In the five years since The Coca-Cola Company paid $5.6 billion to purchase next-generation sports drink BodyArmor, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the brand, which was famously started by serial entrepreneurs Mike Repole and Lance Collins, along with co-founder Kobe Bryant. But with new innovation, refocused marketing strategies and a veritable bandwagon for better-for-you products to ride, BodyArmor is hoping it’s ready to deliver a revival to its parent company.
BevNET's annual Natural Beverage Showcase.
If there’s one ready-to-drink (RTD) style that got a summer glow-up, it’s vodka-spiked iced tea. The trend was kicked off in the Northeast in 2022 by Surfside, a line of canned iced tea and vodka cocktails that infiltrated baseball stadiums and gave beer distributors a higher case-value win.
Iced tea is one of the world’s oldest refreshment beverages, but for product makers there’s been a tradeoff: the drink's surface simplicity has inhibited brands’ ability to adapt to changing marketplace trends. That is beginning to change, ever so slightly.
BevNET’s annual summer conference returned to New York City this June, bringing together some of the beverage industry’s brightest innovators and thought leaders. The event kicked off with several sit-down interviews with entrepreneurs, including several in the low ABV and non-alcoholic beverage categories who discussed the rapidly changing consumer landscape.
In craft beer news: Deschutes and Costco’s Co-Branded Kirkland Beers to be Discontinued; Rhinegeist and Kroger Partner on Super Lager at Premium Light Price Point; BA Harris Poll: Craft Beer Drinkers Are Increasingly ‘More Engaged,’ But There’s Still An Attention Problem; and Bale Breaker Buys Cloudburst Brewing in Founder-Friendly Deal.
In food industry news: Latin-Inspired Frozen Snacks Gain Retail Ground as Maspanadas Enters Walmart; Beef Puffs Startup BUFFS Closes $1.1M Pre-Seed Round; Final Boss Sour Raises $4M Ahead of Walmart, Target Expansion; and Posana Pulls In Pre-Seed Funding.
Early on only the men stood out as the faces of their brands. If I’d known better when I was getting started, I’d have wondered if so many of them were equal in creation, but we only saw the male profile. After dealing with hundreds of brands, there’s been an evolution. While early on I thought the wives were in the background, handling the books, creating the graphics and putting together the decks used to pitch the investors, it’s clear to me that they were much more important parts of the equation.
Lemonade by sales and growth.
In beverage news: Hemp Beverages Grew 133% Last Year, HBA Reports; Nestlé Enters Joint Venture For Premium Water, Beverage Brands; The FDA Sets Sights On Caffeine Content Labeling; and Yerba Madre Names New CEO, YESLY Co-Founder Joins Board.
This fast-growing gut pop category continues to amaze and confound me at the same time. By now, it seems to be more than just a short-term novelty, meaning one can start to wonder whether it represents a more permanent branch of the CSD category in the same way that energy drinks – which after all are pretty much CSDs with elevated caffeine levels – have proved their durability over three decades now.
What I’d ask you to consider is whether, by relying too much on influencers to create instant audiences around unproven products, we’re creating the same kind of sugar high that has doomed other emerging tech and consumer waves. I’d ask you to look at the broad swath of products that have relied on the kind of immediate attention that comes from influencer drip and think about whether the expense and early orders don’t just create a louder crash from a higher initial shelf.
