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.
It’s not so much been a long time coming as it is a long way for them to come, but Red Bull has finally announced that it was going to move three flavored line extensions from overseas into U.S. markets. The company says it will unveil the three tomorrow at the opening of the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show in Las Vegas.
Count the Sambazon team among those organic beverage entrepreneurs -- including Mama Chia's Janie Hoffman and Honest Tea's Seth Goldman -- who are publicly supporting Proposition 37, which would force companies using Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to label their products as such.
FRS recently cut a significant number of positions (albeit fewer than 20) as it realigns itself to transition from a sales and marketing model supported significantly via PepsiCo’s warehouse division to one that is staffed by brand incubation house L.A. Libations.
Beverage marketers discovered the produce section more than a decade ago, and produce buyers went along with them, knowing that the margins those products offered made the space investment worthwhile. The prices it could command, the prominent positioning, the lack of slotting and the familiarity with fast-expiring products made the section a natural for the fresh squeezed, lightly processed, high-turnover juices that emerged in the late 1990s.
Sure, 5-Hour Energy gets all the attention.It should: the company is one of the new millennium’s most impressive meatspace success stories, taking the rising tide of energy drinks and rethinking them into a smaller package. If energy drinks are the mega-version of the soda, then 5-Hour Energy is almost a reimagining of the very same morning espresso that has powered Europe for centuries – a tiny shot that, rather than coming hot and bitter, is in a sweet, portable, oh-so-American package.
Now that it’s bottled and available – for now, pretty much only in Boston, via Blue Coast distributing, but soon to roll out in New York – the company is looking for a full-time CEO to run the business.
Although there were mockups and flavors – even sampling -- and an accompanying bubbly giddiness at the Honest Tea Expo East booth, there was no confirmation that the brand will be rolling out a line of carbonated soft drinks.
You’d think Carl Sweat, the hard-charging CEO of FRS, would have it easy by now. Strong investors, a dynamite functional additive, popular endorsers and clever marketing have been wrapped together into a very cold-box-friendly package. But the company is still fighting it out every day, trying to convince consumers that the quercetin compound that powers the product is worth its sometimes challenging taste and its hard-to-define health benefit.
The Healthy Brands Collective Corp. has acquired Living Harvest Foods, a hemp products company that makes a leading brand of hemp milk, Tempt.
Marketing whiz Matthew Kahn, who worked closely with Glaceau marketing chief Rohan Oza in the key growth years immediately preceding the company's eventual sale to the Coca-Cola Co., Inc., is moving into a similar role at Heineken, where he will be the new VP of Marketing for Portfolio Brands.
Talk about piling on. During the same week that the New York City Board of Health passed its ban on serving jumbo sodas, a pair of developments in two other closely watched social and environmental causes are affecting the Coca-Cola Co., including calorie counts in fast food chains and a battle over Genetically Modified Organisms.
Sparkling probiotic drink KeVita has closed a round of financing. The brand is touted as a less-vinegary but still probiotic beverage co-founded by nutritional consultant Chakra Earthsong Levy and winemaker Bill Moses.
Ecuadorian energy blend Runa received a little stimulation itself recently in the form of a $3 million round of financing from a variety of investors, company co-founder Dan MacCombie confirmed to BevNET on Friday.
Here's a win for former Red Bull honcho-turned Big Red owner Gary Smith, who managed to get Big Red into Pepsi Bottling Ventures' North Carolina markets starting in July.
