My one vice is diet caffeine free coke, I’m so rock and roll. Trying to find a UK/EU alternative I keep finding almost all drink brands are owned by Coke or Pepsi. These companies which originated in the USA have entities in the EU, which complicates the decision. Can anyone recommend a wholly UK(ideally) or EU alternative that’s reasonably priced?
Water is pretty delicious. I couldn’t live without it
Always happy to promote fritz cola. They are big enough that I bet you can find them somewhere locally or get some beverage market to order it.
Club-Mate, once you get used to it you’re addicted. They also make a Cola
Produced in Bavaria by a SME Brewery
Fritz-Kola, produced in Germany, also make a variety of other Lemonades
MioMio, a subsidiary of the Berentzen Alcohol Company, make also caffeinated Mate, Cola and other Lemonades, (but they are partly owned by Private Equity)
I would not recommend mate or any derivative of it to someone who explicitly asked for something caffeine free.
Thanks, the caffeine free part I’ve overread somehow 🙈
To copy my comment from here https://lemm.ee/comment/18279577:
Austria has a quite big drinks economy for being a small-ish country. Now I havent tried each of these yet, but here are a few brands:
- Keli is one of the most well-known lemonade/soda brands and has a Cola flavour drink
- Frucade is a good german-austrian lemonade brand, but has no Cola drink
- “Tirola Kola” from Tyrol
- Pedacola from Upper Austria (weirdly enough not a black colour)
- “Murelli Dracola” from Styria (yes, a Dracula pun since this region allegedly inspired the story)
- “Strizzi Cola” from Salzburg
In Germany, we have fritz-Kola, Sinalco (belongig to a swiss company nowadays), Vita Cola and afri-cola. They all have sugar free alternatives. Fritz and afri are my favourites (and so much better than Coca Cola), maybe you can get your hands on them somehow to try them out!
Where are you based? There should be a local alternative available in your local supermarket. Just try them out and maybe search who is producing them where. Please don’t start to import cola from other countries as everything has to be trucked around and nothing good will come from someone in Spain drinking Cola produced in Norway.
(This is actually something Coca Cola is doing good: They are shipping only the sirup and use local companies to bottle it in order to reduce transportation costs)
I’m in the UK, and this is why I was looking for something ideally UK based, I 100% agree with reducing transport as much as possible. A local bar makes their own Cola but it’s terrible, and is £5 a glass.
I was thinking Fanta is European, but its owned by Coca Cola.
Well it was invented in Germany during the Nazi times by Coca Cola employees, which had to figure out another drink because supply chain issues made producing Come difficult
Lol really?!
You learn something new every day
They even made a braindead commercial for the 75th anniversary with “We will bring back the feeling of the good old times” and brought back something similar to the original recipe (The Product was actually quite nice as it was less sugary and tasted much better, and also contained some real orange juice)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/fanta-ad-forgets-germanys-nazi-past/
It would be great to get the syrup and mix at home, is there any company selling cola flavored syrup?
Yeah, there is this whole sodastream ecosystem (and several competitors) and they are also providing you with Cola syrup. But, TBH, I really don’t like how they taste
There’s Sodastream. I don’t know if you want to include them in your boycott, they’re from Israel.
At least they seem to pay their employees the same (Israeli) standard of wage regardless of their ethnicity.
Not really sure why, I’ve never liked sodastream as brand, so I usually discard them as option.
I’ve been trying FruttaMax syrups, and just now I’ve found they make a cola flavored one, so I will try
Also, looking for this yesterday, I found ElevenFit for flavouring, but they deliver as powder instead of syrup. They seem to do the packaging within my region, so I will definitely try it soon even when I am not too inclined to use powdered products.
I don’t know what you think is reasonable pricing? Fritz is definitely more expensive (in restaurants or snack bars, the difference is often small though) but good, and ethical, and German: https://fritz-kola.com/en-gb
If price is relevant, there’s also Sinalco from Germany, which is (at least in the stores around here) cheaper. But they’re less invested ethically than Fritz afaik.
I’ve never seen Fritz Kola in the UK but I’ll try and find it. For me reasonably priced is anything I can get for around the same or lower as Coke at £1.75/€2 for a 2L bottle. There is Fentiman’s in the UK which is great but 2-3 times the price of Coca Cola
I’m afraid Fritz will be a bit if a disappointment too then, as it is per liter about twice the price of US colas.
Ok so this is not entirely answering your question (as other comments already provided the alternatives I’d give for cola) but I had this issue as well and tackled it another way:
I looked into buying other types of soda like Ice Tea Sparkling. I personally really don’t like any cola that’s not coca cola but have just replaced it with Ice Tea Sparkling and Lemon-Lime drinks from the store brand of the store I shop at (Initially Lipton and Sprite, now store brand since my move to BuyFromEU). Perhaps this could be interesting to you as well.
I’ve noticed nobody mentioned the Cola by Premium Kollektiv: https://premium-kollektiv.de/ I don’t know if it is available outside of Germany but I think they have a interesting concept of economy.
How do i tag people from else where in the fediverse? I’ll try pinging someone from that collective: @uweluebbe
French regional alternatives i know and tested:
- Elsass Cola (from the region Alsace in the North-East) https://www.lisbeth.alsace/elsass-cola/
- Breizh Cola (from the region Bretagne in the West) https://www.breizhcola.bzh/ with the amazing slogan “Le cola du Phare Ouest” (= cola from the west lighthouse, sounds like “far west”)
and a whole lot more https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_alternatif
I can vouch for Euskola from Basque Country, really tasty https://www.euskola.eus/
Is a Swedish Alternative that you will often find in your local Arab restaurant. If not yet, maybe suggest it to them.
Nice! I just ordered 24 of each flavor, so I hope they are tasty! :-)
In Germany, Lidl has caffeine free Diet Coke by Freeway (their own brand) and it is very very reasonably priced.
I have bought the Lidl/Aldi lemon and orange sodas before, I’ll have another look at their cola, thanks! Hopefully Freeway is wholly EU based and not owned by a US conglomerate.
At least in Germany, it’s made by Schwarz Produktion, a company belonging to the Schwarz Group, the owner of LIDL / Kaufland.
Yes it’s German owned
AG Barr - maker of IrnBru … also makes a Cola. HQ in Scotland, on the LSE, a part of the FTSE 250.
https://www.agbarr.co.uk/our-brands/barr-soft-drinks/barr-flavours/
Wow I didn’t even consider Barr was a British company, I just assumed it was American. Barr root beer is great! You may have given me the best option here, thank you!
Free tip . . do NOT come to Scotland and suggest that IruBru is American . . that might end badly. Me personally I’d even avoid calling it British . . . YMMV of course . .
Ha! Good point. I’m far enough south to have only ever seen IrnBru in a supermarket “world foods” section.
I’ll keep this in mind for next time I hop across the wall.
