SodaStream Economics

http://priceonomics.com/soda-makers/sodastream/

by rohin • 14 years ago

53 66 14 years ago

kvb• 14 years ago

This neglects one important consideration (for me, anyway), which is convenience. It's nice not to have to maintain a stock of bottles or cans.

URSpider945• 14 years ago

Not only that, but there is the environmental savings of trucking around water at 8 lbs / gallon, and of manufacturing and disposing of (or quasi-recycling -- they can't be remanufactured, like glass or aluminum) hundreds of PET bottles.

stephengillie3• 14 years ago

What does it take to separate the CO2 in the air from other gases? A centrifuge of some sort -- basically blowing air in a cyclone?

I wonder how difficult it would be to reduce a CO2 collection device to the size of a coffeemaker.

johnrgrace2• 14 years ago

No it's not a centrifuge, CO2 is a product every air liquifaction plant. Air Liquifaction plants mostly produce oxygen and nitrogen by compressing air, cooling it, letting it expand, compressing it... CO2 liquifies at a higher tempature than oxygen and nitrogen so CO2 is a product of all plants and it is very cheap due to a lot of supply. Price is under $1 a pound $0.30 if you're buying railcars.

URSpider945• 14 years ago

Nice article. SodaStream has found a sweet spot where it's providing a convenience and savings for the end customer, while still making profit hand-over-fist on the consumables, and probably even on the base machine. My family of four probably consumes close to 4L per day of SodaStream output, 70% as fizzy water, 30% as diet soda.

The project on my to-do list (please don't do this unless you know what you're doing) is to cut the top off of an expired SodaStream cylinder and fashion it into an adaptor for the hose from my 5 lb. CO2 tank. 5 lbs. of CO2 will yield something like 500 L of carbonated water, at the same $15 per fill as the SodaStream 60L refills. This should bring the cost down to $0.05 per liter or less. SodaStream will still get my money for their soda syrups, but I can disintermediate their highway-robbery CO2 service.

stephengillie3• 14 years ago

How much pressure is in the 5lb CO2 tank when it's full? Duct tape probably wouldn't be strong enough.

The canisters look aluminum, so welding would probably be difficult - aluminum is supposedly very difficult to weld, and welding different types of metal is very difficult as well. The easiest way might be to put the canister's nozzle on a tube.

URSpider945• 14 years ago

No, duct tape won't work. :)

My plan is to tap out the inside of the tank valve and thread in an adaptor. If it works, I'll post it on Instructables...

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

Apparently you can buy adapters: http://www.criticalpaintball.com/SodaMod-p/sodastream-sodamo...

(edit: better link is http://co2doctor.com/freedomoonespec.htm )

sukuriant• 14 years ago

Please make sure your CO2 is food grade, as has been discussed in other threads.

lazerwalker5• 14 years ago

If you're willing to get your hands a little dirty, there's an alternate option that doesn't involve buying into a razor blade business model.

At a welding supply shop, they'll sell you a 5lb tank of CO2 (around $60 initially, then $15-20 for each refill thereafter). If you then go to a homebrew supply store, you can buy a CO2 regulator (~$70, depending on quality), the appropriate tubing and a ball-lock adapter (< $10), and a carbonator cap ($15, something like http://morebeer.com/view_product/18250/). That setup'll let you take any plastic soda bottle (1-liter, 2-liter, whatever) and carbonate it directly. I have a CO2 tank for kegging my home-brewed beer and soda, and I frequently use my carbonator cap to make small test batches of soda before mixing up a full five gallon batch in a keg.

A 5lb tank of CO2 will last for 15-20 5-gallon kegs of beer. There's no easy apples-to-apples comparison (soda is more highly carbonated than beer, and I'm not sure of the effect on efficiency from carbonating such small batches), but any way you work it paying $15-20 for a refill is a much better deal than paying for SodaStream cartridges.

Luc• 14 years ago

Do you worry about the CO2 not being food-grade (e.g. contaminated with lubricants or whatever), or is that not an issue?

lazerwalker5• 14 years ago

Any welding supply shop you might go to is going to have food-grade CO2. You can also easily get it from scientific lab suppliers or any number of other places, and I've shopped at homebrew stores that have refill programs (you drop off your empty tank, and once a week the welding shop picks 'em up, refills 'em, and returns them to the store). Food-grade CO2 is dirt cheap and readily available.

URSpider945• 14 years ago

Go to your local soda supply, they will almost certainly be glad to set you up.

In the Bay Area, Carbonic Service in Santa Clara are GREAT -- if you walk in and tell them you want to make soda, they will hook you up with a 5 lb tank and a fill, and a pre-made-up combo with tubing, regulator and ball-lock valve, along with the screw-top adaptor for the 2L bottle.

jdminhbg• 14 years ago

I get CO2 for a kegerator for approximately the same prices OP lists above from a beer distributor; party supply stores also stock it. Available all over the place.

noonespecial• 14 years ago

Welding CO2 has to be very pure as a general rule in order to avoid contaminating the weld. The gas is used as a temporary shield to keep the weld clear of oxygen and other contaminants. Lubricant in this situation would be a disaster.

What you're thinking of is the CO2 used for propulsion in gas driven guns like BB's, pellets, and paint-balls. This gas often has synthetic oil mixed in to keep the moving parts of the guns lubricated.

TL;DR: Welding shop good, paint-ball shop bad.

johnrgrace2• 14 years ago

There isn't really "food grade" CO2, just CO2.

I bought a CO2 delivery service business in college that was a sideline of my friends dad's business. He was buying tankercars of CO2 for welding to get a lower price and then selling his "cheap" CO2 to bars.

rickdale• 14 years ago

Anyone that lives in state with medical marijuana can go to their local growshops and often get all the C02 stuff there. Where I live there are more grow shops than C02/welding supply stores. Just another tip.

lazerwalker5• 14 years ago

Yeah, that's an awesome point. I've heard there are also paintball shops that will do CO2 refills, although I haven't tried it myself.

dot• 14 years ago

Some places sell the whole kit:

http://stores.kegconnection.com/Detail.bok?no=246

maratd• 14 years ago

> but any way you work it paying $15-20 for a refill is a much better deal than paying for SodaStream cartridges.

I get a discount for trading in my old cartridge? A single cartridge lasts me 3 months. We make 2 bottles per day.

The standard price is $15, I always buy them at Bed Bath and Beyond with a 20% off coupon ... which makes them $10. Ten bucks for 3 months isn't bad.

owenfi• 14 years ago

A guide I made with some photos available here: http://snapguide.com/guides/make-a-pseudo-soda-stream/

watmough• 14 years ago

Only one part of this review really matters, and that's that the "cola" and the "energy drink" both suck, read: your kids will refuse to drink them.

Money wasted.

sp332• 14 years ago

It's pretty hard to make diet cola taste good. Real-sugar soda would probably taste better. Anyway, it's not like people drink Red Bull for the taste :p

smacktoward• 14 years ago

SodaStream does offer a real-sugar cola syrup now (see http://www.sodastreamusa.com/Naturally-Sweetened-Cola-P330.a...), and it does indeed taste noticeably superior to their other cola offerings. The downsides are that it's twice as expensive and can be difficult to find at retail.

URSpider945• 14 years ago

They don't suck, they just don't taste like Diet Coke. My kids (who NEVER get real soda) beg me on a daily basis for sips of my SodaStream diet soda. They would drink my entire glass if I let them.

For that matter, if you are dead-set on real Coke, you can buy bag-in-box syrups from your local distributor (or convince a neighborhood restauarant owner to sell one to you) and have real Coke products for less than SodaStream charges -- but you have to be willing to store the larger box and decant from it into something you can keep in your kitchen.

lazerwalker5• 14 years ago

Cola is a really hard flavor to nail. Pretty much any cola you buy in stores that isn't Pepsi or Coke is almost certainly going to taste like those cola-bottle gummy candies rather than the flavor you associate with Coke. There are a lot of different spices and citrus oils in there, and getting the proportion just right is really tough (it doesn't help that Coca-Cola is literally the only company in the country allowed to use coca leaf as a flavoring. They have a special permit from the FDA to import it.)

I almost always prefer drinking my own home-made soda to store-bought stuff, but I've given up completely on trying to formulate a recipe for a cola that tastes even remotely like people think cola should.

If you're deadset on making cola with a SodaStream, I'd go to a commercial restaurant distributor and get your hands on a box of real Coke or Diet Coke syrup.

rohin• 14 years ago

Do you have a sense if it's difficult to acquire real Coke syrup? Or, do they pretty much shut out consumers from buying it?

lobster_johnson2• 14 years ago

> Cola is a really hard flavor to nail.

Not at all. I brew my own cola at home using the OpenCola [1] recipe -- and speaking as a person who is very picky about colas, I find it delicious, easily on par with store-bought Coke -- which you could easily produce on a large scale.

The recipe is very close to the original Coca-Cola recipe; the Coca-Cola Company now presumably uses synthetic flavours in place of the various oils, which means the homebrew version actually tastes much more fresh and natural compared to store-bought Coke.

(I will admit Homebrew Coke lacks a little bit of the "bite" of Coca-Cola, which might come from the coca leaf.)

I use a SodaStream-style home carbonator, but it's not great. Store-bought soda water is much better.

[1] http://www.colawp.com/colas/400/cola467_recipe.html

rymith• 14 years ago

I personally go through an average of a litre per day, and after I became hooked, I was really worried that they wouldn't be in business for long (often one off companies like this don't last) so it's nice to see they are doing well.

dagw• 14 years ago

They've been selling home carbonation machines since 1955 and have been in the carbonation business since 1903, so it's not like they're some new company that's just popped up (although they've changed owners a good half dozen times over the century).

AjithAntony• 14 years ago

One other omission from the analysis is there may be a fair amount of waste when you buy large bottles of soda water from the store. Economically it would make sense to buy 2L bottle, but I may not be drinking it fast enough to warrant that. You lose a large amount of fizziness after day one, and by day 3, you just dump out anything that is left. With a Soda making device, you always have fresh fizzy water on demand.

tedchs• 14 years ago

FYI, our local Bed Bath & Beyond, which sells the SodaStream syrups and equipment, will refill the CO2 cartridges at a much lower price than buying new.

rprospero• 14 years ago

One thing I found curious on the price economics was the comparison against soda. They listed a price of $0.70 per liter for the SodaStream soda and $1.08 per liter for a 2 liter from the store. Was that a mistake? I'm used to picking up a two liter for $1 for the whole bottle ($0.80 if I'm willing to go generic brand). Did they make a mistkae and not normalize the $1.08 price for the two liter or are people really paying $2.16 for two liters of pop.

pchristensen• 14 years ago

They listed San Francisco stores for the price comparisons, so that sounds right. Buying at non-urban grocery stores would be much cheaper.

stephengillie3• 14 years ago

Soda is sold in 1-liter bottles, and it's usually the same price or even slightly more expensive than 2-liter bottles. Convenience stores and gas stations sell 1-liter bottles in higher volumes than 2-liter bottles because people will accept 1-liter as a single serving (1 kilogram or 2.2 pounds), while 2-liters is too heavy to easily carry in the hand (2 kilograms or 4.4 pounds).

raldi2• 14 years ago

They consider "frequent" to be two liters per week?

One small glass of water is about 1/4 liter. A pint glass is nearly double that. So if you drink one pint glass of water per day, that's already far beyond what they're calling "frequent".

And of course, the above is based on a person who lives alone. If there's more than one person in your household, it pays off even faster.

tkahn6• 14 years ago

Yeah when we do have seltzer at home, I'll drink about 2 liters of it per day.

Cushman• 14 years ago

FYI, that "recommended dose" of eight glasses a day is mythical. No scientific basis whatsoever. If you aren't thirsty, you're drinking the right amount of water.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

raldi2• 14 years ago

Removed.

kscaldef• 14 years ago

Yeah, that was my reaction as well. My wife and I each drink a couple liters a day. Our Sodastream is one of the best purchases we ever made. We save money, we're not lugging bottles home from the store, and it's better for the environment.

showerst• 14 years ago

One important thing that they neglect is that liquid is big, and heavy!

As a city dweller who doesn't usually take a car to the grocery store, I don't usually buy more than a few liters of liquid at a time. I like drinking carbonated water, but I don't want to lug it home, and I don't want to have to store it in my small-ish kitchen.

I wonder what percent of consumers I'm in. 3? 5? Maybe not enough to matter, but I bet even many car-driving consumers don't like carrying a big case of soda.

barrkel• 14 years ago

We (my GF and I), during warmer weather, used to go through perhaps 1.5 litres of sparkling water a day, in the form of 500ml bottles bought as a 6-pack. Buying sparkling water in bulk doesn't work; big bottles lose fizz every time you open them, especially since you can't help agitating them putting them in and out of the fridge. With small bottles, you only open them once or twice.

6-packs of sparkling water bottles make our SodaStream look much cheaper than the analysis in the article. The SodaStream device itself was reasonably cheap too, I don't remember how much, but no more than 40 GBP. Overpriced for the simple mechanism it is, but kept our hands clean.

We do not generally use the SodaStream flavours. They're almost all horrible. The cola tastes like cola-flavoured penny sweets, and of course to achieve the concentrations required they need to use artificial sweeteners even for non-diet versions. They're all too sweet. The one product they sell that's any good - MyWater, and specifically the lemon-lime essence bottle in the three-pack - has been out of stock for the past 6 months in the UK.

We use the sparkling water for the things that we used to use store-bought for - watering down fruit juices, which are almost invariably 10% sugar in the UK from grape or apple juice filler, and for use with other commercially bought fruit and fruit squash concentrates.

alexkus2• 14 years ago

> big bottles lose fizz every time you open them

Solved if you use Fizz-keeper pump caps. This helps put the bottle back up to pressure after it's been opened so that the water doesn't go flat doing the same job.

We used to use these ~30 years ago when we had a Sodastream (I still have memories of going to John Lewis to get refilled cartridges).

akavi• 14 years ago

Dalton's law of partial pressures says Fizz-keepers don't actually work[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_keeper

trhtrsh• 14 years ago

Bias:

""" The “Diet Coke” was a bit of a disaster. Not only was the “fake” easily identifiable, but it tasted pretty bad. No one on the team would be happy to have the homemade version replace our real Diet Coke, no matter how much money we saved. """

Non-sugary flavors are an acquired taste, since we aren't evolved to drink them. Diet Coke tastes bad, at first. (As does coffee, beer, etc). Your brain rejects the unusual flavor, as a poison-prevention reflex. If you don't die, you get accustomed to the flavor (and maybe develop a flavor->caffeine-buzz associaton that makes the taste feel perkier)

If you have been drinking Diet Coke for a long time, you just don't remember how bad the first one tasted.

whatusername• 14 years ago

They compared Diet Coke Mix with Diet Coke. It's a fair comparison. (and I agree - the soda stream mixes I've had have all been pretty awful)

trotsky• 14 years ago

The only kitchen product that requires an end user license agreement: http://www.sodastreamusa.com/faq.aspx#b11

mchristoff• 14 years ago

I love SodaStream despite the razor blade model. For me it is not really about cost saving, it's about time and energy saving. Making on demand sparkling water is just much easier than lugging 3-6 1.5 liter bottles of sparkling water up to my 3rd floor apartment ever trip to the market. Maybe this is different for people who can drive right up to their door, but for those of us who live in cities that's often not an option.

_lex• 14 years ago

I don't mean to be rude, but I'd love to see a similar article on pricenomics. I've never really understood your business model.

praxeologist3• 14 years ago

This is another alternative: http://www.fizzgiz.com/

"Higher carbonation levels may be reached with the Fizz Giz carbonator. More effective carbonation is achieved through agitation during the process. Kitchen countertop units do not allow you to agitate bottles while carbonating. You simply can't mix the CO2 effectively without agitation. The big soda bottling companies know this. Our competitors know this. But since you can't pick up their machine and shake it, they downplay this important fact. One of the biggest consumer complaints by those with countertop carbonators is disappointment with low carbonation levels achieved."

I make flavors for electronic cigarettes, so I have been considering making them for this or a sort of Mio alternative. If anyone wants to beta test some flavors, please contact me.

lukifer• 14 years ago

I'll probably end up buying one of these to try it out. By carbonating for 2-3 rounds, I can get a SodaStream super fizzy, but it doesn't last for very long (and it burns through CO2 quickly). Will the fizz from this device last as long as normal soda bottles (which is to say, at least a day or two)?

praxeologist3• 14 years ago

I don't know because I haven't bought one yet either, but it seems like it would because you need to agitate the liquid to get more CO2 to saturate. I remember watching a bunch of videos there when I found this a while back, maybe you will get some idea from those.

Domenic_S• 14 years ago

Making what, carbonated ejuice?

praxeologist3• 14 years ago

It is basically impossible to get the fizzy sensation with ejuice... Just because I have so many flavorings already I was thinking to try out selling Mio-like water additives or concentrated flavors for SodaStream users. The flavorings we use for eliquid are appropriately concentrated, unlike soda syrups, and typically PG-based like Mio.

lobster_johnson2• 14 years ago

Fizz-Gizz looks great, but those dinky 16g cartridges can't hold many soda-bottle-equivalents of CO2? You get a single cartridge with the Fizz-Gizz, won't you have to refill it constantly?

For comparison, my home carbonator (AGA, not SodaStream, but same principle) has a huge 425g cartridge that yields about 60 liters of carbonated water.

In other words, it takes about 7g of CO2 to saturate a liter of water (probably more as these countertop machines aren't very effective at saturating the water), meaning 16g should give you barely in excess of 2 liters of carbonated water. That's more or less how much I consume in a day.

eldondev• 14 years ago

Another data point: in a household of 2, we may consume 2-3 liters on peak days, probably an average of 1 a day during warm periods in the year. His math is probably right, but his assumptions don't seem to be backed by anything but anecdote! Also, saving bottles is a footnote, but I think environmental benefit adds up quickly when you compare the cost of transporting lots of bottles from the bottler to the store to your house to the recycling center. Wish he had some hard real-world usage data available.

bduerst• 14 years ago

How long until Coca Cola ventures into this home-bev market?

illuminate2• 14 years ago

Never, ever. Why cannibalize their product's long-term viability?

jack-r-abbit2• 14 years ago

I had been thinking about getting a SodaStream for a while now since I drink a fair amount of the Safeway Refreshe brand flavored "fizzy waters". But I didn't realize the machine used a proprietary bottle. I usually buy mine in the 4-packs since it is actually cheaper oz-for-oz than the larger single bottles. But I like to take a few 4-packs to work and drink them throughout the day/week. When I'm running low, I bring in another stock. I don't like the idea of always bringing the empty SodaStream bottle(s) home to refill and take back to work the next day. So I'd probably need a dozen or so of their bottles just for work. And while it may be wasteful, I also have the convenience of taking a bottle where I'm going and then just tossing it when I'm done rather than lugging it around until I get home. And if the SodaStream flavors are garbage then I have less desire to get one.

With the SodaStream, I envisioned being able to take the bottles I do buy (and didn't toss) and reuse them for the SoadStream... always knowing that if I wanted to, I didn't have to keep track of the refilled bottle when I was done. Maybe I'm lazy or selfish for not wanting to keep track of an empty, reusable bottle... so be it. But I like the convenience of the option to toss the bottle when I'm done.

I also wish the article had some numbers on life expectancy of the machine. Its all fine and dandy to accept the reality of needing 4yrs for the machine to pay for itself... until you discover that it failed before then.

Based on my expected use pattern (both refilling AND buying new) I doubt my machine would last long enough to break even.

dfxm12• 14 years ago

Based on your expected use pattern, you should consider buying one unit (comes with 2 bottles) for work and one for home. Of course, this depends on your situation at work. I understand you might not be able to use it. They don't require power, but they can get loud (and stolen, I guess). Who knows? You might make some new friends though...

The sugary flavors are garbage. The fruity "essential oil" type of stuff (probably the stuff you are drinking) are fine.

Of course, YMMV, but I've had one going on 5 years now without a problem.

jack-r-abbit2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the info. "5 years" is a good data point. And yes, I would be making the fruity ones. Work supplies us with all the real soda we want. lol

actsasbuffoon• 14 years ago

SodaStream hacking: Combine various flavors. Mountain Dew + grape is fantastic (and diet).

I've also taken to getting sugar free flavors from Torani and mixing them with other flavors. I love cream soda + vanilla bean + strawberry. The combinations are virtually endless.

SodaStream Economics

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