Originally Posted by henryf
3) I don't know about all of this pre-mix stuff. The same issues exist here in the states and no one seems to be bothered. Canned drinks as restaurant fare are extremely rare in this part of the world. The fast food restaurants do much better installing a self serve fountain and charging $1.29 for a 375ml drink. Refills are gratis. The direct cost to the eatery is probably 3-4 cents. The mark-up is fantastic. I did not check out the free standing fast food places but the food court restaurants that I saw seem to offer the canned drinks.
sorry, I was referring to the bottler's profit margins. Individual packaged servings are typically higher margin than the bulk syrup sales.
The biggest challenge still rests with the fact that most eateries are not set up to dispense a mix of syrup/CO2/water as the mixing equipment (usually provided by the bottler through an equipment licensing agreement which the establishment probably isn't willing to shell out monthly for). The traditional "guns" that you see on a fountain head are probably hooked up to a pre-mixed cannister (where the syrup already has CO2 and water added). These are being gradually phased out by bottlers.
Syrup dispensing and fountain sales in Canada has really shifted to catering to the convenience stores and large volume sales. It can be very costly for small eateries to get the equipment required to dispense from a syrup bladder.