Coca-Cola FREESTYLE Episode 2: The Present of Bad Soda

[Marcel Birgelen]

Putting the cup at an angle also helps to reduce the amount of fizz considerably. Pepsi even seems to fizz more than Coca Cola, especially the products with real sugar in them (over here we still put real sugar into our soft drinks, no HFC here). I remember a certain soda fountain that had a special head for the Pepsi nozzle with some kind of propeller-contraption in it, which reduced the foaming considerably, but it came at the price of reduced flow.

[Randy Stankey]

Putting the cup at an angle also helps to reduce the amount of fizz considerably.

That's how you pour beer, too. Hold the glass at about 45 deg. and run it down the side until almost full then turn the glass upright to finish it off.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I still think that all Freestyles should be buried in a massive ditch and covered over and forgotten about.

[Randy Stankey]

No, the people who created the Freestyle machine should be buried in a ditch and the machine should be placed on top like a gravestone.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Freestyles are why my better half carries a large purse. She always takes cans of coke and gas station candy when we suffer through a movie at the nearby AMC.

Freestyles would make decent coffens if they were stripped out first...

[Marcel Birgelen]

In the modern age of AI I asked how it would look like if you'd convert a Freestyle machine to a coffin. The result looks more like a multi-story family sized coffin affair...


griebels_A_coffin_made_from_a_Coca_Cola_Freestyle_Soda_Machine._e9bdb16e-a332-4cf9-bc82-14497131505f.png

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

LOL! Good one....

[Martin Brooks]

It’s not about the product. It’s about marketing and data gathering.

Those machines don’t just dispense soda pop. They also gather information about who drinks what, when and where they drink it.

Every time you touch one of those machines they record what you do and that data is sent back to the Mothership and used by the company for data mining.

Nonsense. The machine doesn't know "who" you are and it doesn't even know your demographic. It's not like you're sticking a credit card in the machine. It might record how many people choose which flavor or which mix of flavors or how much ice you dump in the cup, and it knows where the machine is and perhaps the time it was dispensed, but that's as far as it could possibly go. And why would Coke care what time it was dispensed? That's not actionable information. Even in a traditional dispenser, the local distributor knows how much is used by virtue of the orders for syrup. And therefore, while it might return some data to the Mothership, it is in no way individualized and it's not data that Coke would ever sell or market to anyone else. Is there WiFi or a network port in these machines? If there isn't, then it's not communicating much of anything.
A lot of people claim these machines deliver terrible soda. I'd like to see a blind A-B test to see whether they could tell the difference between those machines and a traditional one. My bet is that they can't. Back when Coke introduced New Coke and everyone freaked out, the guy who was leading the big protests in NYC was on the news and he failed a blind A-B test that they gave him. He looked all embarrassed and then disappeared from public view.

Having said that, if the local water is bad, it's going to affect the flavor. Well water can be hard and sulfuric even if filtered. I bet a soda from a machine in NYC tastes better than a soda from such a machine in upstate NYC (or elsewhere) and that a canned or bottled soda will taste different from each other and from the machine and Mexican Coke certainly tastes different than U.S. Coke (cane sugar instead of corn syrup and local water).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Nonsense. The machine doesn't know "who" you are and it doesn't even know your demographic. It's not like you're sticking a credit card in the machine. It might record how many people choose which flavor or which mix of flavors or how much ice you dump in the cup, and it knows where the machine is and perhaps the time it was dispensed, but that's as far as it could possibly go. And why would Coke care what time it was dispensed? That's not actionable information. Even in a traditional dispenser, the local distributor knows how much is used by virtue of the orders for syrup. And therefore, while it might return some data to the Mothership, it is in no way individualized and it's not data that Coke would ever sell or market to anyone else. Is there WiFi or a network port in these machines? If there isn't, then it's not communicating much of anything.
A lot of people claim these machines deliver terrible soda. I'd like to see a blind A-B test to see whether they could tell the difference between those machines and a traditional one. My bet is that they can't. Back when Coke introduced New Coke and everyone freaked out, the guy who was leading the big protests in NYC was on the news and he failed a blind A-B test that they gave him. He looked all embarrassed and then disappeared from public view.

Having said that, if the local water is bad, it's going to affect the flavor. Well water can be hard and sulfuric even if filtered. I bet a soda from a machine in NYC tastes better than a soda from such a machine in upstate NYC (or elsewhere) and that a canned or bottled soda will taste different from each other and from the machine and Mexican Coke certainly tastes different than U.S. Coke (cane sugar instead of corn syrup and local water).

Yes it does track flavor usage. But if the water is bad then it only need be filtered. McDonalds filters the water at just about every site they have. At least double filters or if needed triple filters. That's why they have the best tasting Coke. Out of all the theaters I've been to, I can only remember a few that bothered to do the filtering. Where I live there is a lot of chlorine in the water, so, what ever drinking water is used, it gets run through a Brita that sits at one end of the kitchen counter.

[Martin Brooks]

My daughter lives in upstate NY and even though she’s adjacent to the Ashokan Reservoir, they don’t get to use that water because it belongs to NYC. They use well water and even with treatment on the incoming supply AND Brita filters, the water is terrible (although safe).

I’m not convinced that filtration can make lousy water taste good.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Martin, I had a well in Utah for close to 15 years but luckily, that water tasted good. She could set up a double or triple Brita with a little effort and not a lot of cash, Or she can install a McDonalds type set up and probably only change the filters once a year. Initial expense would be high though. Bottled water would cost a lot more over the long haul.

[Marcel Birgelen]

At least around here, McDonald's uses reverse osmosis filters, even though water quality usually is pretty good and rather neutral and wouldn't legally require such filters.

Professional filters will make a huge impact on water taste, if configured and maintained correctly.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Next time I go there I will ask the manager, but they are not my normal eating place. So may be a week or two.