New Mexico man goes to Circle K. Then he tries to pour himself a Coca-Cola and Polar Pop

Dibbs (@its_dibbs) walked into a Circle K in South Valley, New Mexico—a majority-Hispanic community south of Albuquerque—and pronounced it “the sketchiest” store he'd been to, and spent much of his review filming a fountain drink dispenser stocked with Jarritos, horchata, and Big Red.

What happened at this Circle K?

“I honestly was shook,” says the creator, panning across a cracked Polar Pop cup holder and Coke dispenser he calls “disgusting.”

He calls the store “extremely subpar for the brand.” But there he get's a little…demographic.

“You know you're in the hood, though. When you start seeing flavors like this,” Dibbs says.

He runs the inventory: Mango, strawberry melon, raspberry Brisk, Dole strawberry lemonade, “all the Pepsis you could never want,” Dr Pepper cream soda, and—with a beat of surprise—”a bunch of these different Mexican ones, a bunch of horchatas.” Mountain Dew “out the a**.” Sprite Cherry. Lipton Peach. Circle K berries. Big Red. Fanta orange.

“Give me a break,” he says.

The neighborhood he's calling “the hood” is South Valley, an unincorporated community south of Albuquerque that has been majority-Hispanic for decades — 77.6% at the 2000 census. The shelves are typically stocked according to the customer base. Dibbs shouldn't have been surprised.

Flavors at Circle K

First, Dibbs did provide an exact location in the comments: “Lomas and Broadway.” It has a McDonald's attached, per Apple Maps, if a person really needed a functioning Coke dispenser.

But one note suggested Dibbs simply had just not been to one in South Valley before.

One person wrote, “They have the same flavors at all of them bro.” When Dibbs suggested it wasn't true, another person replied, “No, he's right. Same flavors everywhere.”

Know Your Customer

The soda wall Dibbs mocks reflects a documented strategy. Lee Greville, managing partner at agua fresca supplier IntelliBev, told CSP Daily News that “a bulk of c-stores still treat their fountain business as a me-too offer”—with too little innovation for Latino shoppers, who by his count drive roughly one in three convenience-store transactions. His company supplies horchata to more than 2,000 stores expressly to break the me-too pattern.

The label itself is the older problem. Chon Noriega, former director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, told TheWrap that the industry's default has long been to stereotype Latinos as “maids, gang-bangers and sex symbols” while flattening the distinctions between Latin American cultures. A row of Mexican sodas in New Mexico is not “the hood.” It's the neighborhood.

@its_dibbs Blowout city… who can be the first one to tell me which Circle K this is in Albuquerque?? Go! #polarpop #circlek #soda #pop #coke ♬ 2 High – JMSN

Subplot reached out to Dibbs (@its_dibbs) via TikTok comment and message, and to Circle K via email for more information.

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