The History of Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Soda

Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Soda was invented by the eponymous Dr. Brown. Very little is known about him, and there’s a chance the name is simply a marketing ploy, but some origin stories claim that Dr. Brown was a real person who lived in either Williamsburg or the Lower East Side in New York City in the mid-1800s. There, he made tonics, including a celery tonic that was thought to be good for digestion. However, the tonic itself was thick, so carbonated water was often added to make it palatable. What we do know for certain is that in 1868, Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic debuted. (The name was later changed due to the FDA’s eventual crackdown on the rampant use of the word “tonic.”) Interestingly, Cel-Ray owes much of its success to the 1800s health trend that considered celery a superfood. Notably, it was a relatively new crop in America at the time (the seeds had been brought over by waves of immigrants). There were several other celery sodas or tonics on the market concurrently, including Lake’s Celery and Celery-Cola, but most of them were discontinued when America’s fascination with celery wore off in the 1930s. However, Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda endured — why? The unique soda owes its longevity to New York delis. Cel-Ray was long sold exclusively in New York delicatessens, where it paired well with the salty, fatty foods on offer. The botanical flavor of the drink was also familiar to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, many of whom had routinely made similar beverages back home and naturally found work in the New York soda industry. Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda became a quintessential part of the Jewish deli experience in the city and that kept it going for decades. In fact, the exclusivity agreement only ended in the 1980s, when the popularity of Jewish delicatessens started to decline. Today, Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda is still in production and has gained some newfound popularity as soda tastes are once again beginning to shift towards more botanical flavors.