In this episode of Category Close-Up: Expert Analysis, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the energy drinks category.
Our guests for this episode include:
- Scot De Lorme, President & Co-Founder, A SHOC Energy
- Jim Watson, Senior Analyst for Beverage Research, Rabobank
- Tom Montague, VP of Sales, Silver Eagle Houston
- Bob Nakasone, Managing Director, First Beverage Group
Simply put, this category has lots of traffic to direct. At the top end, established leaders Red Bull and Monster continue to put up strong annual growth figures, even despite the pandemic. Meanwhile, as they fight for bigger pieces of the explosive market, Coke and Pepsi have run into challenges, just as beer multinationals like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors are positioning themselves for a run at the category.
On one end of the spectrum, there’s a group of brands pushing the category deeper into audiences and usage occasions that have been steadily cultivated over decades. Embraced by the category’s most hardcore fans as well as new customers coming from the supplement space, these brands have embraced products with higher amounts of caffeine but also other ingredients intended to enhance fitness and overall physical performance, such as BCAAs and CoQ10.
On the other side of the category, another group of brands is looking to expand outside of traditional consumers through a range of innovations outside of just caffeine. Whether through emphasizing clean ingredient profiles, tailoring their products for a specific demographic or creating drinks designed to boost mental as well as physical performance, these brands are helping to reshape long-held truths about the space and its potential.
Oh and don’t forget — making things more complicated, between those two sets is a vast space of beverages with some kind of functional energy callout, which includes everything from caffeine-spiked sparkling waters (or kombuchas, or coconut waters) to coffee-based drinks from energy drink brands.
In this episode, the panel examined the development of the modern energy drink market, framing current trends against historical precedents and consumer preferences. The group also assessed the impact of the rising “energy-plus” segment, as well as how growth in energy is also stimulating interest in calming and anti-anxiety drinks. Other topics included how investors are evaluating opportunities in the space, the future of energy innovation, and how brands are seeking to expand their audiences, among other topics.
Following our Expert Analysis panel, we’ll shift perspective tomorrow to hear directly from the brands and entrepreneurs that are actively processing these major categories at retail on Product Showcase. BevNET managing editor Marty Caballero will be joined by Taste Radio’s Ray Latif to interview a range of energy drink brand leaders, each allotted 5-7 minutes to discuss product strategy and new product information.
Both Expert Analysis and Product Showcase are available exclusively to BevNET/NOSH subscribers and can be viewed here.