I’ve lived in Japan for nearly seven years now, and it surprises me that a simple innovation has not yet made it to the U.S.: canned coffee. Here, you can go to nearly any vending machine and purchase coffee (along with tea and an odd mix of other drinks (corn pottage!?!)) served hot or cold. I understand that maybe vendors shy away from the hot/cold machines for fear of vandalism, but why the coffee? There are many different flavors, and most of them are delicious! The most prevalant, Georgia, is even made by the Coca Cola company! What gives?
I see canned coffee in Los Angeles. It’s usually imported from Japan.
Starbucks sells cold bottled drinks like Frappucinos and they sell pretty well.
I’m in Hawaii, and we have several brands of cold canned coffee. IIRC, most of them are Japanese, such as Ito-En. We also have a local brand called Kona something.
Ahh, but Hawaii and LA host many Japanese students, tourists, etc… Asian speciality shops also sell them, but why are they not available coast to coast with the same visibility as, say, Coke or Pepsi? Why not in machines?
Good point. That there are lots of Japanese products in Hawaii should come as no surprise. As for the rest of the US, my WAG is that everyone assumed Starbucks would be the one to dominate with any coffee-type product. Starbucks, for their part, has been happy with their Frappucinos (mmmm, Vanilla Frappucino…).
Maybe b/c of the wide availability of freshly brewed coffee in this country? It’s pretty easy to just run into any convenience store or bodega and get a cup of coffee.
Plus, we’ve never really focused on hot-beverage vending machines in this country–at least in cans. We have those machines that dump coffee or hot chocolate into a paper cup for you, but I think people view that as sort of the bottom of the barrel. (I know I do.)
I think that there could be a simple reason if we get the horse and cart in the right order.
You want to know why the U.S. doesn’t keep coffee in cans in vending machines, etc - because you think they would sell well.
I would venture to say that it has been tried and it simply didn’t sell well and so that is why we don’t have canned coffee as readily available as other countries. I think it might be an assumption that because there isn’t canned coffee now in our Coke or Pepsi machines that it has never been tried or that nothing has been done to show how marketable this would be. I’m inclined to say that if Coke or Pepsi or any other bottler would turn a profit from canning coffee and selling it in the U.S., they would.
Tibs