EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the first video in our Getting Down to Business series. The first profile features Coca-Cola Refreshments. Enjoy the show.

The history of Coca-Cola Refreshments is spangled with a cavalcade of ingenuity, innovation, efficiency and roll-up-your-sleeves hard work. The long-time leader in the global soft drink market has left an indelible mark on Lehigh Valley.

With this premiere video, LVEDC will take you behind the curtain to show you how the company operates – even when it’s not making its flagship drink!

LVEDC is proud to present our first video in a 10-part series that documents the inner-workings of some of Lehigh Valley’s top businesses. We’ve selected Coca-Cola Refreshments and its Upper Macungie Township plant for the debut video. Produced by filmmaker Jeff Tintle of Thrive Media, the video provides you with an inside look at the plant’s daily operations in a way most people will never see. It features interviews that illuminate how the thunder coming out of the plant winds up in restaurants, soda fountains and stores from Maine to North Carolina. We hope this video series both informs and entertains the viewer.

“This series is a revealing look at the inner-workings of some of the top companies throughout our region,” said John McGran, LVEDC’s vice president of marketing. “LVEDC is proud to tell the success stories of our region and these videos illustrate those stories plainly.”

The videos provide not only offer a look at some of the best companies in the region, but also vividly show the many services LVEDC has to attract businesses to the region – and spur those companies already here into new areas of growth.

Coca-Cola and LVEDC go back a ways. When Coca-Cola Refreshments envisioned a $46 million expansion to include a noncarbonated beverage line to bottle Powerade, vitaminwater and Fuze, LVEDC helped to secure a $1.25 million grant through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The project’s ramifications have been many.

The plant’s full-time employee count now totals 120 after 50 new jobs were created through the expansion. And the company is better positioned for future success in the competitive soft-drink market.

Check out the first in our Getting Down to Business series.