It’s a cloudy afternoon in late March in Burlington, Mass., the Boston suburb that’s the site of co-headquarters for Keurig Dr Pepper. CEO Tim Cofer—who’s just dropped off his suitcase after arriving from KDP’s second home base in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas—is guiding Fortune through the glass-framed modern office building which contains a warren of showrooms. One displays all 16 flavors of Dr Pepper, another shows a panoply of new energy drinks; walking down the hall we visit a gallery arraying dozens of Keurig models, from the K-Mini for dorm rooms to a business-size brewer at over $1,000.
Between extolling the products in each room, the super-salesman describes the promise of this world of liquids, where he’s never worked before, and his mission for KDP. Cofer is instilling the élan of a scrappy underdog in this old-line corporation of 29,000 employees. “We’re hungry, we like to disrupt; this is a challenger culture where we play offense, not defense,” he explains, while standing before a neon-rainbow rack of cans. “There’s a real sweet spot where a company’s large enough to bring the scale in investment and distribution to win in a big way, but keeps the mindset of being nimble, aggressive, and continually dissatisfied with the status quo,” he says.
