So there’s a downside to the SodaStream. Noted.
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The part where their advertising overwhelmingly states that it is a cost savings, and it’s not a cost savings at all. (At least, the amount you have to use it to achieve cost parity is pretty high)
Well and good that you find great value in it. At this stage I am not griping at you but generally in the direction of their ad campaigns and the kinds of people who buy stuff from SkyMall.
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My own preferred way of doing it is just mixing super cheap Polish mineral water ($7 for 9l at the local immigrant grocery stores here) with a bit of fruit juice.
This stuff, if you can find it:
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That’s why we bought one. Mr. Bells likes seltzer and we were going through far too many cans, which needed to be recycled.
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Do your stores not accept empty cartridges for recycling? When I take my empty into Target or Bed Bath & Beyond they give me 50% off the cost of a new cartridge.
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Oh, I bring the empties back to the store and get the trade in rebate on the new canisters. But even with the trade in rebate I’m paying over $20 CDN per canister. Whereas you can refill/trade in a generic paint ball canister for around $5 or less.
In addition to the fact that I hate the idea that my water has to be flown or shipped. Admittedly I have no idea where the cartridges are manufactured, but it just feels so gross and wasteful to drink water from across the world when my municipal water is excellent.
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Then you’re stuck buying dinky little CO2 charges all the time. The most efficient method: get a carbonator cap and a 5lb CO2 cylinder. make gallons and gallons of carbonated water for practically nothing.
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The syrups are just insanely overpriced thick cordial, and you can replace them with whatever cordial you please.
Want ginger ale? Ginger cordial. Lemon cordial for lemonade, etc. etc.
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They don’t compare to soda stream. Stupid expensive for the soda water and it isn’t as bubbly.
People have some wild ideas about how actual people that use the Soda Stream everyday.
We’ve had one for 10 years, it’s used to make carbonated water. It replaced the soda siphon…which actually cost more and more difficult to use.
It makes ‘fizzy water’ which we mix with juice…and then vodka and juice at night.
Never used it to make ‘coke/pepsi/7up’ or any of the flavor bits. Other than a few bits when that came with the unit…which kinda sucked.
It makes fizzy water, pour it in a glass squeeze a lime or lemon in it. Maybe a cucumber wedge and Pimms cup.
The CO2 refills are only 10 bucks with one of the 100 Bed Bath Beyond coupon that owls deliver to our mail box. That lasts a month with 1 liter/day.
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More like a hundred and fifteen years, actually. But there was a big marketing push in the late nineties, and that is probably the time period tsath was referring to.
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How do you get the paint out?
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The CO2 cylinders used to fire paintball guns don’t ever have anything but CO2 inside them. If you want to be very sure, you can buy new, never used cylinders. Some CO2 shops will actually refill what you bring to them instead of swapping the empties you bring them for a same size full container.
I justified not BDSing them by using an adapter and a large CO2 tank and making my own cordials. Now I don’t need to rationalize to myself any more but I’ll keep on doing the same…
According to everything I’ve read, management and manufacturing will stay with the Negev plant.
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I can see the interest; but 3.2 billion dollars worth of interest is a real surprise.
Do they have some sort of absurdly handy patent? Is their distribution network with it despite the fact that Pespi presumably must already have one? Is the brand recognition worth that much?
As it is, producing soda by mixing with flavor syrup and carbonating on site is more or less the default at restaurant-level; is it really 3.2 billion worth of difficult to produce a slightly scaled down offering?
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I’m not certain but I seem to recall they have some weird patents that keep competition away in the consumer market.
I have a feeling Pepsi is betting the consumer market for home fizzed drinks is going to grow in the coming years, and I’ve recently been more and more interested in buying one so my N=1 feeling says they may be on to something.
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I do the same thing, feel a bit guilty about the waste plastic though.
A funny thing is that here in Poland ‘Nałęczowianka’ is considered one of the premium, more expensive mineral water brands 
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What they have purchased is a large, growing, global customer base who are not buying Pepsi. So this will be a handy market for consumables, which they can broaden with added flavor profiles. Little bottles of syrup has got to be more profitable than large heavy bottles of ready-made beverage to transport, store etc. With 50 or so years of credibility and brand awareness it is a feather in Pepsi’s cap. Heaven forbid if Coke had bought it!
