Do you drink soft drinks?
I love diet coke. The carbonated water is tickling your tongue as it goes down. The sweet, sweet flavor. I love drinking it with a juicy hamburger and crisp french fries. But something is amiss in the beverage world. There are new smaller soda cans and they are costing you more for less.
The world would like to buy a coke
The soft drink industry has been on a steady decline for the past several years. Competition from flavored water, energy drinks, and other flavored drinks are chipping away at the once mighty soft drink empire.
These companies are great (crafty) at marketing, mind you. Coke is working hard to expand into far reaching places where people don’t make as much money as you and I living in America.
In other parts of the world buying a coke is a real treat. In these remote villages and areas, people save up money for these infrequent purchases when they come into town. A trip to town! We could get a Coke! But the 12 oz. can of coke you and I are accustomed to, is too expensive for this market. What to do?
If you can’t sell them a cow, sell them a calf
Coke came up with an idea to reach these new customers – a smaller, more affordable can. It’s 7.5 oz in size – smaller than the standard 12 oz can. Every WalMart across the U.S now carries the new smaller cans. Have you seen them?
My wife loves these cans. She doesn’t want to drink a full can of diet coke. Hey, there’s only so much room in your stomach -right?
The incredible shrinking wallet
But what are these smaller cans doing to your wallet?
They’re draining your wallet – costing twice as much per ounce as a 12 ounce can. In my local Walmart, the small cans sell for 5 cents per fluid ounce (fl. oz). The bigger standard cans cost 2.5 cents fl. oz., or ½ as much.
The smaller cans are sold in packs of 24 while the larger 12-ounce cans are sold in a 12 pack.
Bear with me, we have to do some math. Oh no, math!
A 24 count of 7.5 oz cans at 0.5 cents per fl. oz costs $9.00
A 12 count of 12 oz cans at 0.25 cents per fl. oz costs $3.60
It’s actually $0.80 cheaper to buy two 12 packs of 12 oz cans and just not finish them than to buy the smaller 7.5 oz size cans!
Bigger is better – and cheaper
Do you want to avoid paying more for less?
If you like soft drinks and buy them by the case go for the bigger cans. You’ll make the tiny cans jealous. They’ll want to grow up. Be bigger.
What if you want to drink less? I understand – you don’t want to waste it.
Dump out the rest. Save it for later. Share it with a friend. Use it for science experiments to measure volume displacement of CO2 molecules. Just beware of what you are paying so you can keep your wallet from getting smaller, not your can size.
$0.80 might not seem like much but if you’re buying a case a week, that’s $41.60 a year. And that’s money in your wallet!
How many cans of Coke do you drink each day? Please tell me on Facebook or Twitter.
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