Coca-Cola readying 100-flavor soda fountains

Your typical soda fountain in a fast-food joint features eight boring choices, usually offering nothing more exotic than "Orange." It's been that way for decades, but one of the oldest players in the market is finally shattering that paradigm. Coca-Cola is introducing a machine that can pour 100 different flavors. Early prototypes underwent testing earlier this summer and second-gen units are headed for limited markets early next year -- the same thing they said about those self-cooling bottles last year. Assuming they do come to market, swapping out the highly-concentrated flavors is likened to changing a print cartridge, meaning new choices can come and go quickly depending on popularity. It all sounds refreshing, but we're not looking forward to the lines as the thirsty yet indecisive ponder 15 different flavors of Diet Coke.

[TIMMAH Posted Aug 30th 2008 12:41AM]

The machine will be given away free, but the flavor cartridges will cost a bundle...

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 30th 2008 1:57AM]

uhmmm Dieat Coke+Different Flavors= Cancer? Anyone? Well human beings are getting stronger with all types of components they ad in your coke.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2008 1:34AM]

Okay, I just do not see this happening. Even if they can concentrate the soda syrup so that your not switching it out every time you pour a drink, and even if it can store 100 different types of said miracle syrup cartridges, how is it going to change the fact that most people go with diet? (Read whats actually in diet though, then research it......you'll be sick every time someone sips)

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 1st 2008 10:08PM]

I'm glad I don't drink soda.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 3rd 2008 9:36PM]

'Kay blizzarddemon:

First of all, most of your Coke is just fizzy water. Machines already just take a small amount of syrup, and add a large amount of fizzy water. (Trust me, I worked at McDonald's long enough to know...)
Now, do you have a color printer? It doesn't have 64,000 ink cartridges, but it can print a lot of different colors, right? You have magenta, cyan and yellow, and black, and the printer mixes them.
So: you have cartridges with flavorings: cherry, vanilla, grape, lemon, etc. and then Coke & Diet. Now that's 6 cartridges, but 12 flavors, right? Now add, say, Caffeine-free Coke, and you're up to 7 cartridges, but 18 flavors. Add lime, raspberry etc., and you can see that the number of varieties increases geometrically, but the number of cartridges increases only arithmetically. Its not improbable to reach 100 permutations very quickly - Caffeine-free Diet Coke w/ Cherry? Vanilla Coke? Diet Coke w/Lime? Lemon Coke Zero? Not to mention Coke's other brands, like Sprite, or Minute Maid, Canada Dry, Fresca - go to their website, the list boggles the mind...

What frightens me is being behind a gang of 12 yo's each trying their own version of the 'purple Jesus'...

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 4th 2008 11:14AM]

And somewhere in the distance a dog barked . . .

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 4th 2008 5:05PM]

Who needs coke, fix me a Guaraná anytime!

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 9th 2008 4:52PM]

Yup, we've heard of it before. All of these tastes will be almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.