Posted on: Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Regular soda sales fizzling

By J.M. Hirsch
Associated Press

Still think the cola wars are about Coke vs. Pepsi?

These days the carbonated beverage battleground is diet vs. regular, and it's looking increasingly as though the lightweight could flatten its full-calorie cousin.

Though the highly competitive $64 billion soft drink industry still is dominated by regular soda, sales of diet are surging and some industry analysts say low-cal could take the lead.

That's because while regular soda sales have sagged, diet's share of the market has grown steadily since the mid-1990s. Bottled water, tea, sports and fruit drinks also are up, further siphoning regular soda sales.

In an obese nation obsessed with calories and carbs, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that people are switching to diet, and beverage companies are giving them more choices.

In many ways the soft drink industry is better prepared than most others to capitalize on America's perpetual diet.

"There's no such thing as a no-calorie hamburger. There's no such thing as a no-calorie doughnut," said John Sicher, editor of Beverage Digest. "But the soft drink industry already has these huge powerful brands."

Last year, regular soda accounted for nearly 73 percent of sales, but that was down nearly 2 percent from the year before, Sicher said. Meanwhile, diet was up more than 6 percent from 2002.

Sicher thinks that trend will continue and in a decade, diet could outsell regular. He also thinks diet sales will spur overall growth in the soda industry, which slumped at less than 1 percent last year.