Suja Wellness Shots

BevNET Live Summer 2017 got off to a billion-dollar start last month with a presentation from Scott Uzzell, president and general manager of The Coca-Cola Company’s Venturing & Emerging Brands division (VEB).

The San Diego-based brand will unveil a four-SKU line of organic kombucha at Costco stores in three regions later this month, with a broader launch in natural and conventional grocery channels set to commence this fall.

At first, suppliers weren’t sure what to make of the deal, with numerous food and beverage companies reserving their comments. Now, after more than a week’s reflection, many have told BevNET and sister site Project NOSH they are excited about the potential sales opportunities the partnership could provide, expressing enthusiasm for how it will maintain or even enhance Whole Foods’ reputation as a launching pad for small brands.

As the industry continues to mature, the manner in which individual brands choose to approach the issue of alcohol and sugar content in kombucha will likely play a significant role in determining the health of the category going forward.

The delivery of the message was softer, with a few jokes thrown in, but the connective lesson from presentations at Day One of BevNET Live Summer 2017 was quite clear and quite serious: In a rapidly changing world, your business needs to keep up the pace or get stuck in the past.

A list compiled by market research firm CB Insights of the 15 most well-funded venture capital-backed food and beverage startups reveals the increasing value placed on brands that are offering healthier choices and disrupting established categories like meat and dairy and innovating with plant-based offerings.

The Academy’s new policy statement recommends that 100 percent fruit juice should not be provided to children younger than 1 year of age, with the exception of cases in which there is a strong clinical basis for use in the management of constipation

G. Scott Uzzell, the president and general manager of Venturing & Emerging Brands at The Coca-Cola Company, will speak on his company’s experience surveying, partnering with, and developing the landscape of entrepreneurial beverage companies over the past decade.

The group’s mission is to advocate for the advancement of HPP as a critical technology in the food and beverage world for processors, brands and consumers.

Zoe Leavitt, Retail & Food Technology Analyst at CB Insights, led the online presentation, which explored recent investments, current trends and forward-thinking innovations in the food and beverage industries.

As numerous clinical studies confirm the gut benefits touted by brands, probiotics’ popularity with consumers has rocketed and the inclusion of these tiny gut bugs in beverage has sent waves through the industry.

The most well-funded food and beverage start-ups by state include big names, Essentia signs Periscope as its first creative AOR, PepsiCo pulls 12-packs and 2 liter bottles from Philadelphia, and Forbes lists its top female leaders in food.

Steve Smith, the president of JBT FoodTech, said that the company had been looking at various sterilization techniques that do not use heat for over two years before making the decision to purchase Avure.

From fresh takes on familiar favorites to disruptive innovations with the potential to create entirely new categories, the annual Expo is where industry professionals get their first glimpse of the products that will fuel the conversation for the next 12 months and beyond.