PepsiCo ends Sierra Mist, launches Starry to take on Sprite
PepsiCo Inc. has discontinued its 24-year-old brand Sierra Mist and is rolling out a new lemon-lime soda, Starry, the company’s latest effort to compete with Coca-Cola Co.’s popular Sprite soft drink.
Starry will be available nationwide this week. It will be up against Sprite, which has captured 7% share of the $82 billion U.S. soda market.
“With one product dominating the category, consumers deserve another option,” Greg Lyons, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Beverages North America, said in a statement.
Sierra Mist never made a considerable dent in the soft-drink category, only accounting for 0.2% of Pepsi’s 2022 earnings, according to Gerald Pascarelli, a consumer equity researcher at Wedbush Securities, citing data from Nielsen IQ. For the same year, Sierra Mist’s share of the soft-drink market was 0.1%, he added. PepsiCo is “not going to lose a significant amount of revenue” with the loss of Sierra Mist, Pascarelli said.
Starry’s launch marks the “most aggressive move made by the company’s reinvigorated beverage business in years,” according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kenneth Shea.