Hacker News Reader

Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

That's my experience but I'm not much of a Coke drinker.

I recall some years ago Pepsi making the claim they could replicate Coke to the point of it being essentially indistinguishable but that's wasn't the point, their branding required Pepsi to be clearly differentiated from Coke—commercially that seems to make sense.

It's unclear how accurate Pepsi's claims are but they seemed to be based on tasting trials where people couldn't tell the 'clone' from the real thing.

Seems to me Pepsi was likely right, if we consider how close this formulation is to Coke and that it was produced with limited resources then one would expect Pepsi with its huge resources to grind their 'clone' as fine as they deemed necessary.

These days, Coke's 'secret' formula is more a publicity stunt than anything else.

View on HN

Some 30 years ago, someone challenged me to tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke in a blind taste test. After taking several sips, I could eventually tell that one tasted just a little bit sweeter, more sugary, and the other one tasted just a tiny bit more... "dark" is how I put it at the time. (Note that I was using that word to describe a flavor, not a color. I do not have synesthesia, that's just the best word I could find to describe the subtle taste difference). I guessed that the slightly-sweeter one was Pepsi, and I turned out to be right.

Thing is, since doing that taste comparison where I alternated sips several times between the two, I've consistently been able to tell if a drink was Pepsi or Coke. So while they are very very close, they are distinguishable to some people, if those people have trained their taste buds. (Or at least they were up to about 10 years ago, I don't know if they've changed the flavor in the past decade because I practically quit drinking soda at all once I got serious about maintaining a healthy weight.)

They’re easy to distinguish and I bet if I tell you how you can do it easily afterward.

Pepsi has more vanilla and lemon. If you go do a blind test now I bet you’ll find them easy to tell apart.

True story: I was once (late 90s, I think) made part of an impromptu taste-test in a 7 Eleven store in Stockholm [1], when a (probably bored) employee grabbed a Coke, a Pepsi and a Dr Pepper and some espresso-size paper cups and made me and some friends close our eyes and try to guess which was which.

I remember being upset since he claimed I failed to even point out Dr Pepper, which I still think is unbelievable since even its smell is super distinctive and way different from a cola.

[1]: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/buset-pa-kungsgatan--butiken-bl... is the same store, article (in Swedish) about a recent prank someone did there

In switzerland they once did the test on a TV show making people taste beverage of various colors. Most people would say it has the taste of a fruit of the same color while all the beverages had the same mint flavor.

Bottom line: the brain takes a lot of shortcut to allow us to take decisions quickly and is easily fooled. We aren't much better than a tiny LLM model really.

> Some 30 years ago, someone challenged me to tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke in a blind taste test.

I did something similar with co-workers recently, who didn't believe there is a meaningful difference between brands. I blind-tasted 6 different glasses and got each one right. I got my favorite (Coke) right just by the first smell, I just had to taste to see whether it was diet or not.

Not that this is a skill or anything. Its just that each of the brands I tasted has a strong characteristic flavor to me, and the difference between real sugar and artificially sweetened is also stark. I've been drinking diet versions for ages precisely because the sugary ones are just too sweet for me.

The difference between the two is not that subtle. If I order a Coke at a restaurant and they bring out a Pepsi, I can tell immediate and usually send it back for something else.

I don’t have trained taste buds, but something in Pepsi is off putting to me. Worse is artificial sweeteners, which I think I’m have whatever mutation makes aspartame taste bitter. I could never understand why people like Diet Coke, but it turns out I’m the strange one.

Do people think they taste the same ? I can normally tell them apart on smell alone.

There's a story (true AFAIK, but it's the kind of thing I can easily imagine having been debunked) of Pepsi winning in direct taste-test comparisons against Coca Cola, but only when the test was done with small quantities. Apparently the sweeter taste is initially more appealing, but the slightly less sweet taste holds up better over the course of a whole drink.

"...but the slightly less sweet taste holds up better over the course of a whole drink."

I reckon from experience that's correct. For example, I can't drink Pepsi Max as it's far too sweet (all I taste is sweetness, on its own that's not very appealing).

I think it's obvious that a corporation the size of Pepsi could replicate the taste of coke if they wanted to. But why would they - their customers buy pepsi because they want pepsi, not because they are looking for cheaper coke - pepsi is not even cheaper, it's just a different product. Just like 7up tastes different to Sprite.

More interesting, to me, is why the corporations that produce house-brand colas don't do this. While not exactly Pepsico, these producers have plenty of financial resources, plus the motivation to get their product as close to Coca-Cola and Pepsi as possible.

TBF, I think some of them do - Aldi's Cola is like....95% there. I wonder if that last 5% is a concious choice, or an actual technical challenge in replicating the exact taste.

This seems completely believable to me. They have tons of research scientists and chemists who do this for a living, and had access to the best equipment (even back in the day).

It probably didn’t take them terribly long to do it

Pepsi can probably afford to run Coca Cola through a mass spec to get an idea of concentrations and even get the processed coca leaf used by Coca Cola (there’s one company in the uS with a license from the DEA).

In the video, coke was run through several mass spec tests, as was the test formula for comparison.

But the difference is Pepsi would also have had dedicated laboratories and food scientists, scientifically controlled exhaustive testing and unlimited access to any ingredient they wanted. Thus one would expect Pepsi's testing to have had much finer granularity than in this YouTube video).

With millions of dollars tied up in just a few percent of sales you can bet Pepsi knows just about as much as Coke does about Coke's ingredients (and vice versa of course).

The research for both companies is more about the fine minutiae—keeping an optimal differentiation between the two products more than treading on each other's territory. Trampling over each other for market share is done through advertising, not by making their products the same.

Or they could also just hire ex-Coke employees who might have been involved in some sourcing of the ingredients (eg when setting up new factories).

Most trade secrets aren't really all that secret.

Pepsi probably also has had access to Coke's supply chain and long ago acquired samples of various inputs before mixing, which would make analysis easier. The two companies know they're competing mostly on production management and brand image, not secret ingredients. A decade or so ago a secretary from Coke tried to sell some of the company's "secrets" to Pepsi. Instead of jumping on the opportunity to get Coke's secrets, they contacted Coke's legal department and the FBI, with the three working together to prosecute her.

Right, both keep up the pretense as it's in their interests to do so.

Pepsi probably already have done this and likely Coke have done the same to Pepsi. However, Pepsi did also see what happened with New Coke and likely don’t wish to repeat that footgun of changing the formula. Plus people buy Pepsi because they want Pepsi not Coca-Cola

> Plus people buy Pepsi because they want Pepsi not Coca-Cola

Some people perhaps. Restaurants usually only carry one or the other so you don't get a choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com