The right to choose

How many times have you been denied your right to choose your favourite soft drink? Let's focus on the four most popular soft drinks locally. Supposedly, we have a choice between a Coke or a Pepsi, a Kinnie or a Krest, a Fanta or a Sunkist, and a Seven-Up or a Sprite.

However, many catering outlets, known as 'tied outlets', enter into an agreement with one of the two major drinks manufacturers to supply their drinks exclusively. In doing so they are denying us our internationally accepted consumers' right to choose.

In view of this, before ordering a drink, I often ask whose manufacturers' drinks they supply. Then I decide whether to have a cola, a bitter orange and aromatic herbs drink, an orange drink, or a lemonade.

Well, last week I went to the Jubilee Snack Bar, 21 Lascaris Wharf Valletta (tel: 2124-0920). I was very pleasantly surprised when, on having asked the barman/proprietor, Joseph Farrugia, whose drinks they supply and explained why I asked, he told me that he supplied both.

Do you think we ought to start another list? Should we start compiling a list of outlets where the consumers' right to choose is respected?

Since there are outlets which do not respect our right to choose or which do not supply our choice of drink, we must exercise our right to choose those which do.

In any case, since we are talking about drinks, I might as well close this piece with some food for thought. Advertising is a medium based on the assumption that consumers have a choice. In the prevailing scenario, advertisements by soft drinks manufacturers who persuade outlets to deny us the choice are insulting our intelligence.