Coca-Cola Discontinues Controversial ‘Spiced’ Flavor After Customer Backlash

Customers Reject New ‘Spiced’ Flavor

Coca-Cola intro­duced its “Coca-Cola Spiced” fla­vor ear­li­er this year, but the new offer­ing was round­ly crit­i­cized by con­sumers. Cus­tomers com­plained the drink tast­ed like “win­dow clean­er” and was “dis­gust­ing,” lead­ing to poor sales and neg­a­tive feedback.

Coca-Cola’s Response and Future Plans

In response to the back­lash, Coca-Cola announced it will be phas­ing out the Spiced fla­vor. A com­pa­ny spokesper­son stat­ed they are “always look­ing at what our cus­tomers like and adjust­ing” their prod­uct line­up, and plan to intro­duce an “excit­ing new fla­vor” in 2025 to replace Spiced.

Targeting Younger Consumers

The Spiced fla­vor was part of Coca-Cola’s effort to appeal to younger, Gen Z con­sumers who tend to favor bold­er and more com­plex fla­vor pro­files. How­ev­er, the attempt to lure in this demo­graph­ic was ulti­mate­ly unsuccessful.