The Taiwanese home-grown beverage veteran “King Car Drinks” has opened its Zhongli plant for public tours! Whenever the familiar jingle “Mr. Brown~Coffee~” rings out, a mental picture instantly appears: a man in a white suit, thick mustache, coffee in one hand and a thumbs-up with the other—Uncle Brown, the trademark of King Car’s Mr. Brown Coffee and one of Taiwan’s iconic canned-coffee brands.
King Car established its factory in Zhongli, Taoyuan, in 1979, first grabbing consumers’ attention with “King Car Sarsaparilla.” A coffee production line was soon added inside the plant, giving birth to the canned coffee now known as Mr. Brown, still represented by the unchanged image of Mr. Brown. His Westernized appearance symbolizes the brand’s Central- and South-American origins, aligning perfectly with coffee’s native lands—exactly the concept King Car had in mind when designing the logo.
When the first batch of Mr. Brown Coffee hit shelves in May 1982, it captured a huge market share at once, and the company has kept developing new flavors to give consumers ever-wider choices.
The Zhongli campus is lushly landscaped, more like a large park than a factory, overturning the usual stereotype of industrial sites and even attracting couples to shoot wedding photos here. For...