You find it hard to believe that a company would cut cost by reducing the amount of product they use? Tea, even if it is cheap, is still much more expensive th

You find it hard to believe that a company would cut cost by reducing the amount of product they use? Tea, even if it is cheap, is still much more expensive than corn syrup and water. So if you want to cut costs, it makes sense to reduce the amount of tea and make up for it with more sugar. If you do it a little bit over 30 year years, few people with notice. You get a panel of taste testers compare the current version with a slightly watered down version and see if they can tell the difference. If most can't, you make the change and pocket the savings as profit. It's like making a copy of a copy on a copy machine, you can't tell much difference between the two, but repeating the process over multiple generations and the small differences adds up to be dramatic between the original and the 30th generation version. This exact situation happens for many food companies. They gradually reduce quality and costs over the years. And once the people who remembered the original product die off or forget, it can be hard to re-establish yourself as anything but a cheap brand. Five cents is a big cut of a $0.50 product.