How Jarritos Defied Borders and Became a Global Phenom

If you’ve ever eaten in a taquería, or purchased Mexican food from a cart, food truck, or corner vendor with a cooler, you’re likely familiar with the tall glass bottles of vibrantly colored Jarritos soda. But this intrinsically Mexican product is no mere beverage. Over the course of 75 years (August 29 marks their official anniversary), the brand itself has become iconic. Its embrace into the culture of both the United States and Mexico is a story about economics, migration, and the rise of Mexican culture.

According to the official Jarritos story, the brand was founded in 1950 by Francisco “El Güero” Hill, a chemist and inventor who used the dining room table of his Guadalajara, Jalisco, home as his workshop. The first drink he produced was a coffee soda that unfortunately proved unpopular. Pivoting, he turned to fruit flavors instead.

Aguas frescas, drinks made from water and fresh fruit, have long been a ubiquitous culinary staple in Mexico, so the idea for similar fruit-flavored sodas was a natural extension.

Aguas frescas, drinks made from water and fresh fruit, have long been a ubiquitous culinary staple in Mexico, so the idea for similar fruit-flavored sodas was a natural extension. Hill used familiar and popular flavors like tamarind, pineapple, mandarin, guava, and lime. The lightly carbonated, caffeine-free soft drinks—which originally were sold in unlabeled glass bottles identifiable only by the color of the liquid inside—were a hit. When the brand eventually began to label its beverages, it used an image of three jarritos. The little clay jars are a traditional type of vessel that in Mexico, and Jalisco in particular, are used to store and serve beverages. Those same little jars still appear on the brand’s label today.

But Jarritos wasn’t the only brand making fruity refrescos. The brand Barrilitos, now owned by Coca-Cola and relaunched in 2024, originally launched in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1938. “Each part of Mexico has its own refrescos, its own soft drinks, and Jarritos was from Jalisco,” explains Sophie Avernin, a judge for Iron Chef Mexico, and a sommelier and the owner of Mexico City wine bar Provocateur. “Usually you don’t find it at restaurants. It’s not like Coca-Cola, or Pepsi, or Sprite. You find it at taco stands.”

That distinction is important because it speaks to economic accessibility. Pairing refrescos with tacos and other street food is practically a culinary tradition in Mexico, but that combination is also eminently affordable. Jarritos, like many other Mexican soda brands, was priced so that virtually anyone could purchase it. 

“When I was 6 years old in first grade—I’m 39 now—I always needed to have a peso and a half for a snack during my break in school,” remembers Victor Ernesto Castañeda Corona, the senior production manager at Ilegal Mezcal. “That was the cost of one media torta [half of a bolillo roll topped with beans and fresh cheese] and one Jarritos.” That price was around a nickel at today’s exchange rate.

If affordability initially made Jarritos accessible, its broad familiarity and cultural appeal helped to bring it across the border. The brand and its flavors remained popular with Mexicans even after they emigrated to the United States, says Gustavo Arellano, the LA Times columnist and author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. “I live in Southern California and I’m old enough to remember that when you needed to buy Jarritos you needed to go to Tijuana,” he says. “In the late ’80s or early ’90s, you would go to Tijuana and buy them by cases of bottles. You would drink them all, and then you would return the bottles and get a new batch. But then you started seeing the rise of Latino supermarkets [in the United States], and the rest is history, as they say.”

Today the brand, which is still Mexican-owned, is an undeniable global phenomenon, available in 42 countries around the world.

By 1988, Mexicans no longer needed to travel across the border to get their refrescos. Jarritos was being distributed in the United States by Novamex, an El Paso, Texas–based distributor carrying products from Embotelladora Mexicana S.A. de C.V., which itself is part of Consorcio Aga, a large and prominent Mexican drinks conglomerate. By 2008, the colorful drinks traveled beyond North American shores and were introduced to Europe. Today the brand, which is still Mexican-owned, is an undeniable global phenomenon, available in 42 countries around the world.

While the volume of Jarritos sold is a drop in the bucket compared to Coca-Cola, their numbers aren’t unimpressive. In 2019, Novamex CEO Luis Fernandez told the Texas newspaper El Paso Inc. that the company was exporting the equivalent of 2.4 billion bottles of Jarritos per year. The brand’s recognition and popularity has grown beyond the bounds of the beverage aisle, resulting in a variety of creative collaborations. You can shower with Jarritos-scented body wash from San Francisco–based company Native, put Jarritos-branded Nike basketball shoes or Wolverine work boots on your feet, paint your nails with Jarritos-colored nail polish, and enjoy a wide variety of Jarritos-flavored candies, ice creams, and even hard sodas being produced with Anheuser-Busch.

It’s unsurprising to see the soda make its way behind the cocktail bar as well. Michael Aredes, the queer Chicano founder of the Noche Traviesa pop-up, also works the bar at Superbueno in New York City, a Mexican American cocktail bar. While Jarritos Grapefruit is stocked at the bar, Aredes will personally reach for the soda to create cocktails for his own events or pop-ups. “If I’m working an event and that’s an option, I could always pull a bottle of Jarritos and finish it 1:1 with a spirit and add some citrus to give it a little more dimension,” he explains.

But when asked when he first tried Jarritos, Aredes becomes enthusiastic and nostalgic. “I really love the tamarindo, personally, and I grew up drinking the fruit punch whenever I saw that as well. It’s been around since I was a kid,” he recalls. “There was a little Mexican market down the street from my mom’s house, a carnicería [a Mexican meat market], and we would be able to go in and buy cheese, buy chiles, and they had all the fridges filled with all the different sodas and the flavors of Jarritos.”

The fact that Jarritos remains a drink most often purchased in places like Mexican meat markets, bodegas, and taquerías suggests the soda hasn’t strayed too far from its roots. Whether you’re in Brooklyn or Guadalajara, the instantly recognizable, brightly colored sodas labeled with three small clay jars remain a taste of Mexico, a drink people would literally cross borders to try.