Your comment hit me like a bolt of lightning. Every time I use a Freestyle machine I can't believe someone delivered a product that is so agonizingly slow. It's such a basic idea, why does it take what feels like 1-2 seconds to respond to Every. Single. Click.
Last time I ate at a restaurant that had a Freestyle machine, the thing was stuck in an error state and everyone had to stand around and wait for the cashier to go reboot it before they could fill the soda cups they had purchased. Disaster.
Freestyle has been a very successful marketing concept, mostly for Coca-Cola. Less so for the stores that adopt the machine. It isn't exactly driving traffic into the stores like Coke had promised. They've also had a slew of maintenance problems.
Pepsi has had time to catch up and has recently launched Spire, their multi-flavor machine. They chose a simpler approach and skipped the whole microfluidic flavor cartridge thing. It's simply a revamped fountain/flavor dispenser with a new interface. It works just as well as Freestyle IMO, and actually has an advantage of using less physical space up front (but still needs the whole syrup stack behind the scenes)
