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| Sodastream Soda Maker - Do you really save money making your own soda? by Tansin A. Darcos (TDARCOS) 07/02/2012, 9:24pm PDT | ||||
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| I happened to be at Target which sells the Sodastream device, which I've seen advertised on TV. I suppose what it does is creates carbonated water, the idea is you can then make soda yourself. Supposedly this is cheaper than buying soda at list price in a grocery store. As one woman said, "It tastes just like the soda I pay a lot of money for at the store." So let's see just how much you save with this do-it-yourself soda system. It should at least be in line with making lemonade, I can buy a tub of the store brand of lemonade mix from Target for about $3.50 and it makes 8 quarts or the equivalent of 4 two-liter bottles, meaning it's about equivalent to 87c for 2 liters of lemonade
Typical prices here in the Washington DC area put the national brand of soda at $1.69 to $1.99 for a 2-liter bottle. Coke, Pepsi, Mtn Dew, Dr. Pepper, etc. Around $1.69 at Target, often $1.99 at Giant Food or at CVS Drug stores. If you're willing to go with an off-brand, you can often cut that to about a buck. Giant Food sells the store brand of Mountain Dew - Mountain Shoutin', I think - and a Dr. Pepper clone, for $1, sometimes even discounted. Rite-Aid drug stores have their own brand of Mountain Dew - I did a review of it elsewhere on this board - for $1 for a 2-liter. So anyway to get complete details I looked it up on Amazon.com and their price is about the same as Target. So now we have the Sodastream machine. First, the starter kit is about $80. This comes with one carbonator, good for about 60 liters of soda. A replacement cylinder costs almost $60 and is good for another 60 liters. Now, add to this the flavoring. One pack is $8.40 and makes 12 liters. That may be some expensive item, one of the Dr. Pepper equivalent is $5. So I'll revise the price downward from what I did when I first wrote this article and put it at $5 for 12 liters. Total all this up and we can figure $25 for the syrup and $60 for the carbonator, to make 60 liters of soda. The equipment overhead is $20, but you can divide that up over all usage. So let's take a figure for 180 liters of soda, the equivalent of 90 2-liter bottles, which is 3 sets, probably as much as one would use over the summer. The equipment and refills will cost $255, which when you divide it up, means that each 2-liter bottle costs $2.83 to make each 2-liter bottle, vs. about $1 each to buy the store brand, or $2 each as the highest price for the national brand. Yeah, I can really see where paying at least $.83 more to over $1 more per 2-liter bottle to make it yourself saves money. NOT. |
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