Caro (drink)

Caro is a brand of roasted grain drink, a caffeine-free coffee substitute made of roasted barley, malted barley, chicory, and rye. It is manufactured by Nestlé and was first introduced in West Germany in 1954. It is available throughout Europe as well as other markets including New Zealand and Australia. It is imported to the United States under the name Pero and sold in Spain as Eko.

Caro is available as an instant powder or as Caro Extra in granulated form. The name "Caro" references the German word "Karo", the term for the diamonds playing card suit, as seen in stylized form in the product logos used in Germany and the United States, and in the Spanish product until the early 2000 when the branding was restyled.

History

The company's history goes back to the time of Frederick II, who imposed high taxes on coffee beans. The company's founder, Johann Heinrich Franck, found a coffee alternative in chicory, which was mixed with grain and roasted. In 1828 production started in Vaihingen an der Enz and in 1868 it was relocated to Ludwigsburg because of the better transport connections.

The brewable Linde's grain coffee, which is still colloquially called Muckefuck in parts of Germany, comes from the same house. With this, however, the war and post-war period was associated. A new brand name was therefore sought for the soluble substitute coffee in 1954 and formed from components of the word coffee substitute extract (with a C instead of the introductory K): Caro.^[1]

In 2012, 114 employees were employed in the Ludwigsburg plant, producing around 8,000 tons of Caro coffee, Kathreiner malt coffee and Linde's grain coffee.^[2]

For the brand, long-standing signature music in advertising was a textually rewritten version of the song I like by Volker Lechtenbrink, who also interpreted the advertising song.

In June 2018, Nestlé announced that it would close the Ludwigsburg plant at the end of 2018 and relocate production to Portugal.^[3]

See also

• Barleycup
• Inka (beverage)
• List of barley-based drinks
• Postum

References

External links

• Michael Müller: Es duftet – Caro lüftet den Kaffeedeckel. Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung, 2012-9-27 (German)

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Nestlé

Divisions

Nestlé Purina PetCare Nestlé Waters Nestlé Wyeth Nutrition
Divested	BlueTriton Brands (Nestlé Waters North America)

Subsidiaries

• Nestlé India (62.76%)
• Nestlé Pakistan
• Nestlé Canada
• Nestlé Japan
• Nestlé Malaysia
• Nestlé Lanka

Joint ventures

• Beverage Partners Worldwide
• Cereal Partners Worldwide
• Froneri
• Nestlé Toll House Café

Other assets

• Hsu Fu Chi (60%)
• L'Oréal (30.3%)
• Osem (100%)
• Yinlu Foods (60%)
• Malher (100%)
• Lactalis-Nestlé Fresh Products

Brands

Appliances	BabyNes Dolce Gusto Nespresso Special.T
Baby nutrition	BabyNes Bear Brand Cerelac Gerber Nido
Baking	Libby's Toll House cookies
Bottled water	Contrex Acqua Panna Perrier Princes Gate Pure Life S.Pellegrino Vittel
Cereals	Cheerios1 Chocapic Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cookie Crisp1 Corn Flakes Fitness Golden Grahams1 Golden Nuggets Lion Cereal Lucky Charms1 Milo Cereal Nesquik (cereal)6,7 Trix1 Shreddies7 Shredded Wheat7
Chocolate and desserts	Animal Bar Abuelita Aero Aero Biscuits After Eight Allen's Bar One Bertie Beetle Big Turk Blue Riband Black Magic Bono Breakaway Cailler Caramac Carlos V Cheekies Chokito Coffee Crisp Crisp Crunch12 Drifter Fox's Garoto Goobers Kit Kat3 Kit Kats in Japan Kohler Life Savers14 Lion Mackintosh's Toffee Matchmakers Menier Chocolate Milkybar Milo Mirage Munchies Negresco Nestlé Milk Chocolate Passatempo Peppermint Crisp Perugina Polo Quality Street Red Ripperz Rolo3 Rowntree's Rowntree's Fruit Gums Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles Sin Parar Smarties4 Svitoch TEX Walnut Whip White Knight Yorkie Zvečevo
Coffee and beverages	Abuelita Alpine8 Acticor BabyNes Blue Bottle Coffee Boost Carnation8,9 Caro Chameleon Cold-Brew Chuckie Coffee-Mate Dolce Gusto Huesitos Klim La Lechera Menier Milo cocoa Nescafé Nescafé Azera Nescafé Gold Nescau Nesfruta Nespresso Nesquik Nestea Ovaltine4 Ricoré Seattle's Best Coffee Starbucks 13 Supligen Sweet Leaf Zoégas
Dairy products	Alpine8 Bear Brand10,11 Carnation8,9 Coffee-Mate La Lechera Nesquik
Ice cream	D'Onofrio Drumstick15 Eskimo Pie15 Fab Frosty Paws15 Häagen-Dazs2,15 Hjem-IS Ice Screamers Kit Kat15 Maxibon Mövenpick Parlour Savory Smarties
Prepared and packaged food and snacks	Buitoni California Pizza Kitchen DiGiorno Herta Hot Pockets Lean Cuisine Libby's Lean Pockets Maggi Stouffer's Thomy Tombstone Uncle Tobys Winiary Wagner Yinlu Foods
Purina PetCare	Alpo Bakers Complete Beggin' Strips Beneful Bonio Dog Chow Fancy Feast Felix Friskies Frosty Paws ONE Winalot
Uncle Tobys	Cheerios1 PLUS Weeties
Former brands and subsidiaries	Alcon Alfasigma Arrowhead Butterfinger Baby Ruth Chocolate Surpresa Deer Park Dreyer's15 Enviga Gale's Galderma Laboratories Cetaphil Epiduo Restylane Hoadley's Ice Mountain Jenny Craig Ozarka Peter's Chocolate Poland Spring Polly Waffle PowerBar Powwow Water Rowntree Mackintosh Violet Crumble Wonder Ball Zephyrhills

People

• Günter Blobel
• Paul Bulcke
• Peter Brabeck-Letmathe
• Nobuyuki Idei
• Henri Nestlé
• Kaspar Villiger

Related

• Nestea European Championship Tour
• 1977 Nestlé boycott
• Nestlé Invitational
• Nestlé Rowntree F.C.
• Nestlé Smarties Book Prize
• Nestlé Tower
• Toll House cookies
• International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes
• Nescafé Basement
• Maggi noodles safety concerns in India
• Freshly

Related articles

• List of Nestlé brands
• Controversies of Nestlé

• ¹ Currently manufactured by General Mills in the U.S. and Canada. Produced by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand elsewhere. ² Brand owned by General Mills; U.S. and Canadian production rights controlled by Nestlé under license. ³ U.S. production rights owned by The Hershey Company. ⁴ U.S. rights and production owned by the Smarties Candy Company with a different product. ⁵ U.S. rights and specific trade dress owned by Nestlé; rights elsewhere owned by Associated British Foods. ⁶ Produced by Cereal Partners, branded as Nestlé. ⁷ Produced by Cereal Partners and branded as Nestlé in the U.K. and Ireland. Produced by Post Foods elsewhere. ⁸ Philippine production rights owned by Alaska Milk Corporation. ⁹ Singaporean, Malaysian and Thai production rights owned by Fraser and Neave. ¹⁰ Used only in Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia. ¹¹ Used only in the Philippines. ¹² U.S. production rights owned by the Ferrara Candy Company. ¹³ NA rights and specific trade dress to all packaged coffee and other products under the Starbucks brand owned by Nestlé since 2019. ¹⁴ Brand owned by Mars, sold by Nestlé in Canada. ¹⁵ Produced by Froneri in the U.S. since 2020.

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