Kraft Dinner Puts Its Cheese Flavor Into a Soda, on Purpose

Kraft Dinner has already sold you mac and cheese as a cheesecake and as ramen, so a cream soda was never going to be the weird one. On September 23, Kraft Heinz launched KD x Solly's Cream Soda, a collaboration with the Canadian craft soda maker that folds KD's signature cheese taste into a carbonated cream soda base, available first on Amazon with Walmart distribution following in early October.

Solly's founder Adin Wener put it about as honestly as a press release ever does: "It's wonderfully strange, and somehow, it works." That is the entire pitch, and it is more convincing than it has any right to be, because the whole category of brand-extension novelty drinks runs on exactly this kind of confident absurdity.

For Kraft Heinz, this is not really about selling soda. Marketing head Daniel Lundberg said the collaboration "shows just how far we can take the love people have for KD," which is the real strategy: turn a 90-year-old pantry staple into a platform that can support ramen, cheesecake, and now soda without ever touching the actual box of noodles people already trust.

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →