Coca-Cola announced yesterday that it is purchasing approximately a 10% stake in the Green Mountain Coffee Roasting (GMCR) company. Why does that impact SodaStream? Part of the the partnership between the two beverage companies is their plan to “cooperate to bring the Keurig Cold™ beverage system to consumers around the world.” Right now, GMCR produces a lot of coffee pods for the Keurig single-serving coffee brewing machine. They’ll bring their experience to the new venture. Coca-Cola will bring their family of beloved soft drinks to the system, which “will use precisely formulated single-serve pods to dispense freshly-made cold beverages including carbonated drinks, enhanced waters, juice drinks, sports drinks and teas in consumers’ homes with the one-touch simplicity, quality and variety that North American consumers love about the Keurig® brand hot system platform.” No more generic soda flavors!
GMCR’s Keurig Cold™ single-serve beverage system is currently under development with expected availability in GMCR’s fiscal year 2015. Read the entire press release here.
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Interesting! I’m still pretty much kicked my Diet Coke habit. I still have one when I eat out and once in awhile at work during the day, but for the most part, i don’t drink them. I might be interested in a Keurig Cold if there was an easy way to make my own pods with flavors and sweetners that I trust.
Check out this site –
http://twistnsparkle.com/index.html
The Twist n Sparkle device has been recalled by the Consumer Product Safety people because it can explode.
DON
Very interesting. I wonder how this will take off against someone like SodaStream, who had a market as it was cheaper than standard soft drink prices. I can’t imagine Coke will compete against themselves and make single serving containers cheaper than say, a 2 liter bottle. In that case, besides a limited number of times it might be convenient, why would anyone buy it? I guess if it instead is just selling concentrate for you to make at home, without their cost of plastic, labeling, and water it could be slightly competitive, but I would think marginally.
Huh. I currently use fountain Diet Coke syrup with my SodaStream (sorry, haven’t quite kicked the habit yet, Julie!). I figure it costs me about 30 cents to make a 16 oz bottle. Knowing that Keurig coffee pods cost about 50 cents each, I wonder if this Keurig Cold Beverage can come in at a reasonable price.
Still, a 50 cent pod does beat $1.50 in a store for price on a bottle of soda.
No need to worry about Coca-Cola, SodaStream themselves are leading the way to the death of themselves. At first they sold only the one soda maker model which took the large CO2 canister that cost about $12 to exchange. I guess they weren’t making enough on that so they started making makers that only took the small canisters and made more money. I guess that was not enough either because now it costs over $32 to exchange the large one now. You would think that would be enough, but no!!! Now they claim that they have now “re-formulated their syrups. So now the syrup cost the same as it used to buy now only makes a little over half of what the bottles used to make. As I said, don’t worry about Coca-Cola SodaStream is putting themselves out of business. I bought a small $9 adapter (you can find on eBay) that converts 20 oz paintball gun tanks to fit the carbonation units threads and I am now buying concentrates from a different company and making my own sugar free syrups using Splenda and water. My cost now for the syrup is half of what it was with their old formulation and a fourth of what they sell their new formulation for.