Review: Carela Blends Bitter Melon and Green Tea

Posted: Nov 24, 2016 at 7:36 AM (Last Updated: Nov 28, 2016 at 12:14 PM)

Covers Products: Bitter Melon & Green Tea

Carela is a zero-calorie beverage that features up-and-coming ingredient bitter melon extract. paired with green tea, peach juice, flavors, and Rebaudioside A, which is a form of stevia that supposedly has less bitterness and aftertaste. The flavor profile is still slightly bitter and clearly has a zero calorie sweetener in it, but that quickly gives way to a note of tea and peach flavor. While it’s not bad as far as zero-calorie beverages go, it has a long way to go before it becomes something that we’d consume for taste alone.

Adjusting this product’s flavor profile -- and perhaps adding additional options so that there is some variety -- would be very helpful in terms of broadening the potential consumer base, regardless of the purported health benefits of bitter melon.

From a packaging perspective, the 12 oz. fully wrapped plastic bottle feels very much like a functional product -- it doesn’t feel like it makes a lot of effort to connect to your senses or whet the palate. Compared with some of the bottle images that we see on the company’s web site, which are much more colorful (and perhaps future product offerings?), there’s definitely some room for improvement. For now, however, it feels like a product that has packaging that just doesn’t position it properly. Looking more like a tea -- perhaps with a glass bottle -- might help.

In the end, the concept of a bitter melon drink is something that is unique and has potential, but we feel as though Carela needs to refine and reposition its offering before it’s really ready for primetime.

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