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Comment by pantalaimon | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit surprised it didn't catch on as a carbonated soft drink outside Germany.

First of all, I'm a bit surprised that the article does not even mention Club Mate.

Second, it's catching on in the Netherlands through the underground. All hackerspaces have their own supply line, either through their own import, or through other channels. There are now several wholesalers who sell it, and I'm starting to see it in small cafe's as well.

I've also heard that there is a cocktailbar in Amsterdam which uses Club Mate in some of their cocktails.

Perhaps more surprising is that this was attempted in Argentina in the mid-2000s by Coca-Cola. They introduced a soft drink named "Nativa" based off mate with a huge ad campaign to go with it (the slogan was something along the lines of "there's never before been something so ours"). It was a complete flop, and the unsold bottles were removed from the shelves merely weeks after launch.

I'm an Argentine who enjoys mate. While in Germany I tried a Club Mate and found it disgusting. It may be an acquired taste though, much as plain mate is, and I'd gladly give it a second chance if I could get my hands on some.

In Germany, you should give a try to Flora Power, another mate-based soft drink :

http://flora-power.de/

It's more difficult to find than Club Mate (it's a local brew from Hamburg). Depending on your taste, it contains much less sugar than Club Mate and feels more 'herbal', I prefer this.

Also, if you happen to find Kolle Mate[0], try one.

If you're looking for places to buy, Matekarte[1] provides a nice map detailing who sells what and the latest status (in stock, only few left, out of stock). Unfortunately, it appears to only be available in german.

[0] http://kolle-mate.de [1] https://www.matekarte.de/

Thanks for the tip, I'll look for it next time I'm in Germany.

Well, Nativa was pretty gross though. It was (slightly) sweet, and a lot of people prefer their mate without any sort of sweetening.

Me too. I love Club Mate (pronounced Clue-b, Maw Tay). It's apparently super popular among hackers in Berlin.

I only know two places to get it in California. One, The Fizzary on Haight in SF, the other Galcos Old World Grocery in Pasadena although my impression of Galcos is they aren't going to keep stocking it.

It's one of many drinks that seem like they could do well with the right marketing and distribution.

In the USA we've had "Materva" for many years, which seems reasonably popular. Lately, I've seen more and more energy/"health" drinks listing Mate as an ingredient; the Guayaki brand seemingly the most common.

These drinks really have very little to do with the taste/experience of the traditional S. American mate though...

Well, I like the Guayaki drinks, and anecdotally they do help moderate my appetite, so maybe I’ll try traditional mate now.

You can buy a kilo of mate for $4 from any decent latin grocery or mennonite vacuum store. Brew it, add sugar, ice. Totally not worth the $2/bottle for the Guayaki drinks.

I live in a house of four CS students in the UK and it is the staple drink at home. It fuels many of our programming sessions. However, we can't buy it in shops round here and we have to order it in bulk from the supplier. We probably get through a crate of the stuff every two weeks.

I imagine it would catch on in a far bigger way, but no one has heard of it. It was only through a HN article on SoundCloud's Berlin offices that we decided to try some.

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