Reviews

Suja, a leading brand of organic HPP beverages (and part of Coca-Cola’s investment portfolio), is using this product line to expand into one of the more nascent beverage categories: drinking vinegars.

Coco Libre’s Sparkling Organic Coconut Water is an effort to innovate in what has otherwise been a somewhat stagnant coconut water category.

What Metabrew has essentially done is take the concept of Bulletproof coffee (coffee and MCT-rich grass fed butter, in the case of Bulletproof) and turn it into a dairy-free offering with added cacao and stevia.

Greater Than, a coconut water-based sports drink, has been through several iterations since it was launched in 2010. The formulation, packaging and branding have all been changed, which is pretty much par for the course for any product that’s trying to carve out a niche that doesn’t already exist.

Peet’s, which is a premium coffee roaster and retailer that operates several hundred coffee shops and also has wholesale distribution, is joining the ranks of established coffee players that are now taking their flagship brands into the ready to drink cold-brew category.

Chameleon's latest offering, Texas Pecan Coffee, feels like something that’s both a culmination of those efforts as well as a nod to its roots.

While going organic may help Invo stay current and competitive, the market has changed quite a bit. There are more brands competing in the ultra premium coconut water space. And, perhaps more importantly, this segment of the category has eliminated “raw” as an attribute, and there are now a variety of approaches to achieving the level of flavor required to play in this space.

Eliminating the roasting process, which is basically what gives coffee its signature flavor, results in something very different: Instead of a dark, bold, and sometimes acidic flavor, Sunup’s Green Coffee is light and slightly fruity.

As far as yerba mate drinks go, Guayaki is certainly the bar -- and it’s even the brand that, according to the company’s web site, got the founder hooked on mate. So how does Erva stack up? The liquid is really enjoyable -- to the point where we wanted to quickly gulp down the entire bottle.

Califia Farms Nitro Cold Brew is a dairy-free offering that is, at least as far as we know, the first nitro cold brew offering to incorporate almond milk (and macadamia milk).

LIVE has done a nice job of creating one of the more market-ready vinegar-based offerings that’s currently out there. While it’s hard to say exactly how big the potential is for a product like this, it certainly seems like something that can tag along with their kombucha products, at least in some retail outlets.

Compared with what’s already on the market, this product isn’t exactly an innovative offering. But its execution is clean and the product is enjoyable, which allows Starbucks to be in the game with something that can certainly hold its own.

The BluePrint Organic brand has been on an innovation tear as of late, releasing a host of new beverages that include both juice products and vinegar drinks. Its latest effort is this one, a four flavor line of organic kombuchas.

SToK is a relative latecomer to the cold brew coffee category, and we think it’s going to take some serious brand building effort to get traction.