Kinda dumb question but I figured it fits the sub lol
so these boxes are at my work and they’re a syrupy hyper sweet mixture that when combined with carbonated water make soda and it got me thinking:
why don’t they sell ones for like Monster energy?
is it because of the costs, or kids accessing it, or some law?
There’s no technical reason why you couldn’t. It’s probably just some stupid marketing reason like:
- A. Monster doesn’t want to sell its concentrate this way.
- B. They do, but not at a price that would justify including it as an option among other common self serve beverages.
- C. Stores don’t want to offer unlimited access to dangerously high levels of caffeine after a Panera customer with a pre-existing heart condition drank about a gallon of caffeinated lemonade and then dropped dead in the dining room.
There at least used to be, and I got royally screwed by it.
The employee hooked the wrong “orange” syrup up to the dispenser, and what I thought was 32oz of Orange Crush (caffeine free) was 32oz of some Orange energy drink. Needless to say, I was up all night and ended up having to call off work the next day because I was so exhausted and useless (I’m very sensitive to caffeine).
Probably also less common due to liability. Panera got into hot water with their highly caffeinated lemonade.
Don’t know about where you live, but in the EU, there’s a hard upper limit on the caffeine concentration in drinks you can legally sell.
Any syrup designed to be watered down before you drink it would be above the limit and therefore illegal.I’ve had postmix based energy drink in the Netherlands, so that’s not true. Ingredients are not held to the same standards as premixed drinks.
To answer op’s question, I think it’s more of a supply/demand case, and a postmix doesn’t display the brand as well as a can of an energy drink does (which is also marketing).
I haven’t done the math but I can’t imagine that’s the case or most sodas would also be illegal in their concentrated form.
QuikTrip has RoosterBooster
If I were to guess… it’s probably because the chemical makeup of energy drinks would damage the machine? Maybe it’s more acidic or something?
TBH I am 100% guessing here, talking out my ass, having done ZERO research on the topic.
Those machines are usually all plastic, acid doesn’t hurt them. And a lot of the acidity in energy drinks comes from the carbonic acid in the carbonated water and the citric acid that’s added. But those are present in a lot of sodas as well. They all have the carbonated water and a lot of them have citric acid as well. Something like Fanta is probably more acidic than most energy drinks.
The whole energy drinks are super bad because they are so acidic is mostly nonsense. The same was said about coke as far back as I can remember (and I’m an old man). Sure it’s very acidic, but lots of things we eat and drink are acidic, that’s something most of us can handle just fine. A lot of people think orange juice is a healthy drink, but it’s usually more acidic than soda and unless you squeeze the fruit yourself usually contains just as much if not more sugar.
Not to say energy drinks are good for you, the combination of sugar and stimulants such as caffeine and taurine is most definitely not good. But the same can be said of many things we consume. Our bodies like a lot of the things that aren’t exactly good for you. I’ve seen old folk complain about young folk drinking energy drink, whilst they themselves are drinking coffee with two sugars. When consumed in moderation energy drinks are totally fine.
Didn’t Panera kill someone with one of those?
I still maintain that someone with that level of caffeine sensitivity should have either:
1 - Read the fucking sign that said it was caffeinated, or
2 - Not drank a mystery liquid in lieu of signage
“but why would you think lemonade would be caffeinated?” People with severe food allergies don’t just shove random food in their mouths, why would this person?
Did they have caffeine sensitivity? I just thought they consumed a fuckload of it.
One of the people did, I don’t think she had a lot.
Honestly maybe we should just drop the dumb flowery marketing names like “Charged Lemonade” and call it “Lemonade with a metric fuck ton of Caffeine”
This is the sign that people did not read
Costs. These types of machines are generally free refills. You take a 32oz coke, and say actual cost to the store for you getting that coke is about 15 cents. You paid $2.30. Most people get 1 refill. But even if you get multiple, they still make profit.
I don’t know wholesale costs of monster, but I know a 20oz bottle in stores here costs about $2. While a 24oz can of monster costs about $9.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a 32oz fountain of monster cost the store like $0.70 wholesale. So there’s no way they could make profit if people got multiple refills.
Plus, if you try to sell the monster at a higher cost than coke, what would stop someone from dumping the coke, and refilling with monster? Paying the lower innitial price, and now getting refills.
That’s because monster overcharges, caffiene powder is cheap and you could add it to soda for cheap
If you can get ahold of it, yes, very cheap. The problem is that a little goes a very long way, so it’s not so easy to get a hold of anymore, at least in the US.
It was probably 10 years ago that I discovered that I could buy a 500g bag of pure caffeine powder for about $20, plus a milligram scale for another $20. I was drinking quite a bit of sugar free Red Bull at the time, and had been ordering them by the case ($50ish?) to save a little money, so it was a no brainer for me to switch to caffeine powder. Break even point was maybe 2 weeks worth of caffeinated beverages.
The bad news is a few people OD’d on caffeine powder around that time (completely unrelated to me), so it was pretty much banned. The good news is that 500g is a fucking shit load of caffeine. I often get my caffeine from more traditional sources now (coffee, tea), so that bag may end up lasting me the rest of my life.
For some additional context, a 250mL (8.4 oz) can of Red Bull contains 80mg caffeine, while a 1/16 teaspoon (~0.3mL) scoop of pure caffeine powder is about 200mg. That works out to less than 0.5¢ ($0.005) of caffeine per Red Bull, and I’m not even getting wholesale pricing.
You can get it super easy in the U.S. for cheap
Here is lab grade caffeine
That if you wanted to make 150mg energy drinks it would cost less than 3 cents each.
If you want to just mainline caffeine I would recommend caffiene pills they are preportioned and are cheap here are the equivalent to 100g pre measured out for under $20
But my point still remains that the cost of caffeine is completely irrelevant to the cost of energy drinks
Definitely in agreement that the cost of caffeine is a non-factor in the cost of energy drinks vs. other soft drinks.
I don’t believe Sigma Aldrich sells to the general public though, do they?
Personally, I prefer the loose powder vs. preportioned capsules or pills, since it allows me easier control over the dose. When I use caffeine powder, I usually mix it into a drink and just sip on it, rather than take it all at once. Sometimes I just want some herbal tea or a sparkling water with a little extra caffeine… I want the caffeine of coffee or energy drinks, but I don’t want the flavor. Way back in the day, I’d add about 200mg caffeine to a 1L bottle of water and sip on that until it was about halfway gone, then top it off with more water to dilute the remaining caffeine.
Anyone can order on sigma as long as you make an account! Which is really cool but a lot of the times their prices aren’t competitive with random products you could find on amazon since the average person rarely needs hplc grade products.
I used to do that exact same thing with 200mg of caffiene in a Nalgene with a drop or two of lemon juice haha
where the fuck you live that a monster costs nine dollars
WTF? Monster costs $9? That’s insane.
But you’re right it’s cost. I had a Soda Stream and I had the red bull syrup for it so the ability is there and the materials exist.
Plus, if you try to sell the monster at a higher cost than coke, what would stop someone from dumping the coke, and refilling with monster? Paying the lower innitial price, and now getting refills.
People have been doing that for years with buying water, and then filling it with fountain drinks.
I suppose you could counter it the same way that some stores handled the soda refill issue. Have the energy drink refills behind the counter, where only employees can refill it. Have a special cup so employees can tell which customers actually bought an energy drink. Also gives employees a chance to intervene if someone tries to get too much and kill themselves (like with the Panera Bread lemonade/
Monster costs the company pennies more to make it. They just aggressively marketed these if they had a higher price because the original one in the USA, Redbull, was imported from Ireland at first which made the entry price higher.
wtf? 0.5l of coke and 0.5l of monster cost the same where I live
Didn’t they do that at Panera Bread and a few people died?
The inevitable howling from Karens when their children get ahold of a 64 ounce Big Gulp of the stuff notwithstanding, the main issue is that fountain availability would pull back the curtain on the supposed value of energy drinks. These are no more expensive than Coke or Pepsi or Sprite for their bottlers to produce, but they’ve successfully bamboozled the public into believing that a Monster or a Red Bull or whatever is “worth” 4-6x more per ounce than a normal soda. This is obviously bullshit, but if you were able to dispense it at the same rate and the same price as normal soda the jig would be up and the energy store brands would have an absolute cow.
they’ve successfully bamboozled the public into believing that a Monster or a Red Bull or whatever is “worth” 4-6x more per ounce than a normal soda
Christ is this actually true? I’ve never had them…
God people are stupid
God people are stupid
And, we have a winner!
Words to live by: Don’t step in the marketing.
Not on the same scale obviously, but this exists.
Panera bread basically did and a few people died, so that probably didn’t help.
I miss the old Panera, with the Lemonade That Kills You™
Land of the free my ass
Wasn’t it like super caffeinated though?
damn press always ruining fun, if mildly dangerous, foods.
As much as i do consume energy drinks with a meal i do think we shouldn’t normalize it to much.
Also in a “restaurant” the strong flavor can be said to ruin the taste of the food. Though of course in practice we aren’t going to these placed for fine dinning and often precisely to get a chemical fix the places themselves still like to uphold some perception of being cullinary.
Probably liability and insurance.
What do you think would happen if you offered huge drinks, unlimited amounts or large capacity drinks of caffeinated, or energy supplements in a machine. What do you think a bored teenager with a bunch of his friends on a Friday night would do? They’d try to drink five gallons of Monster Energy just to see what would happen.
Someone would suffer a heart attack or some medical emergency and lawyers would have a field day milking concerned parents and restaurants with access to millions in insurance.
Does Starbucks have the same liability and limit the number of coffees someone can buy?
QT has Rooster Booster
sounds like a boner pill
Go to AM/PM, bruh. They got energy drinks on the fountain. Mostly their own brands, but sometimes they have monster or rockstar depending on location.
