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Soda. Wtf are they even thinking at this point. Hell, I ran into a Dollar General to get carbonated water the other day and the only product they had was $9. For carbonated. Water. GTFO
huh, i but carbonated water for like 50 cents a liter at the regular grocery store, and that’s not even the cheap shit.
Dollar stores are just large convenience stores. Very few products are cheaper than an actual grocery store.
A lot of items are more expensive per unit.
Like a roll of aluminium foin is half price at the dollar store, but only has 1/3 the foil.
That’s the poverty trap. Spend ‘less’ up front but way more over the long term whether we’re talking about aluminum foil or car loans.
its shrinkflationed to maximize the cost. and then larger chains started doing ti to. like with carbonated drinks 8pk vs 12pk, and fruit, energy, protein bars. 5 vs original 6-8. same goes with alot of toothpastes too. og is 8.2 to 5.4, and 5.1 to 4.6, and finally 4.3. i noticed that with foils too at the discount(grocery outlet) they used to have wafer thin for 200sqft, removed to 150max.
they play the same trick with TOILET paper too. try to trick people by reducing the ply and keeping the rolls the same, or the amount of paper the same.
target used to have very good instore brand thier up and up, i stopped buying it when they switched to"deal worthy"
soda is overpriced everywhere, people also stopped drinking them for the most part. i think some places have added tax too. i mostly drink sparkling water with flavours, of different brands. i usually dont mind stevia infused ones much. even in discount stores they are expensive asf. sparkling water is cheap compared to soda, like most of the time its half the price.
You can pick up a used ball keg, probs $25-30, a cheap regulator, some tubing and a carbonating cap (you can skip the carbonating cap, which last I looked is some $25, just hook the CO2 line to the dip tube, it’ll take longer to reach carbonation saturation, but it works fine), and a hand faucet for $1 and rent a CO2 tank (last time I filled a 5lb cylinder it was $30 which includes the cylinder) and make gallons of the stuff for decreasing spend.
Upfront cost is moderately high, yes thats true, but the more you use it the less it costs per gallon. And no plastic bottles, no questionable water source, no shipping pollution. You just have on demand carbonated water. If you add fruit puree, you can make “Italian soda”, or you can buy the soda syrup businesses and such use if you want, though you’ll want something in a pump bottle and not a box that hooks to a big system…
One 5lb tank of co2 is enough for 5-10 batches, depending how heavily carbonated you like, and each batch is 5 gallons, assuming a standard 1/8 barrel keg, so the math is pretty appealing if carbonated water is a thing you like.
Italian what?!!
Please tell me more, I have tried lots of things in carbonated water (lemon or cucumber is good) but never fruit puree!
The way we made it at the place I worked was to puree fruit, then reduce it a bit over heat (no added sugar), then put like 2tbsp or so over ice and topped off with the carbonated water.
So it’ll only really work well with flavors that don’t degrade in heat, but you may also have luck with just straight pureed fruits like watermelon, not super sure how that’d turn out.
You can also use fruit syrups that you buy or make yourself, tons of recipes out there.
Thanks!