Pepsi Products: Some of the new products that students will see for sale and in the fountain drink dispensers on campus. Picture curtsey of PepsiCo.com
Reporter: Amanda Wideman
As Coke trucks load up the last of the Coke vending machines on campus PepsiCo is moving theirs in. At the end of May the announcement that PepsiCo would soon be the drink product available on campus was a surprise for many.
The recent change hasn’t kept students from buying PepsiCo products at the Parking Spot. One of the cashiers at the Parking Spot has noticed that as the Coke products moved out and PepsiCo moved in students eventually got use to the switch.
“Well right now it is about the same although there was a small stretch where we were waiting for the change over and so we were pretty low on Coke items. So pretty much once the change over began things have picked back up and have settled down and evened out” Parking Spot employee Elizabeth Lisenbee said.
She continued to say “we still get a few people who come in who are disappointed that we no longer have the Coke product but for the most part a lot of them are really happy that we now have the Pepsi products, the Gatorades and the Mountain Dews and what not.”
Some students still feel as though they should have had an input in the decision to change projects. The promotion of the YouofA had many students thinking they would be a bigger part of these type of decisions.
PepsiCo and Coke got into a bidding war and eventually PepsiCo won out which is why the the change was made. The contract with PepsiCo has a fixed-length term and will have renewal options after that that will continue until 2022. The agreement will feature benefits for the university to support student related programming and services, campus enhancements and environmental sustainability measures.
In the end Coke products have moved out of the University of Arkansas stores, vending machines, and even drink fountain dispensers across campus. As the process continues people have calmed down about the change and have decided to embrace the new drinks being sold.
University of Arkansas Newswire: http://newswire.uark.edu/article.aspx?id=18643