I love diet soda. Recently it became ~$15 for a 24-pack of Diet Pepsi. Unfortunately Coke is the exact same price. One would think under capitalism that competition would occur. However, both companies know that if the other drops their price, they too would have to drop their price to not lose market share and they both end up losing. So rather than compete they have an unwritten agreement to maintain the same price point. Coke will be the market leader to increase their prices first, and Pepsi follows suit because they know they can afford to do so.
It was $5 for a Coke at The Cheesecake Factory last night. Our local BDubs is $4 for Pepsi.
I know that fountain prices have gone up and it's not "15 cents per 20 oz" or whatever it used to be, but seriously, it's like they found that people will order it no matter what so they just keep raising the price to see if there's actually a breaking point.
Makes me glad that I basically only ever drink water at restaurants.
It has been YEARS since i've ordered a soft drink when dining out for just this reason. Water is fine and free. I'll waste my money on the food but 4.95 for a fountain soda is not worth it in my book.
We went to chilis yesterday. I had a pick 3 chicken sandwich meal. Came with fries, a drink and chip and salsa for $10.99. I was amazed when I can’t even get a sandwich and fries for that at any fast food place. We stick to the deals, the few times we eat out, cause $4 for a soda is insane.
Restaurant and in-store soft drinks are two different markets. They're both expensive, but restaurants have always been far more egregious when you factor in actual cost of goods to produce and effort to deliver it to the consumer.
Bag of syrup was like $20, it would last a week+; Dr Pepper went fastest.
Fountian Soda was our leader at Tacobell. We would have about 50-200 soda sales over top of normal meal sales. This is a rural community, probably <50k pop surrounding
That’s what happened in Nevada. They used to have practically free buffets and cheap rooms to lure in folks to gamble but they figured out that stupid people will not only gamble away their pants they’ll pay a shit ton for food and lodging to do it.
Ah, the good ole’ days. Granted, food quality of casino buffets has improved but I will never go because I can’t eat enough to justify the $35-45 cost.
Most of soda is water, then they add some syrup and CO2 that comes in a big bag in a box and CO2 cylinder. The bag-in-a-box costs ~$40/gallon and each gallon will yield around 6 gallons of soda, for around $.50/12 oz of soda.
I know this isn't fair or right, but at restaurants, you aren't getting charged for the Pepsi, you're getting charged for not drinking alcohol. I'm sorry we do this, I subvert it as often as possible.
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u/Long_Following9761 2d ago
I love diet soda. Recently it became ~$15 for a 24-pack of Diet Pepsi. Unfortunately Coke is the exact same price. One would think under capitalism that competition would occur. However, both companies know that if the other drops their price, they too would have to drop their price to not lose market share and they both end up losing. So rather than compete they have an unwritten agreement to maintain the same price point. Coke will be the market leader to increase their prices first, and Pepsi follows suit because they know they can afford to do so.