The story
The Austrian family business was founded by Franz Rauch in 1919 as a cider press for the surrounding farmers. In the interwar period, however, the fruit juice production was already carried out industrially. In 1962 the company was taken over by the next generation and got internationally oriented.
In the 1970s Rauch became the market leader in the Austrian market with the brands Happy Day and Bravo and sold Tetra Pak instead of glass bottles. When a campaign against smoking was launched in Austria with the slogan "Ohne Rauch geht's auch" ("it's possible without smoke"), the company Rauch created the advertising slogan "Ohne Rauch geht's nicht, wenn man denn vom Fruchtsaft spricht" ("Without smoke it is not possible, if one speaks of the fruit juice") and was thus known until the 1980s. The slogan worked because Rauch is not only the name of the company, but also means smoke in German.
In 1998 the beverage supply was also extended to ice tea. In addition, the brewery Fohrenburg was taken over in Bludenz.
On 8 June 2016 the Federal Competition Authority of Austria (BWB) announced a decision of the Cartel Court on 3 March 2016 against Rauch Fruchtsäfte GmbH & Co OG and Rauch Fruchtsäfte GmbH. Due to vertical price adjustments of final retail prices to retail customers in the period from September 2003 to March 2012, a fine of EUR 1.7 million was imposed.
In 2017 the beverage producer was honored as the "Top Brand 2017" in the fruit drinks category in Germany.
It was the most successful year so far in the company's history and the company was able to increase sales by 2.4 percent from EUR 881 million to EUR 902 million.
2019 was the first year in which Rauch sales grew over EUR 1 billion, which fell by 5.3 percent to EUR 965 million in 2020, presumably due to their gastronomy partners' massive losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
From Wikipedia’s article on Rauch (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3