenstein became interested in the company and bought A&W. Because these beverages were so popular, the company began to thrive.

Today, there are over 1100 locations, where customers can find root beer, cream soda, hamburgers and other food items. Now A&W Brands, Inc. and the A&W Restaurants are separate entities; A&W Restaurants are licensing franchises around the world. There is also an A&W Food Services of Canada, which is managed by a group of businessmen who are building a beverage and “Restaurant Empire” across North America.

Though there are many locations, the franchise is suffering as a whole. Wall Street published a list of restaurants that supposedly will not make it by the end of the year and unfortunately, A&W Restaurants made the top ten. According to Wall Street, "A&W does not have the ability to market itself against chains like Burger King. And, A&W does not have the size to efficiently handle food purchases, logistics, and transportation costs compared to competitors many times as large."

A&W has problems with hyping its sales and brand awareness by getting chain restaurants, such as McDonald's or Burger King, to serve its Root Beer or Cream Soda due to a contract created with the A&W restaurant chain which prohibits the soft drink maker from selling to any other fountain operation. Also, A&W cannot afford to insert their soft drinks through Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston, high-priced endorsers for Pepsi and Diet Coke. Claudia Deutsch said, "Still, Cream Soda is natural. There is no nationally advertised Cream Soda. And through focus groups, A&W found that people liked the taste of Cream Soda, and felt that it fit nicely with the old-fashioned image that the A&W trademark conveyed." But getting Cream Soda off the drawing boards was not easy. In 1983, a group of investors, led by Castle & Cooke, another food company that soon fell to the ground, bought A&W from United Brands. Less than two years later, Castle & Cooke pulled out of the grouping and left A&W in the hands of Citicorp Venture Capital Ltd. and the Eagerton Corporation, another venture capital group and neither groups knew much about soft drinks.

By 1986, the management of A&W had gone through enough. In May the management began working with Hicks & Haas, a buyout specialist who also has work with 7-Up and Dr. Pepper, to purchase the company in a leveraged buyout. The buyout of A&W gave A&W more than $70 million in debt, but the huge cash flow in the soda business helped A&W to expand at a feverish pitch. A month later, A&W decided to test the idea of Cream Soda and inserted it into a test market. Before 1986 was out, A&W had borrowed an additional $29 million to buy Squirt. According to Claudia Deutsch, "The Cream Soda has provided 17 percent of last year's revenues, and about 30% of A&W's growth, much more than they had expected."

Business for A&W is not perfect. In 2011, a legal action was taken against A&W Restaurants, Inc. and the company that owns it in a joint lawsuit with a former franchise who abruptly closed four Minnesota fast-food restaurants earlier that year. The city of Inver Grove agreed to join former franchisees Patrick Nichleson and his wife Patricia and argue against A&W Restaurant Inc. that A&W and Yum Brands, which manage all A&W restuarants and sever other fast-food brands, were misleading in their revenue projections that were given to Nichleson and his wife. The A&W Restaurant off of County Road 56 in Inver Grover Heights, closed that February. The restaurant had been opended by Nichleson and his wife in the summer of 2009. The only way that they had been able to open the restaurant was the with the help of a $50,000 loan from the city of Inver Grove. Nickleson had decided to open the restaurant because he was told by Yum that he should expect more than $1 million in revenue annually at his Inver Grove Heights location. However, in 2010 he made about $650,000, a number far off from $1 million. Even though that was provided with predictions since the Inver Grover Heights' A&W was going to feature a new 3-D Drive-In concept - meaning it offered drive-in, dine-in and drive-thru service - the estimates were heavily relied on. John Holland, the attorney representing the city and Nichleson, announced the predictions that the company had given had "no basis," plus the company went against state franchising law. Problems with the Inver Grove Heights restaurant helped lead to the closing of Nichleson's other A&W locations in Little Canada, Pine Island, and Coon Rapids. Nichleson never made payments on the loan he had been given from the city. Since he had not made any payments on the loan, the city made Nichleson pay for the property's special assesments of about $10,000 over five years. The city hopes to recoup that money once the property is sold.