Friday, February 24, 2012
Associated Press
NEW YORK
Pepsi is hoping to win back soda drinkers with a compromise.
Some people don’t like the calories in regular soda but loathe the taste of zero-calorie diet drinks. So the nation’s No. 2 cola company is rolling out Pepsi Next, a cola that has about half the calories of regular Pepsi at 60 calories per can.
The cola, which is slated to hit store shelves nationally by the end of March, is Pepsi’s biggest product launch in years. The drink comes as people increasingly move away from sugary drinks to water and other lower-calorie beverages because of health concerns. It’s also an attempt by Pepsi to revive the cola wars against Coke and others.
Pepsi Next isn’t the first drink to try to hit the sweet spot between diet and regular cola. Dr Pepper Snapple rolled out its low-calorie Dr Pepper Ten, which has 10 calories. The company said the drink, which has sugar unlike its diet soda, helped boost its fourth-quarter sales.
But coming up with a successful “midcalorie soda,” which has more calories, has been more challenging for beverage makers. In 2001, Coke rolled out C2, and Pepsi in 2004 introduced its Pepsi Edge, both of which had about half the calories of regular soda. Both products also were taken off the market by 2006 because of poor sales.
“The problem was that consumers either wanted regular soda or a diet drink with zero calories — not something in between,” said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest.
Pepsi says its latest stab at an in-between soda uses a different formula to more closely imitate the taste of regular soda. Pepsi Next is made with a mix of three artificial sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup.
A Pepsi spokeswoman, Melisa Tezanos, said the company developed the cola by researching the “taste curve” that consumers experience when drinking regular soda. She compared that arc to how someone might evaluate a sip of wine, from the moment the liquid hits the tongue to the aftertaste it leaves.