Pepsi's lemon-flavored drink a bust
Pepsi suffers Israel setback
Company takes Pepsi Twist lemon-flavored drink off shelves
Tempo, the distributor of Pepsi in Israel, has decided to take the Pepsi Twist – a lemon-flavored Pepsi drink - off the shelves, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
The move comes just one and a half years after the launching of Pepsi Twist, in which Tempo invested more than NIS 10 million (About USD 2.2 million.)
"Pepsi Twist catered to a very small niche and therefore it was decided to stop producing it," a statement from Tempo said.
"We decided to focus most of our marketing funds on the Pepsi Max trademark, our low-calorie beverage," the company added.
This is not the first time that cola flavored beverages have been removed from the shelves in Israel.
Previously, Coca Cola in Israel removed its Cherry Coke soft drink.
The launching of Pepsi Twist in Israel was accompanied by an international advertising campaign by the global Pepsi, including the use of star soccer players such as David Beckham and Ronaldo.
In Israel, the beverage was marketed as an answer to the Coca Cola's Diet Lemon, which was largely successful.
Tempo claimed that Diet Lemon was launched to slow down the increase in sales seen at that time of Pepsi Max, Pepsi's diet trademark.
At the same time, Yafora Tavroi, owner of R.C. Cola, launched its own lemon drink.
Unlike Yafora and Coca Cola, Tempo's version was not a low-calorie drink. The company thought that by providing the beverage, Pepsi would have a unique angle against competitors in the Israeli market, an assumption that proved to be false.
According to statistics by Nielsen Israel, Pepsi Twist today captures seven percent of the lemon cola market, trailing far behind lemon Coca Cola (56 percent) and Diet R.C. Lemon (37 percent).
Lemon beverages take up 12 percent of the soft drinks market, which is estimated to be worth NIS 322 million (about USD 70 million) a year.
