As Editor-in-Chief of BevNET, Jeff Klineman oversees the organization's reporting across all of its web sites, as well as BevNET Magazine. Jeff also plans, curates, and hosts the BevNET Live and NOSH Live conferences. Jeff previously worked as a newspaper reporter for the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, the Boston TAB and the Metrowest Daily News, and has freelanced for publications like Slate, Boston Magazine, Self, George, Commonwealth, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. A frequently-cited expert on the beverage industry, Jeff has also twice been named in Forbes as one of the 25 Most Influential when it comes to Consumer and Retail Companies.
Generous Brands has taken another step towards its goal to be a “chassis for the growth of manufacturing” of fresh, healthy beverages with its acquisition of Health-Ade, the second-largest national kombucha brand.
Health-Ade’s investors are selling the company to Generous Brands, a portfolio company of private equity firm Butterfly Equity, for approximately $500 million.
As the alt-soda category has grown over the past decade, the success of main brands Poppi and Olipop has been largely parallel, with one slight separation: the emphasis on functionality.…
Coke CEO James Quincey told analysts on today’s second quarter earnings call that the company would be launching what amounted to a full-sugar line extension, rather than a complete formula change, as some believed President Trump had indicated.
Anthony Kiedis, the hyperkinetic Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lead singer, along with Shane Powers, a podcaster and former Survivor contestant, has turned the pair’s 20-year-plus standing weekly Thursday coffee meeting into a beverage business.
This week’s Beverage Forum event in California went deep into one area that L.A. Libations CEO Danny Stepper holds near and dear: brands’ relationships with celebrities.
Brand-focused investors and deal advisors at the recently completed Beverage Forum conference in California this week offered a series of details that indicate that the outlook is trending positive on the investment front.
Presence Marketing, a natural products brokerage firm that grew out of its Chicagoland founding in 1990 to become the largest independent sales and marketing organization in its channel, has been bought by PLTFRM, a multi-channel sales, marketing, and investment company.
Even in a tough year, beverage brands that were able to show organic growth were also able to find investors willing to back expansion. Investors remained interested in the energy drink and modern soda categories, as well as protein-enhanced drinks and NA Beer.
Big soda has been Melvin “Mel” Landis’s meal ticket for most of his professional career. Now he’s gone to work for one of the brands with the greatest potential to disrupt that category, signing on as the president of Olipop.
Over the past year-plus, we’ve written repeatedly about the slowdown in venture funding and strategic transactions, and panelists on our stages continue to point out that they’d rather see brands with high margins and profitability.
Big-brand portfolio reshuffling isn’t going to all of a sudden clear a pathway to acquisition for tiny brands to get scooped up by huge food concerns – at least not right now. Instead, strategics are looking for those billion-dollar acquisitions that can bring them tangible revenue gains.
Keurig Dr Pepper has agreed terms to acquire energy drink and sports nutrition business GHOST, bringing one of the category’s fastest growing brands into its expanding energy portfolio.
In a move set to impact “thousands of customers,” American Canning today halted operations at its Aluminum Toyo Ultimate Can (aTULC) manufacturing plant in Texas, abruptly ending an innovative first-in-the-nation packaging partnership that had attracted significant interest from ready-to-drink cocktail and energy drink makers.
