If you've been enjoying the taste of Diet Pepsi (NYSE: PEP) since saccharine made way for aspartame in the 1980s, get ready for another change. PepsiCo will no longer sell Diet Pepsi, Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi or Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi with aspartame at the grocery store, according to the Associated Press.
A lot has changed for consumers in recent years. Vegan options are main stream. Organic produce is no longer shoved in a corner ("Nobody puts rutabaga in the corner.") And consumers want more natural products, like cane sugar or stevia, in their drinks and snacks. If you like to buck the system, grab a fistful of bacon and buck away. You don't have to give up your aspartame... You'll just have to wait for it to ship to your home.
PepsiCo Chief Executive Indra Nooyi said on Thursday that the soda giant will sell Diet Pepsi with aspartame on the internet. Diet soda consumption dropped 5.9 percent in 2014, Beverage Digest reported, according to The Week, as U.S. consumers are looking for healthier beverage options.
The new version of Diet Pepsi will use another zero-calorie sweetener, sucralose. It's a "very, very good product," Nooyi said. PepsiCo's Vice President Seth Kaufman admitted the new version might have a "slightly different mouthfeel," but consumers will recognize it as Diet Pepsi, according to the AP.
You should be able to get your hands on an icy cold sucralose-sweetened Diet Pepsi by late-August. Coca-Cola has no plans to revise its formula, according to the AP.
Pepsi and Coca-Cola have been dabbling in the online market. Soda is expensive to ship due to its weight, but the dueling companies have been vending low-volume products that don't have a large fan-base on the world wide web recently, according to The Wall Street Journal.
