I hope this encourages them to kill off the horribly conceived Keurig Kold project, or at least wait until it's ready for prime-time before releasing it.
Some highlights:
* A single-serve soda maker.
* The machine costs $369
* Each 6oz flavor pod costs between $1 and $1.50
* It takes 90-seconds to make a single 6oz drink
* It takes 2-hours to come on and cool down enough to be ready to make a drink.
Even without the cost of the machine itself, you're paying about $0.20/oz of soda (which people say tastes slightly worse than the canned variety), compared to $0.12/oz just buying it by the can. Add the nearly $400 purchase price, the fact that it'd take 6-minutes to "brew" 4-cups for, say, a family, and the gigantic machine on your kitchen counter, and it's hard to imagine why anyone would buy this thing.
Keurig's coffee machines make sense. But at some point during the $200M 6-year development cycle for the Kold, someone should have stepped back and said, "Wait, this is a horrible idea and we should stop."
EDIT: I should add that Coke has invested a total of $2.4 Billion in Keurig (specifically to support the Kold) thus far. They should be doing a dance in the street, since an acquisition is the only way I can imagine them getting that money back.
When I read this, I thought you were mistaken on the cost of the pods, but sure enough, they cost from $1.00 to over $3.00 per pod (on Amazon).
I can buy Coke cans at Costco for around 35 cents/can or close to 3 cents an ounce. Why would Keurig think that I'd want to pay 5+ times more for the "convenience" of buying a big expensive machine to let me "make" coke at home!?
And those capsules look big (which is probably because there's so much sugar in soda, they can't make them tiny. Probably about 1/4 the size of a 8 ounce can of coke.
I suspect it's a licensing thing. The Soda Stream lets you make a liter of soda for about the price of a generic soda (when you factor in CO2 + syrup)
As for the size of the pod, a cap of syrup smaller than one 12 oz drink's pod can make that same liter (though the Kold doesn't have a CO2 cartridge, so I'm sure the tech transfers the fizziness to the pod somehow)
FWIW, you can buy a sodastream unit for ~$70 and then for another $200 to $300 get a conversion kit and a large co2 cylinder and from then on the cost of carbonation works out to less than three cents per liter. Not sure what the syrup cost is since I only use mine for sparkling water.
I just wanted to comment to say that that is a brilliant idea. I only use my Soda Stream for sparking water as well, but I pay about 25 cents per liter for the standard refills.
I have a co2doctor[0,1] kit, a 20lb capacity tank from amazon (bought new - you can get them used but then you don't know where they've been or how clean they are...) and filled it for about $30 at Carbonic Service[2] in Santa Clara.
I like Soda Stream and own one, but the syrups aren't very good if you ask me. I'd happily pay more for Syrup if it was the branded stuff that tastes right.
Part of the reason why, I suspect, is because they aren't aiming for 1:1 parity, they want "healthier" so they can put it on a billboard. Ultimately result is that they taste like diet drinks (only with more sugar).
I agree. I have one, and about the only want I can tolerate is their Cola Zero. However, I've since went back to Coke Zero cans, and was excited by the Kold, but the price really is a non-starter.
>And those capsules look big (which is probably because there's so much sugar in soda, they can't make them tiny. Probably about 1/4 the size of a 8 ounce can of coke.
Who knows, maybe Coca Cola is playing a long game, and hope to refine the technology enough that one day they can ship around only the dry ingredients, and save $$$ on shipping all the water in each can?
In essence, yeah. Probably the catch is the vending machine style approach just doesn't work in homes or small offices- a Keurig approach, where the user supplies the raw materials packet, would be more suitable.
Some highlights:
* A single-serve soda maker.
* The machine costs $369
* Each 6oz flavor pod costs between $1 and $1.50
* It takes 90-seconds to make a single 6oz drink
* It takes 2-hours to come on and cool down enough to be ready to make a drink.
Even without the cost of the machine itself, you're paying about $0.20/oz of soda (which people say tastes slightly worse than the canned variety), compared to $0.12/oz just buying it by the can. Add the nearly $400 purchase price, the fact that it'd take 6-minutes to "brew" 4-cups for, say, a family, and the gigantic machine on your kitchen counter, and it's hard to imagine why anyone would buy this thing.
Keurig's coffee machines make sense. But at some point during the $200M 6-year development cycle for the Kold, someone should have stepped back and said, "Wait, this is a horrible idea and we should stop."
EDIT: I should add that Coke has invested a total of $2.4 Billion in Keurig (specifically to support the Kold) thus far. They should be doing a dance in the street, since an acquisition is the only way I can imagine them getting that money back.