Which Federal Reserve Banks Have Coke Freestyle Machines?
And other adventures with the Coca-Cola Freestyle Interactive Map
At risk of being too grandiose about the whole thing, I have always found a great freedom in the soda fountain. (That’s “soda fountain” as in the literal soda machine, not the 1950s social hot spot, or this newsletter, though I suppose both of those represent their own kind of freedom.) You are in control of your cup: No one is pouring for you, or setting any rules, or even necessarily watching. Change your mind about what you want? Dump it, rinse, and start over. Mixing two sodas? three? more? Go for it. As much ice as possible? Hardly any ice at all? The cup is your canvas, and the fountain, your paintbrush. Whatever art you make is up to you.
No fountain represents that sense of freedom like the Coca-Cola Freestyle.
For the uninitiated, Coke Freestyle machines offer touch screens with a frankly bonkers selection of flavors. What might be standalone drinks on other machines are gateways to entire universes here. Pressing “Diet Coke” does not give you Diet Coke: No, it gives you access to every imaginable flavor of Diet Coke, with the basics available, of course, but also some otherwise unavailable for purchase. Cherry. Vanilla. Cherry Vanilla. Orange Vanilla. Ginger Lemon. Ginger Lime. It’s obscene! And repeat that with Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Mr. Pibb.1 Hundreds of sodas! (…and lemonades, and sparkling waters, and…) If a regular soda fountain represents freedom by giving you exactly what you want, just how you want it, Coke Freestyle represents freedom by giving you something you never knew could exist. Like an ice-cold Strawberry Orange Mello Yello Zero Sugar.2
A later edition of this newsletter might be devoted to all those possibilities, or to something about the origin story of the machine, which involves both the design company behind Ferrari and the guy who invented the Segway. (Really! Not kidding!) But this one is devoted to a different aspect of Coke Freestyle.
The interactive map of machine locations on their official website.
Coca-Cola keeps a record of every Freestyle machine. I’m so glad they share it publicly. Is this map current? I’m not sure. (I suspect not!) But I’m not interested in it as a faithful, up-to-date accounting of every single machine, so much as a loose chronicle of the kinds of places that have these machines. Where can we find the freedom promised by Coca-Cola Freestyle? Think beyond the fast-food chains and movie theaters: I’m talking government buildings, corporate headquarters, international locations. Who craves these demented soda experiences, or believes their employees crave them, or their customers? That’s what I wanted to know. And the map delivered.
Which Federal Reserve Banks Have Coke Freestyle Machines?
Let’s jump right in. I live in Washington, D.C., which means that when I typed my own address into the map, I was greeted by nearby Freestyle machines in a variety of fast casual restaurants, a hospital cafeteria, and the Federal Reserve.3 Which is just one of those things that happen when you live here, but still, the disclosure of this initially struck me as… wrong? like publishing government secrets? or maybe not illicit but inappropriate? like revealing something intimate about Jerome Powell? Even though, obviously, it’s none of the above. It’s fine! This is a soda machine in a workplace cafeteria. (Why shouldn’t we know if the people setting interest rates have Strawberry Pibb Zero?) But it did get me thinking. So the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in D.C. has Coke Freestyle.
What about the 12 regional banks? All of them? None?
I figured it would be one or the other. Coke Freestyle for everyone or for no one. A nationwide institutional policy when it comes to fountain access to Barq’s Zero Sugar Vanilla Root Beer. And I was wrong. Only two of the regional banks! Boston and Philadelphia. Nowhere else! Fed employees in Cleveland must head to the nearest Wendy’s. (Don’t worry: They have five Wendy’s with Coke Freestyles within five miles.) Fed employees in St. Louis must go to the nearest White Castle. (Again, don’t worry: They have six White Castles with Coke Freestyles within five miles.) There is no on-demand Lime Fanta in the walls of the Federal Reserve Banks in Richmond, or Chicago, or Dallas, or Minneapolis.
But, some of you are surely thinking, is there not a Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta?
Yeah. There is. And even there, Coca-Cola’s hometown, the city where they piloted the machines back in 2009, there is no Coke Freestyle. (There are at least two on the same block as the Atlanta Fed—one in a fried chicken place and one in a hotel.) Unbelievable.
May the employees in Boston and Philadelphia get themselves a nice Pineapple Sprite, or Tropical Coke, or Orange Vanilla Hi-C, and know just how lucky they are.
How Many Coke Freestyle Machines Are at Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta?
I sat with this question for a while before I looked it up. I’m not talking about the public World of Coke, but the large, multi-building corporate HQ near Georgia Tech. With a few thousand employees on-site… presumably several cafeteria settings… surely other sources of soda… I guessed there would be 10 to 15 Coke Freestyles. There would have to be some! But I assumed that most of the Coke available would be from well-stocked fridges, or standard fountains, or vending machines. It’s a workplace. (I’m assuming the online map shows only normal, full-service machines that any employee can use, and not any others they have for the purposes of testing or R&D.) A dozen or so, I figured, would be just about right.
No! Coke HQ has 21. (That’s 10 in the North Avenue Tower, 8 in the USA Building, and 3 in the Technical Engineering Center.) At first, I felt naive: OBVIOUSLY, Coca-Cola HQ has more than a dozen Coke Freestyle machines! And then I felt grateful, for the knowledge that Coca-Cola apparently believes the optimal placement of Coke Freestyle machines in a large office building is one per two or three floors, as evidenced by the fact that the North Avenue Tower has one each on the 4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 22nd and 23rd floors. What a thing to know.
How Far Do You Have to Get from Pepsi Headquarters to Find a Coke Freestyle?
Just over two miles. (You will find one inside the nearest movie theater, followed closely by machines in a Wendy’s, a Burger King’s and a Popeye’s, respectively.) And, yes, Pepsi does have its own answer to Coke Freestyle: That would be Pepsi Spire, which even has its own map of machine locations, though it’s rather janky.
What Other Federal Government Buildings Have Coke Freestyles?
There’s one in the Senate Carryout, one in the House of Representatives Café in Longworth, and one in the White House Mess. I have to assume this means that just two branches of government may have unfettered access to Crème Soda Coke at a time.
Where Are Our National Coke Freestyle Deserts?
Here’s something I did not expect to find in playing with this map. It’s pretty hard to find a a place in this country that is not within 75 miles of a Coke Freestyle! Cody, Wyoming? They have one in a Wendy’s. Gilman City, Missouri? Dairy Queen. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico? You have to drive an hour, but then you’ll hit a Jack in the Box, plus a Five Guys. Alliance, Nebraska? Start driving and you’ll eventually get to a movie theater. Mobridge, South Dakota? Dairy Queen. Alpine, Texas? Again, drive an hour, but then you come to a Kwik Stop. You get the picture. If you are within a reasonable drive of a town with ~5,000 people, you probably have a Coke Freestyle.
Which makes sense. It’s not all Federal Reserve Banks and AMC Theaters. Otherwise isolated stretches of highway will eventually have one Subway or Burger King, which generally means, nowadays, a Coke Freestyle. (Or at least a claim to one—whether that is a functioning machine still available to the general public is another question.) Those fast-food joints cover a lot. But there is one exception.
Alaska.
The map claims they have no Coke Freestyle in Anchorage. None in Fairbanks. None in Juneau. None in Sitka. It truly is the last frontier (for deranged soda combinations). The fast-food locations up here sadly do not seem to have Freestyle.
May every Alaskan one day be able to dream of a fountain Zero Sugar Vanilla Fanta.
(By comparison, Hawaii is positively awash in Coke Freestyle, machines for days. And yes, I also checked U.S. territories, and while there are none in Guam or American Samoa, there are two in the U.S. Virgin Islands.)
Can You Describe the International Footprint of Coke Freestyle?
Many in Canada. Essentially none that I could see in Asia, South America, Oceania or Africa. And the ones in Europe are heavily concentrated in American chains like Five Guys and Burger Kings, which creates delightful screenshots like this one, from Paris.
Where Is the Only Coke Freestyle Machine in Zurich?
The FIFA Museum, where you can learn about the beautiful game, and then drink a beautiful Grape Sprite Zero Sugar.
Did You Learn Anything Else of Note About Coke Freestyle Locations?
They have the machines at Disneyland. Law firms. Hospital cafeterias. Theme parks. Colleges. The Exxon station right before you hit the Lincoln Tunnel. There are so many places you can go in this country, small towns and big cities and the highway rest stops in between, and nearly all of them will have a way to put you in reach of a touch screen promising the soda of your dreams.
(Alaska, Guam and American Samoa excluded, obviously, as discussed.)
I missed you guys! Sorry for that unexpected long time away. A brief catchup for anyone who might be interested: In the last 11 months, I got my job back at Sports Illustrated, was very grateful to return to writing about some great subjects, landed a book deal with my pal Jordan, and then actually wrote the book! (Stay tuned. It’s a photographic history of women’s hoops, which is a total dream project, but I did manage to include one relevant soda…) I also spent three weeks in there going across the country and back alone via Amtrak. (I drank soooo many Diet Cokes in the observation car.) And now it’s back to soda writing. If you have ideas or suggestions, please, hit me up! Cheers.
I know his name is just Pibb now, and has been for a long time, but I will never give up on treating him with proper respect, sorry
Press Mello Yello, then Zero Sugar, then Strawberry Orange. The other choices in this family are regular, cherry, orange, peach, limeade and citrus twist, the last two of which strike me as weird, because Mello Yello is… already a lime-y, citrus soda? But who am I to cast doubt on the Freestyle machine flavors of Mello Yello Zero Sugar
Minutiae: There are actually *two* Coke Freestyles in the Fed’s D.C. complex, one in the Martin Building (across the street from the real headquarters of the Eccles Building), and one in the office on New York Avenue. But none in the Eccles Building itself and none in the offices on K Street!
i cannot express how deeply excited i was to see a soda fountain post in my inbox today. welcome back, emma!
(my go-to freestyle move is diet cherry vanilla dr pepper)
This was so much fun to read. Thank you for doing this extremely important research!
The Freestyle map came to my rescue once when I had been working an outdoor gig on an excruciatingly hot day. I became obsessed with the thought that a cherry vanilla Dr Pepper was the only thing that would revitalize me. I checked the map and discovered that there was one at a pita restaurant just a few blocks away. That machine was such a welcome sight.