Went to a drink store (Getränke Markt) in Aachen, Germany today. To my surprise I saw that all local soda brands were almost sold out(Fritz, Afri, Sinalco) and Coca Cola was almost not touched. I was very pleasantly impressed by this. Seems like more people are joining with the small consumer choices to buy from EU rather than US. Do more people notice this elsewhere?
Well, I do suspect that, mostly, this is due to the a lower supply of the local brands. They're smaller brands with a smaller customer-base, so naturally they're stocked at lower numbers in the stores. Now that there's a surge in interest, it's much easier for them to get sold out. Coke, on the other hand, is huge, and lots of people are expected to buy it, so there's a much larger supply that may appear to be untouched, when indeed the shelves were simply arranged to look as full as possible by the clerks, as is common practice.
Good to see that there's more interest in local brands though!
Not just that but if the alternative brand isn't in stock, people will buy coca cola or Pepsi. But coke and Pepsi are not available, many people will not buy alternative brands. So supermarkets will always give priority to stocking the most popular brands.
First I switched to ice tea sparkling from lipton (before joining the movement) and now I just buy store brand soda's instead. They're at least a bit more healthy and are so much more price competitive! I don't drink much so it saves me at most 10 euros a month but buying 1L of cola for almost 3 euros vs 1.20 for 1.5L store brand is insane