97 Year Old Nyc Diner Still Serves Their Coke The Old Fashioned Way

2022Viral video / copypasta / engagement bait parodysemi-active

Also known as: Old Fashioned Coke Β· Lexington Candy Shop Coke

97 Year Old Nyc Diner Still Serves Their Coke The Old Fashioned Way is a 2022 viral meme from TikToker Nicolas Heller showing Lexington Candy Shop mixing Coke from syrup and carbonated water, later becoming an engagement bait copypasta format.

"97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way" is a viral video meme originating from a TikTok posted in August 2022 by Nicolas Heller (@newyorknico), showing staff at Manhattan's Lexington Candy Shop mixing Coca-Cola from syrup and carbonated water, topped with vanilla ice cream. The clip was endlessly reposted and stolen across Twitter/X, racking up tens of millions of views each time it resurfaced, and by early 2024 the caption itself became a copypasta format used to parody engagement bait culture.

TL;DR

"97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way" is a viral video meme originating from a TikTok posted in August 2022 by Nicolas Heller (@newyorknico), showing staff at Manhattan's Lexington Candy Shop mixing Coca-Cola from syrup and carbonated water, topped with vanilla ice cream.

Overview

The meme centers on a short video clip filmed inside Lexington Candy Shop, a luncheonette on Manhattan's Upper East Side that opened in 19253. Instead of pouring Coca-Cola from a fountain or bottle, the staff mixes the drink by hand: pumping Coca-Cola syrup into a vintage glass, adding carbonated water, stirring vigorously, then dropping a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top1. The whole process takes about 30 seconds and looks like something out of a 1950s soda fountain, which is exactly why the internet lost its mind over it.

What makes this meme notable isn't just the video itself but what happened to it afterward. The clip was stolen, reposted, and re-stolen across platforms so many times that it became the poster child for "engagement bait" on Twitter/X2. The caption format eventually detached from the original content entirely, spawning absurdist parodies where users applied the same phrasing to completely unrelated videos4.

On August 11, 2022, TikTok creator Nicolas Heller, who posts under the handle @newyorknico, filmed a visit to Lexington Candy Shop at 1226 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side6. His video featured text overlay reading "97 year old NYC diner still serves their Coke the old fashioned way" and showed one of the staff preparing a traditional Coca-Cola float4. Heller also posted the video as an Instagram Reel the same day, where it picked up roughly 294,100 likes4.

The TikTok blew up fast. Over approximately two years, it amassed 45.7 million plays and 4.8 million likes3. John Philis, the restaurant's third-generation co-owner whose grandfather founded the shop, described the immediate impact: "The next day, the lines started forming at 8 in the morning and it was like, huh"3. The diner went from a quiet neighborhood spot to serving 500 floats a day3.

Origin & Background

Platform
TikTok (original video), Twitter/X (meme format)
Key People
Nicolas Heller
Date
2022
Year
2022

On August 11, 2022, TikTok creator Nicolas Heller, who posts under the handle @newyorknico, filmed a visit to Lexington Candy Shop at 1226 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side. His video featured text overlay reading "97 year old NYC diner still serves their Coke the old fashioned way" and showed one of the staff preparing a traditional Coca-Cola float. Heller also posted the video as an Instagram Reel the same day, where it picked up roughly 294,100 likes.

The TikTok blew up fast. Over approximately two years, it amassed 45.7 million plays and 4.8 million likes. John Philis, the restaurant's third-generation co-owner whose grandfather founded the shop, described the immediate impact: "The next day, the lines started forming at 8 in the morning and it was like, huh". The diner went from a quiet neighborhood spot to serving 500 floats a day.

How It Spread

The video jumped to Reddit within 24 hours, landing on r/interestingasfuck on August 12, 2022, where it collected over 59,000 upvotes. On September 20, 2022, the @ladbible account on X reposted it, pulling another 4,900 likes.

The repost cycle started in earnest around September 2022. The X account @ContentGoViraI (formerly @InterestingPot) tweeted the video, which generated viral quote retweets. On September 24, 2022, X user @OvOBrezzzy quote-tweeted it with "Y'all forgot the most important ingredient in the old fashioned coke," earning over 403,000 likes.

The same pattern repeated in 2023. On April 23, @InterestingsAsF reposted the video and hit 123,000 likes. @OvOBrezzzy recycled almost the exact same quote tweet he'd posted a year earlier, this time getting 26,000 likes. Then on November 7, 2023, @historyinmemes reposted it again, pulling 189,000 likes.

By late 2023, the constant reposting had turned the video into a running joke. On December 8, 2023, X user @loimfy captioned an unrelated "Muddy Workers Operating Machinery" video with the old-fashioned Coke phrasing, marking one of the first clear parodies. On January 27, 2024, @blephin_ posted a surreal edit in the style of the Venus Slime Fields meme, captioned "97-eons-old slime diner still serves their glorp the old fashioned way," gaining 52,000 likes.

The parody wave peaked in February 2024 after the @OJSIMPS0NBURNER account reposted the original on February 21, generating 8.9 million views and triggering a flood of copypasta-style rewrites. By this point the caption format was being applied to random images with zero connection to New York, Coca-Cola, or diners.

How to Use This Meme

The meme works in two distinct modes:

Sincere mode: Share the original video (or a similar nostalgic clip) with a caption about how a very old establishment "still does X the old fashioned way." This plays on nostalgia and the appeal of watching skilled manual preparation of something most people get from a machine.

Parody mode: Take any unrelated video, the weirder the better, and caption it using the template: "[Number]-year-old [place] still [does something] the old fashioned way." The humor comes from the non-sequitur pairing and the meta-commentary on how engagement bait accounts keep recycling the same content. Common approaches include using absurdist or surreal videos, substituting made-up words (like "glorp"), or swapping in bizarre time scales ("97-eons-old").

Cultural Impact

The Lexington Candy Shop saw a dramatic real-world business boost from the viral attention. The Daily Mail reported that the diner's trade increased roughly fifty-fold after the TikTok went viral. The shop, which had operated as a quiet neighborhood luncheonette since 1925, suddenly had lines forming before opening.

The diner, co-owned by Philis and his business partner Bob Karcher, became a must-visit spot for tourists and content creators alike. It's located three blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and its 1940s interior with a jukebox, pinball machine, and vintage signage made it catnip for social media.

The meme also spawned a misinformation episode. False claims circulated on X in late 2024 that the diner had been "shut down after owners were arrested for allegedly laundering over 2.3 million dollars". The Hindustan Times fact-checked these claims and found them baseless, noting there were no mainstream reports of any arrests and the shop was still open. The hoax posts also incorrectly called it a "97-year-old" diner when it had actually turned 100 by 2025.

The meme became a case study in engagement bait dynamics. The SportsGrail noted that many viewers initially dismissed the video as an ad or generic viral content, only to realize it had become one of February 2024's biggest memes through sheer repetition and creative reinterpretation.

Fun Facts

Lexington Candy Shop was established in 1925 and remodeled in 1948, meaning the interior that captivated millions is itself roughly 75 years old.

The "old fashioned" method is actually just how all Coca-Cola was originally served before pre-mixed bottles and fountain machines took over. The drink is mixed from concentrated syrup and about five times as much cold carbonated water.

One commenter on the original video wrote: "I used to go here as a child. My mom would get me coke syrup to help a yucky tummy. I'm so happy part of my childhood remains".

@OvOBrezzzy posted essentially the same quote tweet about "the most important ingredient" twice, roughly seven months apart, and both went viral.

The @Zvbear account that helped amplify the video in 2023 later gained notoriety for posting AI-generated images of Taylor Swift, connecting this wholesome diner meme to one of the internet's most controversial AI incidents.

Derivatives & Variations

Engagement bait parody format:

Users applied the "old fashioned way" caption template to unrelated videos, mocking the accounts that kept reposting the original[4].

Venus Slime Fields crossover:

@blephin_ merged the format with the surreal "glorp" meme aesthetic in January 2024[4].

Muddy Workers mashup:

@loimfy paired the caption with industrial machinery footage in December 2023[4].

"Most important ingredient" quote tweets:

@OvOBrezzzy's recurring joke about a missing ingredient (implied to be cocaine, referencing Coca-Cola's original recipe) became a meme in its own right, with the user posting nearly identical tweets a year apart[7].

Money laundering hoax:

Fabricated arrest stories about the diner owners circulated on X, becoming a minor meme in their own right[5].

Frequently Asked Questions

97 Year Old Nyc Diner Still Serves Their Coke The Old Fashioned Way

2022Viral video / copypasta / engagement bait parodysemi-active

Also known as: Old Fashioned Coke Β· Lexington Candy Shop Coke

97 Year Old Nyc Diner Still Serves Their Coke The Old Fashioned Way is a 2022 viral meme from TikToker Nicolas Heller showing Lexington Candy Shop mixing Coke from syrup and carbonated water, later becoming an engagement bait copypasta format.

"97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way" is a viral video meme originating from a TikTok posted in August 2022 by Nicolas Heller (@newyorknico), showing staff at Manhattan's Lexington Candy Shop mixing Coca-Cola from syrup and carbonated water, topped with vanilla ice cream. The clip was endlessly reposted and stolen across Twitter/X, racking up tens of millions of views each time it resurfaced, and by early 2024 the caption itself became a copypasta format used to parody engagement bait culture.

TL;DR

"97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way" is a viral video meme originating from a TikTok posted in August 2022 by Nicolas Heller (@newyorknico), showing staff at Manhattan's Lexington Candy Shop mixing Coca-Cola from syrup and carbonated water, topped with vanilla ice cream.

Overview

The meme centers on a short video clip filmed inside Lexington Candy Shop, a luncheonette on Manhattan's Upper East Side that opened in 1925. Instead of pouring Coca-Cola from a fountain or bottle, the staff mixes the drink by hand: pumping Coca-Cola syrup into a vintage glass, adding carbonated water, stirring vigorously, then dropping a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. The whole process takes about 30 seconds and looks like something out of a 1950s soda fountain, which is exactly why the internet lost its mind over it.

What makes this meme notable isn't just the video itself but what happened to it afterward. The clip was stolen, reposted, and re-stolen across platforms so many times that it became the poster child for "engagement bait" on Twitter/X. The caption format eventually detached from the original content entirely, spawning absurdist parodies where users applied the same phrasing to completely unrelated videos.

On August 11, 2022, TikTok creator Nicolas Heller, who posts under the handle @newyorknico, filmed a visit to Lexington Candy Shop at 1226 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side. His video featured text overlay reading "97 year old NYC diner still serves their Coke the old fashioned way" and showed one of the staff preparing a traditional Coca-Cola float. Heller also posted the video as an Instagram Reel the same day, where it picked up roughly 294,100 likes.

The TikTok blew up fast. Over approximately two years, it amassed 45.7 million plays and 4.8 million likes. John Philis, the restaurant's third-generation co-owner whose grandfather founded the shop, described the immediate impact: "The next day, the lines started forming at 8 in the morning and it was like, huh". The diner went from a quiet neighborhood spot to serving 500 floats a day.

Origin & Background

Platform
TikTok (original video), Twitter/X (meme format)
Key People
Nicolas Heller
Date
2022
Year
2022

On August 11, 2022, TikTok creator Nicolas Heller, who posts under the handle @newyorknico, filmed a visit to Lexington Candy Shop at 1226 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side. His video featured text overlay reading "97 year old NYC diner still serves their Coke the old fashioned way" and showed one of the staff preparing a traditional Coca-Cola float. Heller also posted the video as an Instagram Reel the same day, where it picked up roughly 294,100 likes.

The TikTok blew up fast. Over approximately two years, it amassed 45.7 million plays and 4.8 million likes. John Philis, the restaurant's third-generation co-owner whose grandfather founded the shop, described the immediate impact: "The next day, the lines started forming at 8 in the morning and it was like, huh". The diner went from a quiet neighborhood spot to serving 500 floats a day.

How It Spread

The video jumped to Reddit within 24 hours, landing on r/interestingasfuck on August 12, 2022, where it collected over 59,000 upvotes. On September 20, 2022, the @ladbible account on X reposted it, pulling another 4,900 likes.

The repost cycle started in earnest around September 2022. The X account @ContentGoViraI (formerly @InterestingPot) tweeted the video, which generated viral quote retweets. On September 24, 2022, X user @OvOBrezzzy quote-tweeted it with "Y'all forgot the most important ingredient in the old fashioned coke," earning over 403,000 likes.

The same pattern repeated in 2023. On April 23, @InterestingsAsF reposted the video and hit 123,000 likes. @OvOBrezzzy recycled almost the exact same quote tweet he'd posted a year earlier, this time getting 26,000 likes. Then on November 7, 2023, @historyinmemes reposted it again, pulling 189,000 likes.

By late 2023, the constant reposting had turned the video into a running joke. On December 8, 2023, X user @loimfy captioned an unrelated "Muddy Workers Operating Machinery" video with the old-fashioned Coke phrasing, marking one of the first clear parodies. On January 27, 2024, @blephin_ posted a surreal edit in the style of the Venus Slime Fields meme, captioned "97-eons-old slime diner still serves their glorp the old fashioned way," gaining 52,000 likes.

The parody wave peaked in February 2024 after the @OJSIMPS0NBURNER account reposted the original on February 21, generating 8.9 million views and triggering a flood of copypasta-style rewrites. By this point the caption format was being applied to random images with zero connection to New York, Coca-Cola, or diners.

How to Use This Meme

The meme works in two distinct modes:

Sincere mode: Share the original video (or a similar nostalgic clip) with a caption about how a very old establishment "still does X the old fashioned way." This plays on nostalgia and the appeal of watching skilled manual preparation of something most people get from a machine.

Parody mode: Take any unrelated video, the weirder the better, and caption it using the template: "[Number]-year-old [place] still [does something] the old fashioned way." The humor comes from the non-sequitur pairing and the meta-commentary on how engagement bait accounts keep recycling the same content. Common approaches include using absurdist or surreal videos, substituting made-up words (like "glorp"), or swapping in bizarre time scales ("97-eons-old").

Cultural Impact

The Lexington Candy Shop saw a dramatic real-world business boost from the viral attention. The Daily Mail reported that the diner's trade increased roughly fifty-fold after the TikTok went viral. The shop, which had operated as a quiet neighborhood luncheonette since 1925, suddenly had lines forming before opening.

The diner, co-owned by Philis and his business partner Bob Karcher, became a must-visit spot for tourists and content creators alike. It's located three blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and its 1940s interior with a jukebox, pinball machine, and vintage signage made it catnip for social media.

The meme also spawned a misinformation episode. False claims circulated on X in late 2024 that the diner had been "shut down after owners were arrested for allegedly laundering over 2.3 million dollars". The Hindustan Times fact-checked these claims and found them baseless, noting there were no mainstream reports of any arrests and the shop was still open. The hoax posts also incorrectly called it a "97-year-old" diner when it had actually turned 100 by 2025.

The meme became a case study in engagement bait dynamics. The SportsGrail noted that many viewers initially dismissed the video as an ad or generic viral content, only to realize it had become one of February 2024's biggest memes through sheer repetition and creative reinterpretation.

Fun Facts

Lexington Candy Shop was established in 1925 and remodeled in 1948, meaning the interior that captivated millions is itself roughly 75 years old.

The "old fashioned" method is actually just how all Coca-Cola was originally served before pre-mixed bottles and fountain machines took over. The drink is mixed from concentrated syrup and about five times as much cold carbonated water.

One commenter on the original video wrote: "I used to go here as a child. My mom would get me coke syrup to help a yucky tummy. I'm so happy part of my childhood remains".

@OvOBrezzzy posted essentially the same quote tweet about "the most important ingredient" twice, roughly seven months apart, and both went viral.

The @Zvbear account that helped amplify the video in 2023 later gained notoriety for posting AI-generated images of Taylor Swift, connecting this wholesome diner meme to one of the internet's most controversial AI incidents.

Derivatives & Variations

Engagement bait parody format:

Users applied the "old fashioned way" caption template to unrelated videos, mocking the accounts that kept reposting the original[4].

Venus Slime Fields crossover:

@blephin_ merged the format with the surreal "glorp" meme aesthetic in January 2024[4].

Muddy Workers mashup:

@loimfy paired the caption with industrial machinery footage in December 2023[4].

"Most important ingredient" quote tweets:

@OvOBrezzzy's recurring joke about a missing ingredient (implied to be cocaine, referencing Coca-Cola's original recipe) became a meme in its own right, with the user posting nearly identical tweets a year apart[7].

Money laundering hoax:

Fabricated arrest stories about the diner owners circulated on X, becoming a minor meme in their own right[5].

Frequently Asked Questions