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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Sodastream

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.

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.

Drinkmate Wants to Help You Make Fizzy Water on the Go

Everyone, it seems, is drinking sparkling water nowadays. Growth rates for the fizzy stuff have shot through the roof the last couple years as consumers eschew sugary sodas and embrace healthier lifestyles.

And seltzer water isn’t the only hydration trend that’s taken off. The hydro flask is having its own moment as consumers wake up to the problem of single use plastic and have made their water vessel of choice something of a fashion statement.

Combine these two trends and you’re probably asking what if you could make your own sparkling water on the go?

OK, maybe you aren’t asking that, but that is the question a company called i-Drink wants to answer with a new product called the Drinkmate instaFizz, a personal stainless “beverage bottle” that allows you to add your own bubbles to any non-carbonated beverage.

The product, which the company plans to debut next month at the Inspired Home Show, uses portable 8g CO2 cartridges to inject carbonation into the liquid. The CO2 cartridges are inserted into the lower cap and the gas is released once the cap is twisted. The bottle holds up to 18.6 ounces, but the maximum liquid volume for carbonating is 15.5 ounces.

Home carbonated beverage machines are not new. Drinkmate makes its own, alongside Pepsi-owned Sodastream and office machines like Bevi. But up until this point, there hasn’t really been a product that lets consumers fizz-up on the go.

So will consumers embrace the opportunity? Hard to say. The product’s fairly high price tag (MSRP is $59.99) might be one deterrent, while the ready availability of low-cost stationary home carbonators (the Drinkmate home machine sells for $87 on Amazon, while the SodaStream Fizzi goes for $69) could be another.

Still, if you’re a sparkling water fanatic who wants to make your own on the go, there’s finally a product for you in the instaFizz.

Spärkel Ships Fizzy Drink Machine That Carbonates Beverages Without a CO2 Cartridge

Over the past couple years, consumption of flavored sparkling water has skyrocketed. The trend has held true in my own household, where we’ve started downing so much of the fizzy stuff I’ve given thought to putting a home drink carbonator on my holiday wish list.

In the past that usually meant buying a SodaStream or one of its many clones, but as of today I have another option: The Spärkel.

What’s the difference between a Spärkel and a SodaStream? Unlike a SodaStream or one its competitors, the Spärkel doesn’t require a CO2 cartridge, instead using a small single-use “sachet” that includes a combination of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate that combines with water to create CO2. The CO2 is cycled through the water chamber to infuse flavors and carbonate.

And while a SodaStream user can chop up and mix natural ingredients into their water and infuse them, the company (now owned by Pepsi) puts a big emphasis on flavor drops. Spärkel doesn’t push flavored syrups, instead pushing its users to add their own ingredients.

Why would you want to eliminate the CO2 cartridges? For one, it would allow you to do away with empty cartridges, which often time go in the garbage. And while CO2 cartridges on home carbonators like the SodaStream are generally considered safe, they have been known to occasionally blow up.

If there’s a downside to using a Spärkel compared to a standard system with a CO2 cartridge, it’s that the users has to pour in the fizz-making chemicals into the system with each use.

Since the CO2 ingredient sachets are made specifically for Spärkel, that means the user has to reorder ever time they cycle through a packet of 90. A packet of carbonators is available for about $50 on Amazon, which translates to about 55 cents per use, or roughly about the same per use cost for CO2 from cylinders (a 60 liter CO2 cartridge can be bought on Amazon for $35).

The chemicals – citric acid (a naturally occuring acid in fruit) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) – are fairly harmless and are kept separate from the water as the resulting CO2 is cycled through the beverage chamber. Once used, the CO2-causing ingredients are then emptied into the sink after use. From an environmental standpoint, the Spärkel has a fairly small footprint, and is certainly better than tossing can after empty can of Spindrift into the recycle bin.

The Spärkel system was first sold through an Indiegogo campaign, raising over $150 thousand on the strength of over 2300 backers. And while Bonne O, the company behind Spärkel, may have used crowdfunding to launch the project’s trajectory, they hardly needed the funds since they raised a $7.5 million in series B funding round this past May.

While over seven million bucks seems like a lot of money for a new product, I’m sure part of the reason for the sizeable funding round was the company behind Sparkel had already brought an earlier version of the product to market. The company’s first product was called the Bonne O Sparkling Water System, and apparently things went well enough with the first product that it convinced investors to chip in on the sizeable series B.

I’m also guessing the investors are betting on the continued growth of the sparkling water category, as consumers pull away from sugary sodas and look to drink healthier options. They no doubt saw the SodaStream exit of over $3 billion to Pepsi and figured that at some point another big drink maker might want to add a home carbonator to their portfolio.

You can buy a Spärkel on the company’s website starting today for $99.

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.

Rocean Raises $6M for its Countertop Carbonated Water Dispenser

Rocean, the company behind the countertop water carbonation appliance, announced yesterday that it has raised a $6 million round of financing. The round was led by global investment firm Blue, with participation from a bunch of high-profile individual investors including musician John Legend. Rocean had previously crowdfunded more than $220,000 dollars on Indiegogo last year.

Spoon contributor Richard Gunther wrote about the Rocean last year, saying:

You’ll first notice that rOcean’s decidedly contemporary countertop device, the rOcean One, is larger than a SodaStream carbonator. That’s because there’s a lot more going on inside of it. It will filter, carbonate, and flavor your own tap water—even plugging into the water line to make operation nearly as simple as pouring from a faucet. You can manage your preferred flavor intensity and degree of carbonation from their app or directly on an integrated touch-screen control panel, and their bottles will have RFID tags that can be assigned to your favorite beverage recipes.

According to Rocean’s press announcement, the devices will start shipping in late summer of this year. Hopefully this $6M round will help Rocean avoid the crowdfunding curse that derails so many homegrown hardware projects that try to scale.

The seltzer water market is hot right now for sure. Quartz reported in January that sales of fizzy water have jumped 88 percent over the past six years, grossing more than $2.3 billion in 2018. That’s probably why so many companies are getting into the bubbly biz.

There’s also an environmental motivation: Rocean is among a number of countertop devices coming to market promising to revolutionize drinking water while helping to save the planet from single-use plastic bottles. Mitte raised more than $10M last year for its mineral water machine. Pepsi bought SodaStream last August for $3.2 billion, and last month debuted its own “hydration platform.” Pepsi’s hydration station and Bevi each offer much of the same flavor and fizz control features of the Rocean, but are targeting offices.

While the earth-friendly aspects of the Rocean, like the reuseable flavor pod containers, are intriguing, I really like the fact that the device can be plumbed into my water line. Making bubble water more convenient (which, I totally get is a very first-worldy relative term here), would help ween me off the cans.

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.

The Weekly Spoon: Where’s My SodaStream Fridge?

This is the post version of our weekly (twice-weekly, actually) newsletter. If you’d like to get the weekly Spoon in your inbox, you can subscribe here.

Every now and then a big company makes an acquisition that makes you wonder about the possibilities.

Pepsi scooping up SodaStream is one such deal.

The $3.2 billion purchase clocks in at 33 times forward earnings. The rich valuation is justified in part by SodaStream’s strong growth in the sparkling water market, but also because it puts Pepsi into a new category: home beverage creation.

“SodaStream is highly complementary and incremental to our business, adding to our growing water portfolio, while catalyzing our ability to offer personalized in-home beverage solutions around the world,” said Ramon Laguarta, CEO-Elect and President, PepsiCo, in the company’s press release.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Big Drink – including Pepsi – has looked at the in-home beverage market. They launched their Drinkfinity line earlier this year, and competitor Dr. Pepper has most likely at least considered the possibilities of a revamped Keurig Kold post-acquisition.

But at this point, it’s safe to say none of these efforts have been a runaway hit. Will a SodaStream armed with Pepsi’s resources change that? While Chris’s take is that it’s best for Big Drink to stay away from the home beverage machine business, my take it a little more sanguine. I think in-home creation dovetails well with two consumer megatrends that will only pick up more momentum:

-The soda business is shrinking fast, and low-calorie healthy alternatives will likely continue to be the fastest growing category in beverages

-Bottled drinks are bad for the environment, so a growing contingent of consumers will continue to look for more ecofriendly alternatives (like home beverages!).

While a countertop beverage machine may not be for everyone, who’s to say SodaStream couldn’t be built into my refrigerator some day? I just bought a new fridge and, I have to say, I would much rather have a tasty drink spigot on it than a touchscreen (and I’m probably not the only one).

Bottom line, whether built into a fridge or through a small machine on the countertop, I think the stars are lining up for continued growth for the in-home beverage market.

Now if they could make a home Kombucha as easy.

(Ed note: Reader Chris pointed out to me that in 2013 Samsung partnered with SodaStream to add a dispenser to a fridge, but the models have since been discontinued. With sparking water having a moment, I have to wonder if it’s time to revive this idea?)

Speaking of Interesting Drink Trends…

Have you ever had your name printed on a beverage?

We have:

While the idea of images printed on drink foam (whether its coffee, cocktails or beer) may seem like a novelty to some, I would argue drink “printing” could become commonplace in the next few years in restaurants and bars.  My guess is that not only would consumers pay a little extra for a drink printed “selfie”, but brands would jump at the opportunity to get the word out via drink-top messaging. Imagine the value of having your new vodka brand printed on all the drinks served in a bar on a given night.

You can read about the new Ripples cocktail printer announced today (and see a video of The Spoon logo printed on a drink) over at The Spoon.

Delivery Tech Is Hot

Grocery delivery and logistics continue to be one of the hottest spaces in food tech. This week we saw a massive $110 million investment in Boxed (which brings the total invested in the grocery logistics company to $243 million) and news of a successful trial of in-trunk delivery by Delivery.com/Phrame.  As someone who’s skeptical about letting a total stranger into my home, I’m intrigued by the idea of trunk delivery. Amazon apparently feels the same.

If you haven’t caught our the latest episode of The Smart Kitchen Show, I had a great time talking with VineSleuth’s Amy Gross about how AI can help consumers find the perfect wine.  Check it out at The Spoon or subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts.

And if you like my conversation with Amy, she’s just one of many great speakers coming to the Smart Kitchen Summit in just under seven weeks. Make sure to get your tickets today with the discount code NEWSLETTER for 25% off of tickets. 

In the 08/22/2018 edition:

Grocery Logistics is Hot as Boxed Nabs $110 Million Investment from Aeon Group

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 22, 2018 09:16 am
Boxed, an e-commerce company that sells bulk grocery items, yesterday announced a $110 million investment led by Aeon Group, one of the largest retailers in Japan. This minority stake brings the total amount raised by Boxed to $243.6 million and values the company at $600 million.

Ripple PM Prints a Selfie on your Cocktails

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 22, 2018 06:00 am
We are all used to the idea of Instagramming our cocktails, but the new Ripple Maker PM, made by Ripples, lets you place your Instagram-worthy photos directly on the foam of your favorite boozy beverage. To customize a cocktail, users upload selfies, logos, or other images to the WiFi-enabled appliance using a Facebook Messenger app.

Buttermilk Co’s Microwaveable Indian Meals Merge Authenticity and Convenience

By Catherine Lamb on Aug 21, 2018 01:15 pm
Founder Mitra Raman got the idea for Buttermilk Co. because of a craving for rasan: a tomato-y South Indian stew and her favorite food. Raman’s mother gave her the ingredients in a bag — all Raman had to do was add water and boil.

Hitachi to Use AI to Analyze Hospital Food Leftovers and Improve Patient Recovery

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 21, 2018 11:14 am
We often write about artificial intelligence (AI) being used on food before it gets to you: inspecting the supply chain, making sure your burgers are cooked, etc. But a new unit of Japanese company Hitachi is applying AI to food leftover on the plate after people are done with it.

Phrame and Delivery.com Partner for In-Trunk Delivery

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 21, 2018 08:16 am
Is your car trunk the new post office box? It could be if a new service from Phrame and Delivery.com catches on. The two companies announced today the conclusion of a successful pilot that saw deliveries made directly into car trunks in an attempt to provide a new method of convenience for grocery shoppers.

No More Lukewarm Coffee: How Heating Tech will Disrupt the Kitchen

By Catherine Lamb on Aug 20, 2018 02:27 pm
The ability to apply precision heat to food and drinks is a quick-evolving — and pretty darn exciting — area of the digital kitchen innovation. And no one is pushing more boundaries in this space than Clay Alexander. He’s the founder and CEO of Ember, a company which makes smart mugs which can exactly control and […]

Coca-Cola Should Stay Out of the Home Device Business

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 20, 2018 11:51 am
After I wrote up the news this morning about PepsiCo buying SodaStream for a bubbly $3.2 billion, a commenter got me thinking about what rival Coca-Cola’s next steps should be. Spoon reader “James” asked: So now that Pepsi has Sodastream and Dr. Pepper has Keurig, what consumer hardware company is Coke going to buy?

PepsiCo Buys SodaStream for $3.2 Billion

By Chris Albrecht on Aug 20, 2018 08:21 am
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.

Podcast: The AI Powered Sommelier With Amy Gross

By Michael Wolf on Aug 19, 2018 08:07 am
A decade ago, Amy Gross was enjoying a glass of wine with her husband when she noticed how the same wine tasted different to different people. From there she began to think about how technology could be used to make personalized wine recommendations, and it wasn’t long before IBM and others wanted to learn more […]

Food Tech News Roundup: Plant-Based Starbucks, Google’s Wearable Meal Plan, and Grocery Innovation

By Catherine Lamb on Aug 18, 2018 06:00 am
What a week for food tech fundraising! From DoorDash’s $250 million to a hefty raise for cellular aquaculture company BlueNalu to not one, not two, but three fundraising rounds for food waste startups, it’s been a doozy.

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?

Tales From The Soda Wars (Home Edition)

The first in an occasional series of (only) slightly less serious looks at the challenges of kitchen and home tech from humorist and blogger, Janet Payton.

Growing up in late 70s and early 80s, I regularly enjoyed healthy, home-cooked meals prepared by my mother. But my parents were children during WWII, and wartime sugar rationing clearly had an impact on their eating habits. They stockpiled the sweet stuff like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. As a result, I regularly feasted on sugary sodas, candy bars, ice cream, and all things Hostess.

As an adult, I have managed to cut down on junk food and soda consumption, but I still toss back a couple of Diet Cokes every week. Yes, I know soda, particularly diet soda, is terrible for me (thanks a lot, well-meaning Facebook friends). But I’m a lazy person, and soda is tasty and convenient. I also don’t take vitamins or floss regularly. Feel free to call my health care professionals.

I wanted to stop drinking diet soda permanently, but I still craved something cold and fizzy. I tried mineral water flavored with lemon. Meh. Later I resorted to kombucha, which is very expensive and tastes like the spoiled root beer I made in my 6th-grade science class. Kombucha is supposed to aid in digestion, but if you’re someone like me who is blessed with excellent digestion (probably because I don’t take vitamins), it just makes you sick to your stomach. Plus I think you’re required to do yoga while you drink it. Blech.

Enter the home soda maker.  

The home soda maker has always seemed kind of unnecessary to me. The idea behind any good kitchen technology is that it’s supposed to make life easier for working parents. You know, so we have more time to pretend to help our kids with homework or search for something we haven’t seen yet on Netflix. But is there anything easier or cheaper than grabbing a delicious carbonated beverage? They’re everywhere. That said, the Gen-Xer in me liked the idea that I could make healthier, fancier sodas, while also cutting down on waste. Healthy and good for the environment? Sign me up. I was jazzed to use this new technology to make me feel even more self-righteous.

So off I went to my local one stop shopping center to pick up some kale-based dinner options and the SodaStream PLAY. I wanted to add my own natural flavorings to my sodas, but I can’t resist a good impulse buy, so I threw some SodaStream Diet Dr. Pete syrup in my cart purely for the comic potential. I know. I know. Those syrups are no better for me than convenient store-bought beverages. But it’s Diet Dr. Pete for cryin’ out loud! I had to try it at least once.

Back home, I walked into my kitchen with my groceries and new gadget to find my work-at-home husband standing in his underwear making his third cup of coffee. He laughed at my purchase (and, I might add, Diet Dr. Pete killed!), but in the time I turned my back to put away the bread, he had busted open the box like a child on Christmas morning and had started to force-fit pieces of my new purchase together. 

I am a rule follower, so after whipping out the instruction manual and frantically scanning two full pages of warnings about personal injury, property damage and CO2 death scares. I was convinced this was going to turn into an episode of Jackass. I considered Facebook-livestreaming our adventure, but one of us wasn’t dressed for it.

Me: Could a CO2 leak from this bottle kill us?

My husband: Not sure. I guess we’ll find out!

By the time I had finished reading the warnings out loud, my husband had nearly assembled the whole device. I was ready to give it a go, but by this point, the promise of certain death had me so on edge that as soon as I inserted the carbonating bottleneck in the Snap-Lock position and it made the slightest of sounds, I jumped about a foot.

Me (handing bottle to my husband): Here, you do it. But put some pants on first.

Most things don’t scare me. I am the one who kills all the spiders in the house. I enjoy public speaking. I find ventriloquist dummies charming. I just don’t like gas or the potential for explosions of any kind. This is why you will never see me lighting the grill. That story about ESPN’S Hannah Storm losing her eyebrows and eyelashes after her gas grill exploded in her face might as well have been written by Stephen King. It haunts me to this day.

My inner voice of reason ultimately prevailed. Really, what are the odds a company would make a soda machine that’s appealing to children and also highly explosive? Besides, my husband looked like he was having too much fun with my new purchase. I made him step aside, and I took charge of the situation.

I snapped the bottle into place, pushed down on the carbonating block a few times, added some very-bad-for-me syrup flavoring to the fizzy water, and within seconds  I had a refreshing Diet Dr. Pete. Granted, buying a Diet Coke at the store is way easier and probably cheaper, but the level of smugness I felt was totally worth it. I made my own soda. It was like I was homebrewing beer, only without the mess of fermentation, beards, and utilikilts. And it was good too! If only my 6th-grade science teacher could see me now.

Bottom line: I like this home soda maker. It’s lightweight, doesn’t require a plug-in or batteries, and takes up minimal counter space. And it’s fun! You can control the amount of bubbles and flavoring depending on the person or mood. For instance, if I’ve had a particularly hard day, I can totally go wild with a few more hits of the carbonating block, and then throw in a couple of extra shots of Dr. Pete.

I look forward to trying new natural flavors, which is the main reason for buying the SodaStream PLAY in the first place. There’s a rhubarb soda I’m dying to make with my neighbor’s homegrown rhubarb. I’m sure I’ll eventually add some sugar to a few of these concoctions. In honor of my parents, of course. I wouldn’t want their sugar rationing to have been in vain.

Image credit: K.G.23 on Flickr