Do you like coffee? Do you like Coca-Cola? If so, you might be interested in a new concoction: Coca-Cola plus Coffee
Welcome to Plain English, the podcast that lets you, the English learner, explore the world with your new language. I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and you’re listening to Episode 151. You can find an interactive multilingual transcript of this episode online at PlainEnglish.com/151.
Coming up on today’s program, Coca-Cola is gearing up to introduce a new flavor in 25 countries: Coca-Cola plus coffee. It’s been tested in Australia and Japan, and according to the reviews, it tastes just like it sounds: Coke plus coffee. Later on in the episode, we’ll talk about the English expression, “bread and butter.” And of course it’s Thursday, so we’ll have JR’s song of the week.
Before we start, I wanted to thank our partner, MosaLingua. MosaLingua has a great online pronunciation course that can help you build your confidence, reduce your accent, and improve your speaking skills. You can check them out at PlainEnglish.com/learn.
Coca-Cola to launch coffee-flavored soft drink
If you live in Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, or Japan—or if you’ve visited one of those countries—then you might already know what the next flavor of Coke tastes like. But for the rest of us, we’ll have to wait to see just exactly how Coca-Cola Plus Coffee tastes.
That’s right, the Atlanta-based beverage giant announced a coffee-infused version of its classic product would be available in 25 countries soon. It’s being marketed as an afternoon pick-me-up: the perfect thing you need for that slump that comes around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon when you need a little something to keep your energy levels up. The move comes as Coca-Cola is experimenting with new flavors and trying to find growth as consumer tastes shift away from high-calorie, sugary drinks toward healthier options, bottled water, energy drinks, and ready-to-drink coffee.
Coca Cola Plus Coffee will be flavored with coffee extract. The company says that it will have more caffeine but less sugar than a regular Coke, and will probably come in a smaller bottle than a typical twelve-ounce can. I wanted to get a sense of exactly what this would taste like, so I did some research online. I found some blogs that reviewed the taste—they were mostly Americans who had traveled abroad and had come across the new Coke flavor.
Here’s what I can gather: Coca-Cola Plus Coffee is going to taste a lot sweeter than regular Coke. The review I especially like is from a blogger named Benji and he runs a web site called The Coffee Concierge. In his video review, which is really good, he says it tastes like Coke up front, like right when you start to taste it. Then just a few seconds later, you get the flavor of coffee. And the last flavor you taste is brown sugar. He said it’s like taking a sip of Coke, followed immediately by a sip of cold-brew coffee. That sounds pretty good!
The only bad news, according to Benji, is the aroma. Now, I love the smell of coffee. I almost like the smell better than the taste—I said “almost.” But I don’t really think Coke smells like much of anything. Benji says that Coca Cola Plus Coffee smells like fertilizer—not really appealing. But we’re not here for the smell, are we? Most people are going to drink it for the taste, the sensation, and possibly for the caffeine.
I read a blog in Japanese—actually the Google translated version, which can be dangerous. But the writer for Shin-Shouhin suggested, rather humorously, that you might not drink Coca Cola Plus Coffee for its taste, but rather to give you the energy you need to power through that mountain of work you have.
That’s not exactly how Coca-Cola would phrase it, but I think that’s actually close to the purpose of the product. I mentioned earlier that consumer tastes and preferences are shifting away from the full-calorie soft drinks that have been Coca-Cola’s and Pepsi’s bread and butter for so many years. Many local governments are getting in the game, too. They’re worried about the health consequences of people getting so many liquid calories. So the UK, Mexico, South Africa, and some cities in the US either have or are contemplating an additional tax on high-sugar beverages. New York City even limits how big a cup you can sell a sugary drink in.
So Coca-Cola, like other big beverage companies, is trying to diversify. If you’ve traveled in the UK, then you are probably familiar with the chain Costa Coffee. Coca-Cola bought Costa Coffee recently and will probably be looking to integrate Coke products into Costa and put Costa products onto grocery store and convenience store shelves.
In addition to coffee, Coca-Cola is giving its local subsidiaries around the world wide latitude in creating new flavors. Coke is a conservative, older company so they have traditionally been very protective of their brand and they’ve been slow to bring out new flavors. But not anymore, not now that their traditional products aren’t growing as quickly as before. Now they want the different regions of their company to experiment with new flavors and textures, in hopes of finding a new big worldwide hit.
If you take all the individual regions of Coca-Cola and put them together, they released 500 new flavors around the world in a single year. In Russia, they released a cucumber-flavored Sprite. In China, they came out with a sesame and walnut flavor. They experimented with vanilla, orange, ginger, and green tea-flavored soft drinks, too. Here’s the one I really want to try: Maaza Chunky. That’s a chunky mango-flavored drink they released in India.
For now, though, they are relatively protective of their main Coca-Cola brand, so a new flavor of its Coca-Cola product is pretty rare. They released Orange Vanilla Coke earlier this year, which was the first new flavor of its main product in ten years. Coca-Cola Plus Coffee is already available in Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Japan, and will be released in a total of 25 countries by the end of this year.
I think I would try the cucumber-flavored Sprite. That sounds good. My fizzy drink of choice these days is Coke Zero Sugar. When I was a kid, I was allowed to have just one soda a day and it was usually the regular version of Coke. These days I don’t drink a whole lot of soda, but when I do, I usually get Coke Zero Sugar. I think it’s about 75% the flavor of regular Coke and 25% the flavor of Diet Coke, which is not a bad balance for something with no calories. I don’t think I would be a regular user of Coke with coffee, though. I think I want to keep those flavors separate.
I got a funny note from Chris in the city of Ulm, Germany. He enjoyed learning the phrase, “recipe for disaster,” but he quickly pointed out that listening to Plain English is a “recipe for success!” I couldn’t agree more, and an easy recipe to follow, at that! Part of Chris’s recipe is to pick out ten words from the episode to look up and remember, which I think is a great idea. I recommended the app Quizlet to him. Quizlet is a popular flash-card app that you can use to make your own flash cards if you’re looking for a new study resource.
I hear from so many listeners who struggle with their speech. They can read and even understand spoken English, but when it comes to speaking they just freeze. Practice with pronunciation is so important to knowing how to speak. That’s why I love the MosaLingua pronunciation course, which you can find at PlainEnglish.com/learn . In the course, they tell you exactly what’s holding you back and they give you concrete strategies to improve your pronunciation to drop that accent and sound like a native. When you start speaking better, you have more confidence. And the best thing is, this course on English pronunciation is available in your own language. Check out the MosaLingua pronunciation course at PlainEnglish.com/learn .
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