Real Beanz: Vanilla Nut (Relax)

Another mainstay of the ready to drink coffee category, vanilla is sure to be one of the more attention grabbing flavors of the Real Beanz lineup. From a taste perspective, blending vanilla and hazelnut makes for something that’s unique and extremely enjoyable. Plus, it keeps the added vanilla flavor from completely overpowering the coffee (a common problem with vanilla RTD coffee). The product is, as part of its “Relax” formulation, a decaffeinated product that has been enhanced with chamomile, lemon balm, passion flower, and calcium. While it’s fine to have a decaf offering (most RTD coffee lines do, although they never seem to be big sellers), making it into a pseudo-relaxation product seems like a big gamble. For one, we think that consumers don’t associate the flavor of coffee with relaxation, so making the consumer buy into this is going to take some work. Plus, adding the word “Relax” to the front panel makes it hard to quickly figure out what this product is all about. Consumers will either have to read the back of the label -- or will simply move on to another product (hence the “big gamble” comment before). Visually, we think that Real Beanz has come up with something that’s attractive to the eye, with a premium looking brand that seems to befit an RTD coffee brand. Overall, really nice flavor and visual execution, but we’re far from convinced that making this into a relaxation product is going to work.