Coca-Cola Jet aims to power up sales

Coca-Cola is using micro-dosing technology from drug-makers, a smartphone operating system from Microsoft and style tips from Italian car designers in its latest attempt to revive falling sales of soft drinks from dispensers.

Coca-Cola spent four years developing a self-serve beverage dispenser that can pour as many as 120 drinks. It uses 40 per cent less storage space than traditional six- or eight-tap drink machines, said Gene Farrell, the project's manager.

Code-named Jet, the company will test the touch-screen-operated dispenser in Atlanta restaurants this month and another 70 or more in Southern California during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

Coca-Cola is betting a larger variety of beverages, including Orange Coke, Powerade and Minute Maid juice, will lure fast-food consumers back to buying drinks with their hamburgers.

People may even pay more for greater choice and a better tasting, colder beverage, Farrell said.

"The way you grow profit for everybody is, you grow the size of the pie," he said. "When there's new growth, there's opportunity for everyone."

Drink machine sales for Coca-Cola, which controls 70 per cent of the US market and is the exclusive supplier to McDonald's, have not "grown as robustly as we would have liked", Farrell said.

Industry volume sales for US dispenser soft drinks probably fell more than 3 per cent last year, after a 1.3 per cent drop in 2007, according to John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest newsletter.

He estimates the overall soft-drink market, including dispenser drinks, is at US$72.7 billion ($124.8 billion).

Coca-Cola sells concentrated beverage syrup to restaurants, convenience stores and entertainment venues to be mixed at the drink machine with water, carbon dioxide and high-fructose corn syrup sweetener.

Jet is the product of more than 20 patents and hundreds of confidentiality agreements.

The drink mix inside the Jet is Coca-Cola's most concentrated, Farrell said.

The concentrate is dispensed with technology adapted from medical equipment used to measure precise amounts of dialysis and cancer drugs.

The machine's software runs on Microsoft Windows CE, an off-the-shelf computer operating system used in advanced mobile phones.

The curvy dispensers come in red, black or silver and feature the familiar white Coca-Cola ribbon.

The company settled on the look after consulting with two high-end Italian car designers suggested by chief executive Muhtar Kent because of their ability to find "passion in big, boxy things," Farrell said.

The development team also included a former Apple designer who worked on the iPod.

- BLOOMBERG