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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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PepsiCo Bringing SodaStream Professional and Unattended C-Stores to College Campuses

In July of last year, during the first wave of the pandemic, PepsiCo introduced the SodaStream Professional connected sparkling water system for offices. At the time we noted that the machine, which reduces the need for single-use platic bottles was a good idea, but its future seemed questionable given that offices were closed. Even now, more than a year later, it’s unclear when or how workers will return to the office, so like any good company, PepsiCo has adapted, and is now bringing its SodaStream Professional to college campuses.

PepsiCo has installed its SodaStream Professional at William and Mary College and College of the Holy Cross (it’s also installed a machine at Dana Hill High School in Dana Point, California), which dispense customizable carbonated water. Customers can choose from a number of flavors, adjust the fizziness of their drinks and even offer up enhancements like electrolytes and vitamin B.

There is an accompanying QR-coded bottle and mobile app that people can use to control the machine. Users download the app and scan the QR code with their phone. At the machine, they scan the bottle’s QR code which allows users to order via the app, contactlessly dispense the drink, and remember certain flavor/fizziness preferences for future drinks. For those without the QR-coded bottle, the machine works with other vessels, and can be controlled with the on-board touchscreen. Pricing for the drinks is dependent on the arrangement made by the university.

The move to colleges is a smart play by PepsiCo, given the unknown future of office work. Schools have re-opened (fingers crossed) and are once again alive with activity on campuses.

But PepsiCo isn’t stopping with the new beverage station. The company has also launched a branded convenience store at Kansas University that features cashierless technology. The new store is powered by New Stand, and is not as high tech as the computer vision + artificial intelligence-powered Amazon Go, so students can’t just grab what they want and walk out. But it does allow users to scan their items with the New Stand mobile app at checkout.

And if that weren’t enough, during a video chat this week, Greg Herman, Sr. Marketing Director, Beverage Innovation – Foodservice at PepsiCo told me that in addition to these programs, PepsiCo is also still running its robot delivery program that it launched back at the start of 2019. That program used small, rover bots from Robby to carry around snacks and beverages that students could order. Herman didn’t provide too many details on the program, but we haven’t heard much about it since launch, so it’s nice to see it’s still going.

Between these programs, cereal dispensing robot vending machines, and 3D printed plant-based meat, colleges are fast becoming hotbeds of food tech innovation.

Beyond Meat and PepsiCo Partner Up for Plant-Based Snacks Joint Venture

Beyond Meat and PepsiCo announced today that they are forming the PLANeT Partnership, LLC, a joint venture that will develop snacks and beverages made from plant-based protein. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

The PLANeT Partnership will lean on Beyond Meat’s plant-based protein food expertise and PepsiCo’s massive marketing and commercial sales infrastructure to scale any new product options created.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this news. First, PepsiCo’s involvement is another example of how plant-based protein is going mainstream. According to the Good Food Institute’s 2020 Plant-Based Market Overview, “grocery sales of plant-based foods that directly replace animal products have grown 29% in the past two years to $5 billion.” And those numbers were released before the pandemic, an ongoing event that’s spurred explosive sales of plant-based foods. Meticulous Research projected sales of plant-based foods would “grow at a CAGR of 11.9% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $74.2 billion by 2027.”

So it makes sense for PepsiCo to partner with a well-known brand in the plant-based food space to get in on some of that sweet plant-based money.

In addition to money, there’s another “green” aspect to the partnership: sustainability. One of the main benefits of plant-based foods is that they take less of a toll on the planet. PepsiCo isn’t exactly known as a steward of the environment (though it does run its Greenhouse Accelerator program), and creating the PLANeT Partnership allows them to get a little eco-halo effect and create a line of snacks that will appeal to conscious consumers.

I’m curious to see what role the direct-to-consumer sales channels play in all this. Both PepisCo and Beyond Meat launched D2C channels last year. Obviously PepsiCo has deep in-roads with traditional retail, and in-store is where the big money is. But as shoppers get comfortable with buying more of their groceries online, the PLANeT Partnership has an opportunity to build a robust D2C channel from the ground up and own more of its customer relationship and data.

But mostly, I’m interested to see what actual food comes out of this partnership. Having been in the Beyond Meat test kitchen, I know firsthand that its culinary team is remarkable and have no doubt they could come up with tasty treats.

Now we just need to see if this PepsiCo + Beyond Meat endeavor will get Coca-Cola and Impossible Foods to announce their own partnership.

Coca-Cola Unveils a Prototype for Paper Bottles

Beverage giant Coca-Cola recently unveiled a prototype for its first-ever paper bottle, the first step in the company’s goal to create a bottle that can be recycled like any other type of paper product (h/t Food Navigator).

This first-generation prototype, for which Coca-Cola partnered with paper bottle company Paboco, still contains some plastic. Coca-Cola explained in a blog post that the prototype is made up of a paper shell with a plastic closure and plastic liner. Though the liner and closure are made from “100% recycled plastic that can be recycled again after use,” the company says its next step is to create a bottle that does not need the plastic liner.

The world’s plastic problem is now considered one of the biggest environmental threats out there, with an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the oceans alone. Big Food (and Bev) is under pressure to come up with more sustainable packaging options for their products.

Even so, any bottle containing a CPG beverage has to adhere to certain standards around safety and storage capabilities of packaging, hence the reason Coca-Cola can’t immediately switch to using just any paper bottle. The company says it is currently “putting the bottle through comprehensive testing in the lab to see how it performs in the refrigerator, how strong it is, and how well it protects the drink inside.”

The paper bottles won’t be available on grocery store shelves any time soon, but Coca-Cola’s prototype is another step in that direction. It follows efforts from Coke competitor PepsiCo and spirits brand Diageo, both companies that plan to release paper bottles in 2021.

 

Pepsico Launches New SodaStream Professional Connected Sparkling Water System for Offices

Looking at the homepage for the new SodaStream Professional is like looking back in time. The page features pictures of the connected sparkling water device in the middle of an office as workers stride by, seemingly without a care in the world, sans facemasks.

I bring that up not to poke fun at Pepsico, but because the world that the company imagines for its new device, is far different from the one we currently live in.

Pepsico announced the new Sodastream Professional over the weekend. It’s a carbonated water dispenser and mobile app system that allows users to choose from different unsweetened flavors, levels of carbonation and track their hydration. It will also tell you how many plastic bottles you saved/avoided using.

Pepsisco didn’t provide many other details for the SodaStream Professional (like pricing), but it seems to be a follow up to a similar product the company announced a little more than a year ago. That device was smaller (countertop instead of freestanding), but had the same capabilities and was going into testing last summer.

In the press release, Pepsico said it was bringing “customizable beverages to workplaces, college campuses and airports.” But those are three locales that are either shut down or severely diminished, thanks to the global pandemic. There isn’t as much call for a sparkling water dispenser for the masses when there aren’t masses of people in any given location.

At least the SodaStream Professional appears to be contactless, with control via the mobile app.

The SodaStream Professional faces competition for your sparkling water dollars. Bevi makes similar fizzy/still flavored water dispenser for offices (and introduced its own touchless tech in June). And the Rocean was supposed to put its sparkling water dispensers at the Conrad New York hotel this past spring, but who knows how that went.

It should be noted that the SodaStream Professional is a good idea. We need to use fewer plastic bottles and drink less sugary sodas and this device seems like it can help with that. I just would like to hop in a time machine and fast forward to when we can safely go back to the office and use one.

PepsiCo to Make Concentrates of its Sodas for SodaStream

If you love soda, but don’t like all the plastic associated with it, good news! Soon you can make 10 real Pepsi products like Pepsi Cola, 7 Up, Mountain Dew and more from the comfort of your own home with SodaStream (if you live in select European countries).

SodaStream, which was acquired by PepsiCo last year, announced yesterday that it will start making concentrates of popular Pepsi beverages that can be used with SodaStream devices. Calcalist was first to report on the news, saying the new concentrates will be available in Norway and Sweden first, followed by France and Germany starting in March of 2020.

Sustainability seems to be the main pitch for these concentrates as they won’t save consumers a lot of money. Calcalist writes that these homemade sodas will cost $.93 per liter, compared with $.95 for one that already comes in a bottle. But the benefit is that people won’t use as many plastic bottles in the first place.

Reducing single-use plastic bottles is a pretty good reason on its own to launch this type of endeavor, given the abysmal state of plastic recycling and the mounting levels of plastic in our oceans. PepsiCo has been testing out other ways to reduce its plastic use as well, including new flavored seltzer machines for offices, selling its Tropicana orange juice in reusable glass bottles, and using recyclable flavor pods for its Drinkfinity system.

There are two big questions that still hover over this new concentrate system, however. First, will it fare better than the Keurig Kold, which used Coca-Cola branded flavor pods to make sodas at home? That device was short-lived, being pulled after just 10 months on the market for being too expensive and too loud. Since this will use a device that many people already have, there shouldn’t be the same hardware issues.

The next question, of course, will be how closely people at home can recreate the iconic taste of their particular soda. Will the flavors match up? It seems like there’s potential for a real uncanny valley type situation where close enough really doesn’t cut it, even if you’re cutting out plastic bottle.

Pepsi Launches Flavored Seltzer Machine for Offices to Reduce Plastic Waste (and an Earth Day Tie-in)

PepsiCo announced today — Earth Day — the launch of a new mega SodaStream-like “hydration platform” that will dispense flavored still and seltzer water and hopefully reduce people’s use of plastic bottles.

Details are slim (the system doesn’t even appear to have a name), but this “hydration platform” has three parts. First there is a freestanding or countertop dispenser with a touchscreen, which lets you adjust the flavor, temperature and carbonation levels of your drink. The dispenser connects with a mobile app to let you know how much water you’ve been drinking (and how many bottles you’ve saved). And there are QR code stickers for reusable bottles that the dispenser can recognize and use to automatically bring up drink preferences.

Since the press announcement was light on specifics, we followed up via email with PepsiCo. In the company’s response it referred to the device as “Water Station,” but none of the announcement materials did, so that could be a working title. The company said the dispenser connects to a regular water line for installation and uses CO2 canisters for carbonation.

PepsiCo also said that the pricing is yet to be determined and may vary depending on the customer. The Water Station will roll out to “select workplaces and college and university campuses” starting this summer.

Aside from the Earth Day tie-in, it makes sense that PepsiCo is launching such a product. Traditional sugary soda sales are in a slump while sales of flavored waters and seltzers have been on the rise. Plus, this hydration station follows Pepsi’s $3.2 billion acquisition of home seltzer making system, SodaStream, in August of last year.

It’s always hard to gauge exactly how sincere giant companies are about wanting to reduce waste, but Pepsi has made other moves to cut down on its plastic use. The company is testing out selling its Tropicana orange juice in reusable glass bottles as part of the Loop program. And last year it launched its Drinkfinity flavored water system that uses recyclable flavor pods.

No word yet if there will be a home version of this hydration platform, but given the amount of flavored soda water I drink (Spindrift FTW!), I’d love to see one on my countertop.

PepsiCo Buys SodaStream for $3.2 Billion

PepsiCo said today that it will buy SodaStream, makers of the countertop carbonation system, for $3.2 billion. The move not only pushes the sugary drink giant further into the healthy beverage market, but it also moves the company into more of a hardware space, which opens up new lines of recurring revenue.

Soda sales have been on the decline in recent years, with Pepsi soda brands in particular struggling to rebound. On the contrary, sparkling water sales have surged, driven in large part by millennials and their quest for new flavors and healthier ingredients. To capitalize on this trend, Pepsi launched its own line of colorful sparkling waters earlier this year called Bubly which has actually experienced strong growth since launch.

But with the SodaStream purchase, PepsiCo is also getting into a hardware solution for beverages. In addition to selling the machine itself, SodaStream also sells replacement CO2 cartridges and a wide variety of flavor concentrates. Its numbers over the last year have been good, with second quarter year-over-year revenue increasing 31.3 percent to $171.5 million.

Pepsi already has a line of product that is similar to SodaStream’s. Though the drinks aren’t carbonated, the Drinkfinity system lets users flavor their own water with special pods that are popped on the tops of a proprietary bottle design.

The SodaStream deal is also reminiscent of the Keurig Kold device, which was a pod-based home soda maker that actually had Coca-Cola as a partner before fizzling out after just ten months on the market in 2015. Earlier this year Keurig Green Mountain bought the Dr Pepper Snapple Group for $18.7 billion, but so far there have been no rumblings of a resurrected Kold-type device.

I’m curious about the long-term prospects for this PepsiCo/Sodastream deal and the overall home carbonation market in general. I bought a SodaStream a long time ago and used it pretty religiously for about a year. Then as seltzer water became more popular and more available, it was just easier to grab a six-pack and keep them in the fridge rather than refilling bottles, keeping them cold, blasting air (loudly) into them and remembering to exchange empty CO2 canisters at my local drug store. Yes, I realize that I’m abandoning the more eco-friendliness of SodaStream’s re-usable components, but — actually I don’t have a rebuttal to that. I just want convenience.

Now there are even more seltzer brands offering a wider range flavors that are available just about anywhere I go in the day. Will seltzer’s ubiquity beat SodaStream’s refillability?

Food Tech News Roundup: Voice-Enabled Faucets, Food Incubators, and No More Meat

Happy weekend! We’re going to make this short and sweet, since there’s plenty of food tech news to read and (hopefully) a lot of sunshine to enjoy.

Without further ado, here are the stories in food and smart kitchen innovation that caught our eye this week.

New reach in food delivery
Food delivery creeps ever further and further into our lives. This week, delivery startup Postmates expanded to 100 new cities, adding 50 million potential new customers. They also deepened their partnership with DIY burrito chain Chipotle Mexican Grill, adding 300 new stores to their delivery route.

Postmates wasn’t the only food delivery startup with an announcement this week. Uber Eats teamed up with payment app Venmo to let people easily split the cost of rides and food orders. So if your friend eats half of your Pad Thai, you can make her pay you the $6 you deserve.

 

Target rolls out more Midwestern curbside pickup
Shoppers at over 200 Target stores throughout the Midwest can now take advantage of curbside pickup. This brings the total number of stores with the Drive Up feature to over 800, spread throughout 25 states — with more to be announced over the coming months. Which means Target is halfway to national curbside pickup retail domination and has no plans to slow down.

 

Photo: Budweiser.

Drizly brings the Happy Hour to your office
This week online liquor store Drizly partnered with Anheuser-Busch to debut something that every workplace needs: an Office Bud-e fridge. The fridges have smart sensors that sync up to WiFi to automatically re-order beer (Anheuser-Busch, of course) through Drizly when stock is running low. According to a press release shared with the Spoon, the fridge can hold up to 180 cold ones at a time, and is set to rendering “classic ‘beer runs’ obsolete.”

 

Delta touch faucet with Alexa

A sneak peek at the new Delta faucet
Our friend Stacey Higginbotham of Stacey on IoT gave a video review of the new voice-enabled Delta faucet this week. In the video, she asks Alexa to “please turn on her Delta faucet” to let the water go. But things get a lot more specific; she asks Alexa to dispense “one cup” of water, and also to fill a vase that she places in the sink. Both times, success! These may seem like small victories, but it’s an indication of voice assistants connecting even further into smart home gadgets.

We the first to scoop the faucet, which lets you turn on the water with your voice, last year. The product isn’t actually for sale yet, but when it is — we’re interested.

 

Photo: Pepsico.

PepsiCo unveils plans for new food incubator
PepsiCo has become the latest mega CPG company to launch its own food-centric incubator, following in the footsteps of General Mills, Campbell’s, and others. This week on an investor call they announced plans to launch a new food innovation center called “The Hive,” which is intended to refine and grow their niche brands, and seek out new startups for investment. This comes just a few months after PepsiCo partnered with The Hatchery Chicago, a non-profit food and beverage incubator, to help beef up their business.

 

Photo: WeWork.

Meat is off the WeWork menu
This week coworking space giant WeWork made some serious strides to cut their meat consumption. Its 6,000 employees were told that they could no longer get reimbursed for meals including meat, which includes poultry, red meat, and pork. WeWork co-founder also told staff that they were nixing meat options from the startup’s internal “Summer Camp” retreat. No mention was made of fish, so I guess pescetarianism is still kosher?