Grocery Store Pulls Soda With Nazi Imagery After Customer Complaint

A grocery store chain in Utah had to stop selling a brand of soda because of troubling imagery on its bottles. After a customer complained on social media about the unsubtle use of Nazi iconography on a bottle of soda, Macey’s Grocery Store agreed to pull the product from its shelves.

A customer, Kate Boyle, on Monday afternoon tweeted a photo of a bunch of glass soda bottles on a shelf at a Macey’s store in West Jordan, Utah, a Salt Lake City suburb. The soda was called Not See Kola (or “Nazi Cola”), with the bottles prominently featuring a version of the German Coat of Arms.

A heavily modified version of that symbol was used by the Nazis in Germany during Adolf Hitler’s reign. Boyle’s photo of the soda bottles can be seen below.

The Macey’s Twitter account responded, eventually leading to the store removing the product, reported KSL, an NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City. Boyle told KSL that Macey’s apologized to her personally. She objected to the store selling a product that, satirically or not, used imagery associated with a regime that systematically attempted to wipe out Jewish people.

“We have reviewed our craft soda offerings and decided to discontinue Not See Kola,” Macey’s said in a statement, per KSL. “We apologize and our stores have been instructed to remove the product from shelves immediately.”

The soda is distributed by Real Soda of Utah. Other Real Soda of Utah products have been criticized by customers along similar lines, such as the grape juice flavor “Orthodox Jooce.” Another customer complained about Not See Kola on the company’s Facebook page in April, prompting Real Soda of Utah to claim the complaint was the result of “differing senses of humor,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

According to Utah.gov, Real Soda in Real Bottles of Utah LLC is a privately held company in Provo and was established in April 2017.

The company did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Whether the soda is satirical or not, some Americans have felt anxiety over a rising tide of white supremacist or neo-Nazi sentiments. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in August 2017 when a driver rammed his vehicle into people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The driver, James Fields, Jr., was said to hold far-right views.