Kroger adds seasonal Coca-Cola flavor Walmart, Target won't offer

While fast-food chains always had a handful of seasonal items, it wasn't a major trend. Burger King and Wendy's would add fish sandwiches for Lent season, and the Shamrock Shake was a McDonald's annual seasonal offering that came out around Patrick's Day, but seasonality was somewhat limited.

Enter Starbucks.

The coffee chain has made having a seasonal beverage menu table stakes for any coffee company. It's something even chains like McDonald’s that have a coffee program have had to adopt.

People expect that the fall season means offering pumpkin spice, and that the winter season means peppermint, eggnog, and other appropriate flavors.

The fast-food industry used to operate more around movie releases and tying special food to things not dependent on the calendar. But while they do still happen, movie tie-ins are becoming increasingly rare.

Now it’s much more likely for companies to try to establish offerings on a seasonal basis. That’s something Wendy’s has done with the Summer Strawberry Salad and some of its Frosty flavors.

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This trend has spread to grocery stores, where seasonal soda flavors have become a thing. Some brands, like PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew, offer so many new flavors each season that they can spread them out between retailers and restaurant chains.

Coca-Cola, however, only has very limited seasonal flavors. That makes it surprising that its winter take on Sprite will only be offered at Kroger.

Seasonal flavors are a relatively new phenonmenon in the traditional soda space.

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Coke’s Sprite has tried to extend its brand

It's only a fairly recent development that Coca-Cola's (KO) Sprite has featured brand extension flavors. That used to be something limited to Coke, as cola lends itself well to adding everything from fruit flavors to vanilla, cinnamon, and other options.

Sprite, however, has been mixed with lemonade and has hit store shelves in other extensions of the popular lemon-lime classic flavor. It's not as easy to expand the Sprite brand as it is to create new Coke flavors.

Adding cranberry flavor to Sprite made sense, but Sprite Vanilla Frost, a flavor that first came out in 2024 as a Kroger exclusive, seems less logical. Vanilla does not automatically seem to go with lemon and lime, and the original launch was fairly polarizing.

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“The broad public opinion of this soda was not enormously positive; I was sent plenty of pictures of Kroger stores flush with stock of this limited-time-only soda well into the promotional period. It turns out no one was crying out for vanilla baked-good sweetness added to their Sprite,” Sporked reported.

That's anecdotal, so maybe those cases flew off the shelves after the soda was around for a while, but it certainly seemed like Sprite Vanilla Frost was not a clear winner.

Coke’s Sprite welcomes winter

Even though its first run may not have gone that well, Kroger (KR) will bring Sprite Vanilla Frost back as an exclusive flavor beginning in November. Perhaps the flavor will build a following in its second year, or maybe Sprite completists will simply need to own some to round out their collections.

If they want it, Kroger will be the only option, since it's an exclusive product you won't find at Target, Walmart, Amazon, or any regional grocery chain.

Coca-Cola has been working to tailor its product release to each market around the world. That's something CEO James Quincey talked about during its first-quarter earnings call.

“During the quarter, some markets improved sequentially while other markets faced macroeconomic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions that impacted consumer confidence and consumption behaviors. Despite this backdrop, we delivered robust organic revenue growth through our stepped-up capabilities and better than ever system alignment. We're getting more granular and tailoring our execution to win locally in key geographies, categories, and channels,” he said.

Quincey had mixed feelings about Coca-Cola's North American performance, and Sprite was not one of the highlights he mentioned.

“Bright spots include continued volume growth for Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, another good quarter for fairlife and Topo Chico Sabores, and continued traction with food service customer renewals and new accounts,” he added.