Coca-Cola Dropped Two New Flavors
Soda brands are going wild with new flavors this year, and Coca-Cola isn't stopping with a Diet Coke shake-up. This week, the brand dropped the first new Coke flavor since 2002, when Vanilla Coke came out.
Georgia Peach Coke and California Raspberry Coke just joined the Coca-Cola family, and are "locally inspired," with fruit sourced from the two regions in their names. The sodas are meant to compete with craft sodas (and likely every trendy flavored water) and come in 12-ounce bottles instead of cans.
While the packaging for a four-pack of the new drinks has Coca-Cola's signature red font and cursive letters, it's also got a pretty, hand-drawn peach and raspberry on the case, not unlike Chobani's new style.
The drinks are meant to reflect the company's "handcrafted heritage." While Coke is available in more than 200 countries today, it all started at a single pharmacy in Atlanta, where the syrup created by Dr. John Pemberton was mixed with carbonated water and sold for five cents a glass. It was 1886, after all.
With the names of the flavors, Coca-Cola is hoping to promote ingredient transparency. Coca-Cola Innovation's Senior Brand Manager Lilian Norton told Beverage Daily the company knows customers "want clear ingredient information" and are "shopping local and eating local." Though we're not sure a brand as big as Coke will ever be considered local, this is their answer to meeting the demand.
According to a post on the Coca-Cola website, the company's research and development team worked with almost 9,500 consumers and tested more than 30 flavor options, most of which were fruit-based. Diet Coke's four new flavors are all fruity, so it makes sense they'd stick to this route.
The new flavors are available this week at grocery stores nationwide and will enter into bars and restaurants soon, too. For now, the flavors are only available in 12-ounce glass bottles.