The Lost Recipe
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 22 of 100.
Lindlhuber Brewery, Munich, Saturday, 7:00 am. At noon the mayor taps the first keg of Oktoberfest, and the Lindlhuber family has served the festival for 130 years.
At 6:00 am, old Anton Lindlhuber opened the office safe to fetch the leather notebook with the original 1893 recipe, which he reads aloud at every opening. The notebook is gone. The safe was not forced: it was opened with the combination.
The night watchman locked the office at 11:00 pm and only came back at midnight. The theft happened in that hour. Three people had a motive, and none of them wants to say where they were.
The brewery's tasting room, oak tables, beer mugs hanging from the ceiling, the smell of malt in the air.
Suspects
Korbinian MaierMaster brewer, 61
Quirin LindlhuberGrandson of the owner, 26
Ottilie BrandlRepresentative of the rival brewery Spatenhof, 45
The real case
The attempt to sell Coca-Cola secrets to Pepsi
Atlanta, United States, 2006
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In 2006, an executive assistant at Coca-Cola in Atlanta took confidential documents and a sample of an unreleased product out of the company, and two accomplices offered the material to Pepsi for 1.5 million dollars. Pepsi alerted its rival, and the FBI set up a sting with an agent posing as a buyer.
All three were arrested; the assistant was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2007. It was not the drink's secret formula, but the case became a symbol of how a century-old recipe is guarded and coveted.
The game borrows the idea of an insider trying to sell an old brand's recipe to a rival group. Characters, setting and outcome are fiction.