A Wider Look: Honest Fizz Goes Fully Organic and Gets a New Can

Organic erythritol was the bottleneck, but a packaging change and a shift in availability (and affordability) of the sweetener has given way to an across-the-board update to Honest Tea’s line of zero-calorie sodas.

The company, an independent operating unit of the Coca-Cola Co., today announced all Honest Fizz products, which in addition to organic erythritol are sweetened with organic stevia, will be USDA certified organic beginning in March. Since the line’s debut in 2013, its root beer variety had been the only one with a completely organic formulation.

The move is tied to a new look for Honest Fizz, which has traded a slim 12 oz. can for a standard-sized one. Dan Forman, Director of PR & Digital Media, Honest Tea told BevNET that “moving to the traditional soda can enabled us to save money on packaging (more flexibility on where we manufactured) which we invested into [the] cost for organic ingredients.”

Forman said that the new can also enables Honest Fizz to be better positioned alongside the rest of soda category and allows for pricing that is more in line with conventional soft drinks: single cans of Honest Fizz have a suggested retail price of $0.99-1.25 and $4.99-5.99 for 6-packs.

New Honest Tea Herbal VarietiesHonest Tea also extended the Fizz brand with a Ginger Ale flavor, the fifth variety in the line, and now employs its evolved brand logo on packaging.

Along with the updates to Fizz, Honest Tea announced the addition of two unsweetened, caffeine-free herbal varieties to its line of glass bottled iced teas. The launch of Cinnamon Sunrise Herbal Tea, a blend of organic Vietnamese cinnamon and Fair Trade Certified red rooibos from South Africa, and Ginger Oasis Herbal Tea, made with organic Indian ginger, green rooibos, and Egyptian lemongrass comes on the heels of a revamp and reformulation of Honest Tea’s “Honest-Ade” line, which are now presented as herbal teas within the company’s mainstream-oriented line of PET-packaged drinks.

The revamped Honest Fizz and new tea products will be available nationwide within the natural channel and in the natural food aisle of mainstream grocery stores beginning in March.