Vita Coco will be sold at large-format retailer Target, according to a story in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
The products will be part of an expansion of the company’s focus on natural and organic products, and, taking a page from Whole Foods’ book, the company is working with existing purveyors to specify product parameters. The program, “Made to Matter — Hand-picked by Target,” will comprise more than 120 products, according to the paper.
“Natural, organic and sustainable resonates with Target’s guests,” Kathee Tesija, the executive vice president of merchandising and supply chain, told John Ewoldt of the The Star Tribune. “We’re taking our 17 best natural and organic manufacturers, which are normally competitors with each other, and coming together as a team to take the guesswork out of buying better-for-you products.”
Vita Coco told BevNET that it can’t comment on the news until August.
In other Vita Coco news, Stuart Elliott of The New York Times reported on a campaign the coconut water brand is conducting in partnership with Rio 2, an animated and family-focused film. The partnership combines two entities with Brazilian ties. The Vita Coco founders, Ira Liran and Mike Kirban, first developed the idea while on a beach in Brazil. Like its predecessor, the film takes place in Brazil.
“The centerpiece of the partnership is the creation of two flavors of Vita Coco Kids that are inspired by Rio 2,” Elliott writes. “The flavors are Blu-berry Beach, named after the main character in both movies, Blue the blue macaw, who is voiced by Jesse Eisenberg, and Gabi’s Pink Lemonade, named after a new character, Gabi the poisonous frog, who is voiced by Kristin Chenoweth.”
Read the rest of the story from The Times to learn more about the marketing tactics of the partnership.
Meanwhile, Diet Coke consumption was in the news when former White House Budget Director Peter R. Orszag, now an executive with Citigroup, took up a pen to defend Diet Coke, despite the fact that he’s severely cut back on his own consumption at the behest of his family.
In an Op-Ed for BloombergView entitled Your Diet Coke Won’t Kill You, Orszag denounced studies linking ill health effects with diet sodas, claiming that they may have overlooked some key variables like causality of disease and external factors such as cigarettes and obesity.
“I’m glad that my family succeeded in getting me to shift away from diet soda and toward tea,” he writes. “Yet I’d say the case is still out on whether my health was ever at risk.”
Orszag, while admitting to an eight-can a day habit of Diet Coke during his time at the White House, still never entered the same stratosphere of famous golfer and roustabout John Daly.
In yet another story about his regrets and excess, Daly told The Guardian that he still smokes about 40 cigarettes each day. However, he can’t drink 26-28 Diet Cokes like he used to.
“Now I have 10-12 at most,” Daly said.
If you’re looking to explain the downward trends of diet CSDs, look no further than golf’s Keith Richards.