Harmless Harvest Sighted in Costco, Testing Other Channels

Attention, you Harmless Harvest zealots: there may be bulk discounts in your future.

Co-founders Justin Guilbert and Douglas Riboud — currently abroad to look at tea operations for their new product line, 100% Raw Tea — confirmed to BevNET that they have begun checking a few new channels for their coconut water, which has grown a huge presence in Whole Foods over the past two years.

Word leaked out on an ongoing Costco trial — including demos — for the high pressure processed (HPP), sometimes pink, “raw” coconut water with sightings of 4-packs of 16 oz. size Harmless Harvest bottles shelves alongside other mainstays like Sambazon and Bolthouse Farms.

At $3.97 for 16 oz., that’s a nice per-oz. discount from natural channel sales, but it was only available at a handful of Southern California locations.

Photographic evidence soon followed.

According to Guilbert, trials have also taken place with New York-area Walgreens as well as on-premise locations like Pret a Manger.

“We really want to see if it shows promise before effectively going for it,” Guilbert told BevNET via an email from a far-off tea garden.

Multi-pack sales in Costco would likely excite (Costco) card-carrying members of Harmless Harvest nation, whose members have been known to descend on Whole Foods as soon as new product arrives. A Costco expansion would also indicate that product supply, once a concern for the pair of entrepreneurs behind the company, has become less of an issue.