Comment by jbay808 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbay808 | Hacker News Reader

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I know that these things are optimized like crazy, but I often feel like the focus groups must just not include people like me. Most of the processed food industry makes foods that I find sickly sweet or absurdly oily, among other issues. Soda for example.

I wouldn't describe as a failing of the Coca-cola company the fact that I don't like coke. Everyone has preferences. I would describe as their utter failure the fact that the first time I enjoyed drinking a cola since age 10 was when I had an unsweetened cola-flavoured La Croix.

For the longest time I didn't understand why vending machines exist, until I went to Japan and noticed I was always within arm's reach of a refreshingly bitter tea.

I had always mentally equated that bottled drink == headache-inducing sugar rush and it necessarily had to be that way. Even when they made a sugar free drink, they just loaded it with other sweeteners.

But that was really just an optimization process gone wrong and gotten trapped in a local minimum, I guess. I hope they're starting to learn their lesson.

I don't like Frito Lay snacks as much as I don't like local gourmet snacks made by some hipster company. They are both bad for you unless you moderate consumption.

That is orthagonal to the engineering that goes into making millions of chips a day. Just because I don't enjoy going on Royal Carribean cruises doesn't mean I shouldn't appreciate the logistical miracle that goes behind the scenes to make 12,000 meals a day. Nor does it diminish the engineering miracles that went into making this huge city in the middle of the ocean where you can hang out and have a martini while playing casino. Not my thing but amazing nevertheless.

Ever looked at Cigarette manufacturing line? I have. And it is insane! 10,000 cigarettes a minute. My jaw was on the floor. Deeply immoral business but I think that's orthagonal.

> but I often feel like the focus groups must just not include people like me.

I'm sure they do. That's why they came out with the baked chips, hundreds of non-sugar diet drinks (e.g. slightly flavored 0 calorie water). We all eat. We all get addicted. They just need to find your poison and optimize it.

> I hope they're starting to learn their lesson.

As this article shows, they've got an entire industry to learning every possible lesson.

The slightly flavoured water is a very new development -- the la croix I mentioned. When I had it, I thought for once, they've finally found something I like. But why did it take so long?

La Croix was founded almost 40 years ago, I remember drinking it (not very enthusiastically) as a kid growing up in the 80s.

Oh what?? Wow, I'm quite surprised. Were they making the same sort of product back then?

Maybe it just took them a long time to spread to Canada.

They can identify the market but not have the right way of reaching it. Two of the biggest changes in the past few decades:

1. Everything can be shipped online, so niche targets have more options. I have a memory of craving Yoo-Hoo in college, in the mid-2000's and seeing no local outlet for it, and therefore I went on Amazon and purchased six boxes of the stuff. I got what I wanted, although by the time I was done with those six boxes, I was very much over Yoo-Hoo.

2. The move towards stocked-fridge offices as seen in every SV tech campus, which make more of these items a B2B purchase, and therefore incentivize developing and marketing products on the basis of productivity-enhancing qualities. In the not so distant past it was more common for a campus cafeteria to be relatively modest, putting things in the hands of the culture more generally...

...and there is evidence for a "big sugar" industry conspiracy in the late 20th century pinning the blame for heart disease on high-fat diets, and therefore shifting the culture for a whole generation, but primarily in North America. Other countries did not have the same kinds of trends. And since that marketing position has gradually decayed they are forced to start selling water minus the sugar, indeed they anticipated that happening when they started bringing out diet sodas in the 80's.

Seems like Safeway and Walmart these days are all stocked with at least four competing brands of drinks that are just carbonated water + flavour, even out in rural areas. That should have been possible before online shipping and SV beverage cabinets.

Anyway, diet sodas have been around forever but to my memory always attempted to taste as sweet as the sugary drinks.

It's funny you should mention Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearly_Canadian

Can you explain what's interesting about Clearly Canadian?

I used to like their drinks back when it was possible to find them in stores, perhaps 15-20 years ago. But I'm pretty sure they were all sweetened...

It sounds like your tastes are an outlier, and didn't present a good ROI

My impression is that the totally-unsweetened carbonated water market has exploded in the last 5 years...

Even semi-sweetened carbonated water seems to have exploded with White Claw going mainstream.

> A 12-ounce White Claw also has 100 calories, 2g of sugars, and 2g of carbs.

Unsweetened, flavored carbonated water really became cool recently rather than just something people drank when they were taking a break from alcohol or coca cola. I'd be dumbfounded if numbers didn't back this up among people 25-40 in the past 5 years.

One can of coke can be turned into 3x as much coke by watering it down. I do this at BBQs or parties, and people look at me funny, but it turns the sweetness down to a manageable level.

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