Plan Your Meetings

Sodas at Coffee Breaks: June 2007 Morsel

A lot of companies are now offering boutique-type sodas during coffee breaks. They are more expensive then the usual Coke or Pepsi products because they have fancy names, but are they worth the additional cost? I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong; it is nice to have a variety of soft drinks we don’t normally see, especially root beer. Adults love root beer because they haven’t had it since they were kids.

Here is a way to have these offerings without paying the boutique prices: Ask the hotel to bring in more varieties of Coke products. Don’t settle for Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite. Tell them you would like Cherry Coke, Barq’s Root Beer and Fresca added to the sodas being offered. This way, you get the great variety without paying higher prices.

— Claire R. Gould

Claire R. Gould is the owner of Rx for Catering, LLC, a culinary and logistics company that works globally negotiating and designing menus for meetings and events. Her company has done work for Coca-Cola, IBM, Honeywell and Randstad, among others. Gould teaches and writes about culinary and banquet trends and topics, and publishes a quarterly online newsletter “The Claire Diaries.” If you have any feedback for her, please leave a comment below.