This post is part of the Food Writer’s Diary blog.
One of the biggest food trends on the NRA Show floor, as well as in the American marketplace at large, is the tendency of people to add flavors to things that weren't there before. From cinnamon-flavored whiskey to birthday-cake-flavored cookies, consumers seem to enjoy trying things that taste like something else.
At the Coca-Cola booth at the NRA show this month in Chicago, Kathleen Ciaramello, president for national foodservice and on-premise, shared with me the most popular, unconventional flavors they've seen nationally being dispensed out of their Coca-Cola Freestyle machines.
The Freestyle machines, in case you haven't seen them, sort of look like arcade video games, and let consumers pick different flavors to add to their drinks.
Most people still pick beverages they could get elsewhere, like, you know, Coke and Diet Coke, but here are the top 10 drinks that can only be assembled using Freestyle:
1) Barq's vanilla
2) Coke cherry vanilla
3) Sprite cherry
4) Sprite strawberry
5) Sprite peach
6) Coke lime
7) Hi C grape
8) Hi C orange vanilla
9) Diet Barq's vanilla
10) Sprite grape
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