Graveyards Are Where Dead People Live

Coca-Cola is introducing a new high-tech soda fountain that will let users mix up 104 different drinks, creating inventions such as Caffeine-Free Diet Raspberry Coke.
Coke's new Freestyle machine is housed in a curved metal shell created by the designers of Ferrari race cars, and features a touch-screen menu. Inside, technology common in measuring tiny doses of chemotherapy drugs is used to release digitally-controlled amounts of concentrate flavor from dozens of plastic cartridges.



Here's how it works: A regular soda fountain combines carbonated water and flavored syrup in a mixing chamber, and pours the mixed drink out through a designated spigot. But the Freestyle has just one nozzle. The machine pours carbonated water through the center of the nozzle, then shoots streams of flavor into the falling water, such as lime oil and Diet Coke syrup, so that the drink is mixed in the air.

Coke has filed for 34 patents on the Freestyle (that's for you Conch), but says the most important was for its so-called Perfect Pour technology, the spout that keeps one customer's Sprite with Grape from tasting like the last person's Pibb Xtra.

But the Freestyle's complicated technology and expense — Coke charges 30% more for it than traditional fountains — have slowed its way into stores. Five years after the company began developing the Freestyle, it's still only in tests in a handful of stores.