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In the midst of a significant shift in its sales and marketing strategy, Celsius has announced a new partnership with fitness infomercial icon Tony Little, most often known for his work promoting the Gazelle Exercise Machine. Celsius, a manufacturer of calorie-burning drinks and powders primarily consumed before workouts, has tweaked its positioning and marketing in the hopes of broadening its target use and consumer base to include individuals on weight-loss programs.

Late yesterday, Standard and Poor's announced that Monster Beverage will be added to the S&P 500 index next week. Monster will replace Sara Lee, which is splitting its North American business and international beverage business into two publicly traded companies. Monster, which has been publicly traded since 1995, will join the three major beverage companies - Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper Snapple - on the S&P 500.

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.