Pepsi hopes 60-cal cola is Next big thing

Pepsi aims to win back soda drinkers with a compromise.

Some people don't like the calories in regular soda but loathe the taste of diet. So the nation's No. 2 cola company is rolling out Pepsi Next, a 60-calorie drink that has about half the calories of regular Pepsi.

The cola, due on store shelves nationally by the end of March, is PepsiCo's biggest product launch in years. The drink comes as health-conscious people increasingly move toward water and other lower-calorie beverages.

It's also an attempt by Pepsi to revive the cola wars against Coca-Cola and others.

Pepsi Next isn't the first drink to try to hit the sweet spot between diet and regular cola. Dr Pepper Snapple rolled out its low-cal Dr Pepper Ten, which has 10 calories. The company said the drink, which has sugar unlike its diet soda, helped boost its fourth-quarter sales.

But coming up with a successful "mid-calorie soda," which has more calories, has been more challenging for beverage makers. In 2001, Coke rolled out C2, and Pepsi in 2004 introduced its Pepsi Edge, both of which had about half the calories of regular soda. Both products also were taken off the market by 2006 because of poor sales.

"The problem was that consumers either wanted regular soda or a diet drink with zero calories -- not something in between," said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest.

Pepsi says its latest stab at an in-between soda uses a different formula to more closely imitate the taste of regular soda. In addition to sugar, Pepsi Next is made with a mix of three artificial sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup.

A Pepsi spokeswoman, Melisa Tezanos, said the company developed Next by researching the "taste curve" that consumers experience when drinking regular soda. She compared that arc to how someone might evaluate a sip of wine, from the moment it hits the tongue to the aftertaste it leaves.