Coke Freestyle

I was excited as a six year old at Christmas to sample the new Coke Freestyle. Later I felt like the kid who had received a lump of coal instead of the goodies. The only location for the Freestyle near me was the Home Town Buffet in Loma Linda. Home Town has instituted a new policy that the beverage bar is paid for as an additional item. Hope that works out for them, selection has been cut and items ala carted.

Per Wiki the Coke Freestyle
Technologies involved include microdispensing technology and proprietary PurePour technology. Both technologies were originally developed to deliver extremely precise doses of drugs.^[1] One Freestyle unit with a similar footprint to current vending machine can dispense 106 carbonated and non-carbonated beverages from one freestanding unit. Microdosing blends one or more concentrated ingredients in 46-ounce packets with water and sweetener at the point where the beverage is dispensed,^[4] thus avoiding the use of traditional 5-gallon boxes of syrup (also known as a bag-in-a-box).^[6] Cartridges store concentrated ingredients in the dispenser cabinet and are RFID enabled. The machine uses RFID chips to detect its supplies and to radio resupplying needs to other units. The traditional ice cube dispenser remains.^[7] The maximum rate of output is 95 drinks per hour.

I was very disappointed with the drinks choice. I have to stick to the sugar free variates and they were limited and not very tasty. Coke & Raspberry tasted like cough syrup. I can still dream, they might get it right someday.