NEW YORK — Pepsi is hoping to win back soda drinkers with a compromise.
Some people don’t like the calories in regular soda but loathe the taste of zero-calorie diet drinks. So the nation’s No. 2 cola company is rolling out Pepsi Next, a cola that has about half the calories of regular Pepsi at 60 per can.
The cola, hitting store shelves nationally by the end of March, is Pepsi’s biggest product launch in years. The drink comes as people increasingly move away from sugary drinks to water and other lower-calorie beverages because of health concerns. It’s also an attempt by Pepsi to revive the cola wars against Coke and others.
Pepsi Next isn’t the first drink to try to hit the sweet spot between diet and regular cola. Dr Pepper Snapple rolled out its low-calorie Dr Pepper Ten, which has 10 calories. The company said the drink, which has sugar unlike its diet soda, helped boost its fourth-quarter sales.
Pepsi says its latest stab at an in-between soda uses a different formula to more closely imitate the taste of regular soda. The Associated Press
