Keurig’s Kelley Bets Big on Soda Maker

The company best known for its single-cup brewers has been reeling since introducing the Keurig 2.0 platform that has irked java sippers with its restrictive label-scanning technology.

Keurig Green Mountain hopes households and offices across the country that use the popular coffee K-cups will buy into its homemade soda business. Instead, its sparkling drink pods contain what Keurig calls “Karbonator beads”, each of which hold beverage-grade carbon dioxide that is released during the drink-making process.

Keurig’s engineers spent the last five years developing the proprietary KOLD system, which includes more than 50 technology patents and another 100 patent-pending applications.

The new Kold machine has a suggested everyday retail price of $369. Sadly the product and supporting pods won’t run cheap, with the Kold unit priced at a cool $370 and Kold pod four-packs costing about $5 each.

Deryck van Rensburg, the Coke executive overseeing the Keurig partnership, said the alliance supports growing consumer demand for beverage variety and innovation.

Coca-Cola now has a 16.8% stake in Keurig Green Mountain.

Fresh-made. The KOLD™ pod and drinkmaker do all the work.

Space savings. KOLD™ pods need no refrigeration so consumers can easily store more beverage choices in their pantry or in their countertop KOLD™ pod carousel, offering everyone, including family and guests, exactly the cold beverage they want, when they want it.

In the cold beverage world, there are two great superpowers, Coke and Pepsi. Moreover, thanks to the “aerospace-inspired thermal transfer system”, each one of Keurig Kold’s crafts will come out chilled, so you don’t have to worry about keeping ice on hand or throwing your drink into the freezer at first blush. Partnering with Coca-Cola, it is putting out the Keurig Kold system, a soda dispensing machine that promises to be safer than other machines that also dispense carbonated liquids of sugar and happiness. Keurig also says the Kold can chill drinks to almost freezing in 19 seconds.

On a different note, The Company has disclosed insider buying and selling activities to the Securities Exchange, According to the information disclosed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Form 4 filing, the director of Keurig Green Mountain, Inc., Mardy Michael J, had purchased 1,000 shares in a transaction dated on September 1, 2015. In December, Keurig will expand to non-alcoholic mixers. The 52-week high of the share price is $158.87 and the 52-week low is $45.25.

Coca-Cola declined to comment, but the company posted an interview on its website with Deryck van Rensburg, the president of Coca-Cola/Keurig Ventures.

Keurig Green Mountain Incorporated (NASDAQ:GMCR) shares will open today at 55.33 after closing yesterday at 55.52. As Keurig prepared to launch its competing at-home soda maker, SodaStream officially added Pepsi to its lineup this month.