You used to find a lot of machines set up that way (late 60’s - early 70’s when I was young). Don’t know but just guessing that some of the stores and places that had these machines either owned them and maybe stocked them. Every little country store at that time usually had a Coke box that looked like a chest freezer and you’d open them up to get a drink and there’d liable to be Cokes, RC’s, Mountain Dews, Nehis, Royal Palms, and who knows what in the vending racks. Surely as things progressed and the soft drink market intensified, Coke and Pepsi got out of the business of sharing space in their machines.
One other little related historical tidbit…when shade tobacco was big in Gadsden County, a lot of the labor used in the growing and harvesting lived on the different farms and a few, with the help of the farm superintendent would arrange to have a Coke machine set up on the porch of the house they lived in. These became little money-makers as the other tenants would come and buy soda waters and Coke would add them to the route and make a weekly drop. Coke’s marketing strategy at the time was to make their product available wherever and whenever to everybody they could. It was a great company and made a lot of people in Gadsden County rich by way of early investment opportunities when it was just getting started. Times have certainly changed…
