The Coca-Cola Company, the world’s biggest beverage business, has begun testing a new drink fountain which can dispense over 100 branded beverages from a single machine. The decision on a roll-out of the product in the foodservice industry will be made after the second round of testing – which is due to begin early next year.

The drink fountain amazingly takes up a similar amount of space to a standard eight drink dispenser and Coca-Cola is excited about the prospect of bringing it to the marketplace.

“Innovation is our lifeblood, and we wanted a dispenser that offers consumers greater beverage variety while helping our customers increase beverage profitability, ” said Chris Lowe, president of Coca-Cola North America FoodService and On-Premise, in a statement. “We started by ignoring preconceived notions of fountain beverages and explored how a fountain dispenser could look and work in the future.”

Consumer testing has so far been positive, with Coca-Cola reporting that 72 per cent of consumers are more satisfied with the new fountains compared with current fountains. The fountain was also well received in terms of variety, taste, value, experience and ease of use.

The system has been developed in such a way that it can handle a diverse range of products and ensures the introduction of new products to the device will be easy. How easy? “… About as easy as changing a print cartridge,” Coca-Cola reports.

The idea of the new fountain appears very suitable for introducing new products and brands to consumers, but only time will tell if the range is too extensive for consumers to cope with.

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