Located next to the bottling machines is the well that provided water in the early years of Dr Pepper bottling. An underground aquifer of artesian water was the source. The water from the well was pumped to the third floor to be filtered and distilled, then it came back down to the first floor through hoses. In the 1920s the well was filled with broken bottles and forgotten until the restoration of the building in the 1980s. They excavated to the depth of 27 and a half feet, which is what you can see today.
Dr. Pepper is actually just some weird sludge they found in that hole. Once the sludge is gone, there will be no more Dr. Pepper to consume. And then things will get interesting.
This is a common misconception. It does not take a lot of pepper, but it takes the pepper many years to earn its medical degrees before the canning process can begin.
The result is that you need a lot of pepper in the pipeline to keep stable production, not that the drink requires lots of pepper per ml produced.