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Jarritos was founded in Mexico in 1950, starting out as a local soda maker but eventually became a favorite American brand.
Its fruit-flavored drinks, bottled in distinctive glass vessels, now reach consumers across continents, turning Mexican soft drink craftsmanship into an international presence.
In 1950, Don Francisco "El Güero" Hill launched Jarritos from a small facility in Mexico City.
His first product was a coffee-flavored soda packaged in glass bottles with a pale brown label.
After six months of disappointing sales, Hill began creating fruit-flavored sodas in his workshop, testing and retesting formulations of natural fruit extracts and carbonated water.
By 1953, Jarritos had introduced lime, mandarin, and tamarind flavors (all Mexican grown fruits).
The brand's sales doubled that year as corner stores across Mexico City began stocking Jarritos due to increasing demand.
Mexican consumers particularly embraced the tamarind flavor (similar to the traditional Mexican agua frescas).
Don Francisco Hill spent fifteen years as a chemist at the National Laboratory of Mexico before starting Jarritos.
In his laboratory, Hill mixed fruit extracts with mineral water until he developed Jarritos' signature coffee flavor.
His wife Rosa later found his handwritten formulas—thirty-eight pages of precise measurements and testing notes—stuffed in kitchen drawers and taped inside cabinet doors throughout their Mexico City home.
Hill named his soda brand after the clay jugs Mexican street vendors used to serve aguas frescas.
These sturdy, earthenware containers, called "jarritos" (literally "little jugs"), kept drinks cool in the Mexican heat.
Each jug stood about 6 inches tall, with a narrow neck and rounded body, designed to be gripped easily in one hand.
Street vendors would lift these jugs high, pouring sweet horchata or tamarind water into customers' cups.
In 1955, Jarritos founder Francisco Hill invented a mechanical press that could extract juice from whole tamarind pods.
The press crushed the pods between metal plates, separating the sticky pulp from the seeds and fibrous shell.
Using this extracted juice, Hill created Jarritos Tamarindo.
It was Mexico's first carbonated tamarind beverage.
Following the success of Jarritos Tamarindo in 1950, Hill introduced three new flavors:
The new flavors increased Jarritos' market share from 15% to 35% of Mexican soft drink sales by the end of 1952.
By 1960, Jarritos delivery trucks supplied their products to 8,000 stores across Mexico, reaching customers in 25 of the country's 31 states.
The company also built distribution partnerships with major retailers like Comercial Mexicana and Sumesa.
Jarritos first exported its sodas to American stores in 1988, starting with distributors in Texas and California.
The brand's distinctive glass bottles, filled with flavors like tamarind and mandarin, quickly found their way onto convenience store shelves across the Southwest.
By 2009, Jarritos' production lines were filling and shipping 360,000 bottles per hour to U.S. distributors—enough to fill three semi-trucks every sixty minutes!
Jarritos sells its Mexican sodas in 42 countries spanning six continents, from Canada to Australia to Japan.
The company produces all its beverages in Mexico, using local sugar cane and fruit flavors sourced from Mexican farms.
At its bottling facilities in Mexico City and Guadalajara, Jarritos employs over 1,000 Mexican workers who maintain traditional production methods.
Novamex, headquartered at 500 W. Overland Avenue in El Paso, Texas, has owned the Jarritos brand since 1988 and manages its distribution across North America while partnering with regional distributors in other markets.
In May 2023, Jarritos and Nike released a Nike Dunk Low sneaker featuring Jarritos' signature green and orange colors, with the Jarritos logo embroidered on the heel.
The sneaker's design incorporated textured suede panels reminiscent of condensation on a cold glass bottle, while the shoe's sole mimicked the translucent appearance of Jarritos' mandarin flavor.
The collaboration attracted significant attention among sneaker collectors aged 18-30, with the limited-edition shoes selling out within 3 minutes on Nike's SNKRS app.
Resale prices reached $400, triple the original $140 retail price.
It was Jarritos' first partnership with a major athletic wear brand.
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