Headlines

CSD share might be slipping as a percentage of total beverages consumed, but there’s a Zero-sum gain out there – Coke Zero, that is. After a long period of double-digit growth, the brand continues to be the growing star of the company’s sparkling portfolio. Over the past year, the brand grew a little over 4 percent, according to A.C. Nielsen Scantrack numbers in Food, Drug and Mass retailers to push it into third place in the diet drink category.

Calling PepsiCo’s lack of bottling flexibility “hard to believe,” PepsiCo Americas Beverages CEO Al Carey said that the company has begun working with some of its more creative bottlers to create new package sizes for its beverage business. Speaking at Deutsche Bank’s Global Consumer Conference, Carey said that it PepsiCo was focused on “holding or improving value share” by the end of 2012, but that it was unsustainable to continue lowering prices to improve its position.

Today we’ve added videos from Day 2 of BevNET Live Summer 12 to BeverageSchool.com.  For a nominal fee, you can watch all of BevNET Live Summer 12 on-demand as many…

The concern that New York City’s proposed ban on the sale of large-size sodas and other sugary beverages may spill over to other cities is becoming a reality. According to The Boston Globe, Cambridge, MA Mayor Henrietta Davis proposed the idea of a similar sugary drink ban at a city council meeting last night, stating that “in addition to being an obesity threat, soda is one of the contributing factors to an increasing rate in diabetes and heart disease amongst younger people.”

Clearly, coconut water has been one of the fastest growing categories in the beverage industry, but are its highly touted rehydration benefits as helpful as advertised? In a recent article, National Public Radio (NPR) posits that while coconut water does provide an electrolyte-packed punch, most individuals can rehydrate just as well with plain water.

Quietly, and with barely a shred of promotion, the Coca-Cola Co. Inc., has launched a new coconut water-infused Vitaminwater flavor called Coco-Refresh. It appears that Coke introduced Coco-Refresh exclusively in the New York City market a little over a month ago, and though the drink is listed among other Vitaminwater varieties on the company’s website, there are only a few tidbits of information about the product, mostly from the viral rants of beverage-crazed bloggers.

Energy shot maker Bazi announced yesterday that it has entered into a merger agreement with GT Beverage Company. According to a joint statement released by the two companies, GT Beverage, which manufactures a line of vitamin-enhanced water drinks for kids, will retain 95.5 percent of the common shares outstanding of Bazi, which has received a line of credit from GT for up to $600,000. The merger is expected to close on or before October 15, 2012.

Balance Water, a line of functional waters infused with tasteless herbal extracts, pulled in investment to the tune of about $4-5 million recently, according to co-founder Martin Chalk. The funding came from a mix of sources: Emil Capital Partners supplied institutional cash, while famed investor Thomas H. Lee, the founder of Thomas H. Lee partners, put in money as an individual investor, as did Australian actor Hugh Jackman.

Lance Gentry, the well-known and well-liked former VP of marketing for Izze Beverage Co., passed away Friday following a battle with brain cancer that lasted more than a year. Gentry became a familiar and welcome presence when he visited the BevNET team during frequent trips to Boston as he attempted to open the market for Izze.

After spending months in limbo as product slowly trickled through a declining number of stores and online retailers, relaxation shot RelaxZen has been sold to a pair of Brooklyn-based investors by former CEO Brent Sonnek-Schmelz.

Latching onto growing consumer demand for lower sugar, low-calorie beverages, Snapple has launched a new line of all-natural teas lightly sweetened with real sugar. Snapple Lightly Sweetened Teas are made with a base of white tea and contain 18 grams of sugar - less than half the sugar content in other Snapple varieties.

Looking at the numbers at the seventh incarnation of BevNET Live, which finished up on Tuesday after two days of intense teaching, networking and community building in New York City, however, the event started and ended with the simplest number: one.