Coke is trying to boost its fountain business (in restaurants, etc.) by letting people add a shot of flavors to its drinks – kinda like Starbucks does.
Remember when Coke changed the basic formulation? Folks balked at New Coke.
So, let’s dink with flavors some more and confuse people re: what a Coke tastes like.
Might work … but I resisted headlining this “adding fizz to the soda biz”.
The soda business is in need of some innovation.
Sales volume in the U.S. has slipped steadily for the past five years, and fell 2.1% in 2009 to 9.42 billion cases.
Fountain sales, which make up about a quarter of soft-drink volume, slipped 2.7%.
Coca-Cola hopes a new high-tech soda fountain will add some life to listless soft-drink sales by letting restaurant-goers mix up 104 different drinks, creating inventions such as Caffeine-Free Diet Raspberry Coke.
Coke is the giant of the fountain business, with 70% of the U.S. market.
A key to Coke’s strategy is to sell more sodas when people are dining out, presumably with family and friends.
The Freestyle is a wireless device, capable of beaming back information that helps Coke realize that sales of non-caffeinated drinks skyrocket after 3 p.m., or that a particular restaurant will need a concentrate shipment by the next week, based on usage patterns.
Although Coke is charging more for a Freestyle machine than for a traditional soda fountain, the company expects restaurants will ultimately raise the price of a drink by about 10 cents.
Excerpted from WSJ: Coke Goes High-Tech to Mix Its Sodas, May 10, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703612804575222350086054976.html?mod=djemMM_t
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