Back to the future

It was a tired Friday evening when we walked into Five Guys up on Bell.  We'd order our food, I like the small cheeseburger with grilled onions and mushrooms.  We sat down to settle in with our peanuts and I noticed the new monolithic coke machines.  Yes!

It felt a little back to the future for me, 'cause Patrick was in his Marty McFly vest.  "Whatdya do? Jump ship?" Tee hee.  I love that movie.  Aaaand, Huey Lewis was playing in the background.  See why I felt like I was in the movie?


Having worked for Coke for almost 4 years as my first job out of college, I was so excited to try it out.  When I started in 2000 being the "coke lady" for folks like Joe Johnston at Joe's Real BBQ (when that had first opened).  At that time, Coke machines had just switched to Bag-in-the-box (those 50# giant boxes of syrup) from those pre-mix canisters.

Pre-mix system (image)

Bag-in-the-box system (image)

It appears that the new Coke machines connect the same way with drains and water and ice machines but the guts are so so much cooler.  I got an Orange Vanilla Caffeine Free Diet Coke.  Wowza. Here's how the experience goes:

The dispensing area is super sleek and clean.  You choose one of the non-greyed-out flavors (they get greyed out when the syrup is out I guess).  Once you choose your flavor, you have the option to choose to add a flavor.  For the Caffeine Free Diet Coke, there was the option to get cherry, lime, orange, vanilla and raspberry.  So so so fun.  Other base flavors have other syrup flavor options.  Sean got a Strawberry Sprite Zero. Click on the pics to be able to read my notes.

It tastes perfect (probably because the added flavorings aren't sugar free).  I had learned from one of my trainees when I was first working for Coke that if you just put a splash of regular coke into a full cup of diet coke, that it makes the diet "funk" go away.  It works, try it!

It was also perfect because I bet it is always perfectly calibrated (syrup to water ratio) and probably has a built-in water purifier.  The machine is so amazing.  I was lucky to be able to watch the Five Guys employee change out the syrup.  It's just like changing out printer cartridges.  The syrup must be super duper concentrated to be so small now.  He swiped the cartridge over this little Coke bottle symbol to open the door.  Whoa! Then he peeled off two little tips and pushed it in to reload.  After closing the door and pushing a few buttons on the touch screen, he was ready to go again.

This is the future folks, it's awesome and I hope you get to try one out soon.  I head that Pei Weis are getting them too.  Check it out!