Welcome to You Are What You Eat...Or Are You?, a mini series about the ways that we project our identities through food.
Almost two years ago the Coca-Cola Company discontinued Tab—America’s pioneering diet soda that peaked as a cultural icon in the ’70s and ’80s but dwindled in sales over the past decade. Its small cult following still isn’t ready to say goodbye.
The tart-tasting, low-calorie cola hit shelves in 1963, marketed to “beautiful people” alongside luxe images of chandeliers and caviar. By the early ’80s it was a best-seller. And then Tab all but vanished. Coke stopped advertising the soda after a cancer scare involving saccharin, the sweetener used in Tab, and the retro pink cans were quickly forsaken for Diet Coke, which launched in 1982. By 2011, Coca-Cola supposedly produced only 3 million cases of Tab a year and 885 million cases of Diet Coke.
But for the zealous “Tabaholics” sitting on ever-shrinking supplies, the soda brand remains a way of life. When Coca-Cola culled underperforming brands, including Diet Coke Feisty Cherry, Sprite Lymonade, and Coca-Cola Life in October 2020, it was Tab’s demise that resulted in a social media uprising, a last-minute buying frenzy, and a small but mighty organizing committee determined to see Tab back on shelves.
Save Tab Soda was born from its fans’ collective heartbreak, says Adam Burbach. The 40-year-old fintech product manager and Save Tab Soda president from Lincoln, Nebraska, started the organization mere weeks after Coca-Cola announced the cuts, and also runs the 750-follower Facebook page. After noticing upset comments, Burbach put a call out on social media and organized spirited Tab lovers into one Zoom room. “The rest is history,” he says.
Since that initial meeting, the organizing committee has grown to about 15 members and roused a digital community of thousands (who primarily exist across multiple Facebook pages) to try and bring back Tab. They meet weekly on Zoom. They’ve organized letter-writing campaigns and phone-in days, erected digital billboards outside of Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, written Valentine’s Day cards to Coke’s CEO, secured over 5,000 signatures for Change.org petition to save their favorite soda, and published a coffee table book packed with personal Tab stories, memories, and tributes.
So far Coca-Cola hasn’t responded. But the Save Tab Soda organizing committee is undeterred. “We’re in it for the long haul,” says vice president Jenny Boyter, a 64-year-old retired high school principal from Atlanta.
This kind of effort may seem “silly or extreme” to outsiders, Burbach admits. But for its fans, Tab is much more than a soda. Trish Priest’s work colleagues identify her as a Tabaholic. For a milestone birthday, her coworkers completely redecorated her office with Tab merch, says the 56-year-old Microsoft program manager from Seattle. (She’s also an admin of another Facebook group titled “Bring TaB! Soda back to ALL store shelves! #BringBackTaB,” this one boasting over 1,000 members.) “I even had a colleague take a Tab to Toulouse, France, for me because we had a meeting there.” For Boyter, her soda activism has created a vital sense of community during retirement. “Because Tab is a part of everyone’s life,” she says, it brings people together.
On a recent Zoom call, the founding members cracked a handful of their last remaining diet colas to tell me all about how they fell in love with Tab, what they’re doing to bring the soda back, and why they think this vintage soda deserves a second life.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
When did you all start drinking Tab?
Priest: I actually don’t remember when I started, but I don’t remember not drinking Tab.
Boyter: My mom was often on a diet, so we always had Tab. Looking back at pictures from 20, 30, 40 years ago, I’m like, “Oh, there’s a Tab right there.”
Burbach: I had Tab when I was a kid at my grandparents’ place. But then I didn’t see it again for about 20 years. It showed up again in 2018 in the market near where I live and I was shocked. I thought it’d been discontinued. I was so excited to see it that I bought every 12-pack on the shelf.
How many Tabs per day would you drink in the before times?
Priest: I’ve fluctuated between three to six a day. I try not to go over six.
Boyter: I don’t drink coffee, so I would drink one Tab every morning and that was just perfect. Once in a while I’d come home from work and be like, “Okay, that was a two-Tab day.”
Burbach: I usually had three per day. I would have one first thing on my trip to work and then as soon as I was finished, I’d have my next one ready. Then I would switch to water and probably have another [Tab soda] in the middle of the afternoon.
How do people identify you as a Tab lover?
Priest: I work for Microsoft and they provide soda but not Tab. So I’ve brought [Tab soda] to work for 22 years. Tab is my identity at work. I always have a can in meetings; it’s the international symbol for “Trish is sitting here.”
Burbach: Same for me. I’d be carrying Tab around with my laptop at work and people would say, “Oh my gosh, where did you find that? I didn't know they still made that.” One of my colleagues mentioned her grandma used to drink Tab, so I gifted her a six-pack because it’s so difficult to find.
Boyter: When I retired at the end of May, all the teachers and my assistant principal threw me a Tab-themed retirement party. They made Tab centerpieces and cookies. They dressed in Tab costumes. This woman made me a Tab cross stitch; it was unbelievable.
Priest: I drank it so much that sometimes I would even fill the can with water when I didn’t want any more.
Boyter: Yeah, I’ve done that too.
Burbach: I wasn’t trying to stand out at work by drinking Tab. But when people did notice, it became part of my identity and the way they related to me. I was celebrating a milestone anniversary in October 2020 and I was working remotely. My boss left three 12-packs of Tab on the doorstep for me. It was no longer available on Amazon, so she actually took the time to try and find it. It was amazing that someone thought of me and recognized that Tab was important to me.
Boyter: That just sounds so familiar. The only reason I still have some Tab is because before I retired all my teachers were on the lookout for it after it was discontinued. Colleagues would send me a text, like, “Hey, do you want? I found some Tab. Never mind, I bought it all.”
Priest: When I bought the condo that I’m in now, I had previously worked with the guy who owned it and he left me a 12-pack of Tab in the refrigerator.
What do you think loving Tab says about you?
Boyter: I don't think we’re all trying to be a certain thing, but Tab is nostalgic and unique. Also, I’m already old, I guess, but I love vintage stuff.
Burbach: Yeah. Like, I don’t put the fact that I love Tab on my Facebook profile, but if I’m out shopping and I spot something with the logo on it, I’m all about it. I was at Walmart and they had some toy trucks and little minivans that had the Tab logo, so of course I bought them. I’ve also collected some old [Tab] advertisements.
When I look at the Facebook pages, [Tab fans are] a mishmash of people. All generations, genders, backgrounds. You even see that with our committee. We're all from all over the country. We have different political perspectives, I’m sure. It’s a melting pot of people.
I’m honored that you’re all drinking a Tab right now. How many cans do you have left?
Priest: I have three 12-packs left that I’m saving for special occasions.
Boyter: I have seven 12-packs left. I’m intermittently drinking some Pepsi products in between to stretch them out. My birthday is in November and I have to have a Tab on my birthday.
Burbach: I only have 21 cans left now and I also only drink them on special occasions, like today. We were all really struggling to get it. We were looking on Amazon and it would sell out in seconds.
Priest: Yeah, Amazon reduced the number that each person could buy. Somebody would post in one of the Facebook groups that it was up on Amazon and then it would be gone immediately. And I paid a lot on eBay, like the same amount I’ve paid for a bottle of nice wine, for a 12-pack of Tab.
Boyter: At the store when I went to stock up, I would be like, “Well, I don’t want to take the last 12-pack.” I felt bad because I knew somebody else was out there and they were desperate too and I didn't want to be that toilet paper hoarder.
Priest: The thing that Jenny is saying, where you leave one 12-pack on the shelf, that is a standard Tab-y thing to do. You can take all the other ones, but you always left one 12-pack for somebody who you knew was going to be needing it.
What does Tab taste like?
Burbach: It’s very hard to describe. We've all been trying to find a substitute for it and there’s no other soda that tastes like it. It’s probably the closest thing to the original Coca-Cola classic formula, but without all the calories. Diet Coke does not taste like Coca-Cola, Coke Zero does not taste like Coca-Cola. But Tab tastes very similar.
Boyter: I feel like it’s a little spicy. It’s a tiny bit like Dr Pepper, a tiny bit like Coke. But like Adam said, there’s just nothing that really compares.
Priest: I’ve been trying to find something else, too. Tab isn’t as sweet as most of the other diet sodas and it has a little lemony flavor. If you get a Diet Coke from the fountain, that has saccharin in it along with aspartame, and so does Tab. So that’s the closest thing, especially if you add a little squeeze of lemon.
How did you feel finding out it was discontinued?
Boyter: People immediately contacted me on Facebook and somebody wrote, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I’d heard rumors [Tab was being phased out], though.
Priest: Yeah, I had been living in fear of it going away for years. They took it off of Amazon Fresh and I was freaked out, so I sent them an email every day for eight weeks with a business justification for bringing it back. They never responded but they did bring it back.
Burbach: We were shocked that they just said, “Ah, we don't want to produce it anymore. It's not a big seller for us.”
Boyter: Yes, and I think it’s so sad that, of all the products Coke has recently cut, Tab was one of them. It was 57 years old.
Burbach: I think everybody has something like Tab that they relate to. While we all know that our efforts to save it could be perceived as extreme or silly—like, we get it—everybody has a favorite product that, if it suddenly went away, they’d do the same thing for. Like, for all the people that drink coffee, what if one day coffee just disappeared? That wouldn’t fly.
How did the Save Tab Soda committee come together?
Burbach: Jenny and Trish and a whole bunch of other people were on that first Zoom call. We have a pretty dedicated base of people who join weekly when we're talking through our various different events.
Boyter: I was so thrilled to find Adam’s group because I wanted to take action. At the beginning we were meeting twice a week, and I was just excited to talk to other people about Tab and what we could do to bring it back. We’ve done so much since then.
Priest: I’d attended events around saving the Netflix show, Daredevil. And I’d seen other movements happen where change was possible. I’m not one to just take something and not do anything about it, especially for a product as central to my life as Tab. So when I saw Adam’s website I was like, “Yes, let’s get this organized.”
What are some of the campaign highlights so far?
Burbach: We started off with some simple things, like all [of us] calling Coca-Cola on a specific Friday. We had a letter-writing campaign in 2021 where everybody sent Tab-themed Valentine’s to James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola. And we spent a lot of time collecting Tab stories and photographs from the group and printed a soft-cover book that we sent off to executives.
Boyter: And we were able to become a nonprofit because Trish is so organized and she did all the tax stuff that nobody else understands.
Priest: When we started fundraising, we wanted to make sure that donors understood that we were not profiting from it at all. We didn’t want people to think that it was going into some random GoFundMe that we could use for something else, so we wanted to be really clear and accountable. Which is why we decided to officially file as a nonprofit in August last year. It’s a 501(c)(7), which is basically a club. If we ever have any extra money, we’ll donate it to charity. Then CNN did an article about us.
Burbach: Then the billboards went up in mid-June to mid-July this year.
Boyter: We had two in Atlanta. One faced Coca-Cola headquarters and then behind it was World of Coke, CNN, and the Georgia Aquarium, so it saw a lot of pedestrian traffic. Then the other one was in a neighborhood called Buckhead. There was a lot of construction on the street so the drivers had to slow down and had time to look at the billboard.
Priest: That whole endeavor cost about $4,000. None of us have much of a background in any of this, but it’s been really educational setting up a nonprofit organization and learning all about fundraising and organizing.
Have you all become friends through this?
Burbach: Oh, for sure.
Boyter: We text each other in between the meetings sometimes and we’ve mailed each other Tab merch and stuff. It would be so awesome if I ever get to Nebraska or Seattle, I can see them in person.
Burbach: I would say a good chunk of our meetings are just socializing, too. Asking each other like, “How many Tabs do you have left?” Or, “Hey, what have you found to replace it with?” And we’ve done a couple of little social hours too, where we’ve invited people just to come and hangout [on Zoom], no planning at all.
Priest: We’ve all gotten to know each other. I would love to see people in person at some point.
Boyter: Yeah, that would be so great.
Are you guys still hopeful Tab will be brought back?
Burbach: For sure.
Priest: Surge [another Coca-Cola product] had been brought back years later under a different CEO after it was discontinued. And CEOs do come and go, so decisions can be unmade.
Burbach: And we recently saw the Taco Bell Mexican pizza brought back after fan demand. We’re hopeful and we know it’s an iconic brand.
Priest: The 60th anniversary is coming up and Tab is featured in a [season one] Stranger Things episode to mark the era. I want the TV appearance to make it go viral. Like the song, oh, what’s it called?
Boyter: Running Up That Hill [by Kate Bush].
Priest: Yeah. That one, that came back. We would love to have that happen to Tab.
Tab was supposedly cut for lack of sales. Do you think Coke could have done something differently?
Priest: They could have actually advertised it. Tab hasn’t been advertised since Diet Coke came out in 1982.
Boyter: Like Trish said, it feels like there’s been zero advertising. I can’t believe a product has been sold for decades with no advertising.
Burbach: And the Tab label doesn’t tell you anything. Is it strawberry-flavored? What is it? If it said something like, “zero sugar cola,” that would be a reason for someone to buy it. I would also hope that they’re looking around and seeing that everything ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s is very in, whether it comes to home decor, clothing styles, all that stuff. Tab would be an amazing opportunity for them to bring something back and make it fresh again.
Boyter: Midcentury is so hot. If I was in marketing at Coke, I’d tell them, “This is such a layup. I don’t even have to work.” Plus, our Save Tab Soda committee is already advertising for them. We’re putting up billboards. You’re welcome, we already did your job.
Priest: Yeah. We’ll be their advertising budget. We’re happy to spread the word.
Were you ever worried about the health concerns around saccharin though?
Priest: No. There were questions about the [health] studies from the beginning. And saccharin was removed from the carcinogen list in 2000.
Do you have a line in the sand? A time when, if Tab is not back, you’ll give up the fight?
Boyter: We’ve talked about that and we were all like, what is the saying? We’re in it for the long haul.
Burbach: Yeah. It’s not going to hurt us to keep going.
Priest: It took eight years for Coke to bring Surge back. Like I said, CEOs come and go.