In recent years, customers told Pepsi that they weren’t interested in drinking diet colas because of their concerns about the sweetener aspartame. Pepsi took the logical next step and changed out the sweetener in Diet Pepsi to a blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium to prop up diet cola sales, and in response to the change, sales…. fell even faster. Now Pepsi has canceled a planned meeting with bottlers to discuss solutions to the crisis.

The Wall Street Journal speculated that this meeting would involve changes to the formula of Diet Pepsi, perhaps a switch back to the previous formula or to yet another sweetener blend. What about stevia? People like stevia, right?

After the news about the presentation, which was to take place online, became public, Pepsi canceled it without explanation, also not commenting on the matter to the Wall Street Journal.

Store data showed that sales of Diet Pepsi have fallen almost twice as quickly as sales of all other diet sodas this winter and spring, indicating the need to try something else.

“I think they have to keep trying different formulas,” one bottler in the Northeastern U.S. told the Wall Street Journal. That means the company will risk alienating more customers every time it switches sweeteners out.

PepsiCo Cancels Meeting to Discuss Plan to Revive Diet Pepsi Sales [Wall Street Journal]

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