I bought a tub of the powder because this is the on-course nutrition at Vineman.
$29.95 for 57 Servings (as indicated on the label). A cost of $.53 per serving.
At the grocery store, I buy a tub of the Gatorade Thirst Quencher powder for $6.00. This is for 35 servings. A cost of $.17 per serving
As far as I can tell, the only difference is that the Endurance Formula has 200 MG of sodium vs 100 MG. And the Endurance Formula has 90 Mg of Potassium vs 30 MG.
Is there any other reason why the Endurance formula costs 3x more? (Other than triathletes will buy anything that says Endurance on the label?)
I’ll hazard a guess at this since no one else had, and that is economy of scale, additional marketing costs and a higher gross margin on the specialty Endurance product as compared to the Thirst Quencher product.
I don’t bemoan Gatorade for any of this.
On the flip side, from the athlete’s perspective, one of the best long-distance nutritional fuel sources is bulk malto-dextrose. That is pennies a serving when bought in bulk. That fact is what makes the sports/endurance nutrition category a good revenue stream for nutritional brands.
Ultimately a big part of what we are paying for is product quality (safety), packaging, convenience (distribution, availability) and brand identification. There are values attached to each of those features.
For the niche, specialty endurance market another thing we are paying for is a perception of “exclusivety” with a product tuned to an endurance market with more sodium.
goto Sam’s Club or Walmart and pick up the Gatorade 02 Perform for .08 per serving in 76 oz ready to mix tubs.
What annoys me is that I used to be able to find bottles of Endurance in my local grocery store all the time, and while you payed a little bit of a premium for it compared to ‘normal’ Gatorade, it wasn’t even twice the cost per ounce, much less 3x.
Market pricing.
Normal gatorade has to be priced at a level where people who don’t really need it will buy it (ex. weekend softball players). They are competing with many “imperfect substitutes”; everything from Powerade to Coke to Red Bull.
Endurance is priced for those (like you) that actually need it and will pay a lot more. There is also some extra marketing cost/unit due to the smaller market; but this is about willingness to pay, not cost.
I’ll hazard a guess at this since no one else had, and that is economy of scale, additional marketing costs and a higher gross margin on the specialty Endurance product as compared to the Thirst Quencher product.
I don’t bemoan Gatorade for any of this.
On the flip side, from the athlete’s perspective, one of the best long-distance nutritional fuel sources is bulk malto-dextrose. That is pennies a serving when bought in bulk. That fact is what makes the sports/endurance nutrition category a good revenue stream for nutritional brands.
Ultimately a big part of what we are paying for is product quality (safety), packaging, convenience (distribution, availability) and brand identification. There are values attached to each of those features.
For the niche, specialty endurance market another thing we are paying for is a perception of “exclusivety” with a product tuned to an endurance market with more sodium.
But surely you recall the old 50oz canisters that come in green packaging. I know I do as I actually purchased twelve of them from TriSports last year. It was pretty sad to see Gatorade come up with a snazzier packaging and decided to reduce the content down to 32oz while charging a few more bucks for it without changing the contents at all.