Organic bottled tea brand Honest Tea will be sold at more than 75,000 retail outlets nationwide by the end of this year, up from 15,000 in 2007, the year before the Coca-Cola company made a minority investment in the company. Earlier this year, Coke exercised an option to acquire Honest, but Goldman has remained at the helm and kept most of his equity in the company. "You really have to make sure you stand for something," Goldman says. "When we started this business 13 years ago, if growth was more important than anything else, we would have just made the [tea] sweeter and cheaper. It doesn't take a market research guru to tell you that sweet drinks sell more. But we really wanted to do things differently and in a way that meant something to us. And that's why it became valuable to Coke."
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