Why can’t I ever get a Diet Dr. Pepper or ANY type of clear diet soda (7up, Sprite, Fresca) at restaurants?
Almost certainly, it’s because the demand for those items isn’t high enough.
ISTM that I’d seen Diet Sprite/7Up at fast food places in the 80s … not in a while, though.
Yeah, if there’s not enough demand, the product will go bad before they use it.
At the place I work, we get Pepsi products in 5 gallon bags. The soda system mixes 4 parts water w/ 1 part soda syrup. So each bag makes approx. 25 gallons of soda. The shelf life is around 6-8 months or so, and they cost about $65-80/bag. If we carried all the obscure sodas people wanted, we’d be tossing out a lot of expired product.
There’s also the fact that most fountain systems have a fixed # of hookups for different brands of soda. The soda gun at our bar has enough connections for 12 sodas and 1 for water. So you need to try to decide what’s most in demand, and caffeine-free/diet clear sodas just don’t sell that well to take up 1/12th of our soda gun space.
DDP much to my astonishment, is available in McDonald’s out here in Oregon. That was a cool discovery upon moving west.
This is a classic example of failed American marketing.
I’ve read that sugar-free sodas had passed sugared sodas in the marketplace.* Give that most fountains have only one sugar-free choice, this implies that at stores, where more options are available, the sugar-frees are outselling the sugared ones big time.
But the mentality still persists that only a few people want sugar-free drinks and so why bother carrying more of them.
- In looking for a cite, I found this which indicated they still had a ways to go as of 2004. Still looking for newer cite.
Well, it could be that more people who want sugar-free specialty sodas are willing to make do with the standard sugar-free offering or with the full sugar version. A person who wants a diet Dr. Pepper may be willing to drink a full on Dr Pepper or a diet Coke. But people who want a full-sugar Dr. Pepper would be willing to drink neither a diet Dr. Pepper no a Coke.
Most fountain diet soft drinks are made with different sweeteners than their canned/bottled counterparts. I like canned diet soda, but the fountain stuff tastes “off” enough to me that I’ll get a regular soda or an unsweetened iced tea. I’m sure there are other people who feel the same way.
Robin
I agree, I like two diet choices, one with and one without Caffiene. The sugar-soda drinkers often get two of each.