Just when you thought it couldn't get any more crowded with beverage company relations, particularly given the dueling investments from Glaceau millionaires Rohan Oza (Popchips) and Mike Repole and Darius Bikoff (Pirate's Booty) the snack aisle is once again facing incursions from its liquid relations. Which is a complicated way of saying that iced tea and juice titan AriZona is heading into the snack food business with AriZona Chips 'n Dip, a square package with separate compartments for tortilla chips and either cheese dip or salsa.

First it was apple juice and arsenic; this week it's orange juice and fungicide. Earlier this week, the FDA halted shipments of the citrus juice in its bottled and frozen form while it tested for traces of the anti-fungal carbendazim, a chemical that is banned in the U.S. but is still used in Brazil. A recent story on CNN.com explains that it was Coca-Cola that originally alerted the FDA about the fungicide.

The 2012 Winter Fancy Food Show is being held January 15-17 in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. We've created a comprehensive list of exhibitors that are showcasing beverage-related products at the event. We'll be on hand to cover the show as well. If you'll be attending, please drop us a line.

He's been a standard-bearer for the organic success story for years, as well as a mentor to Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman, but Stonyfield founder Gary Hirshberg announced today that he's handing day-to-day operations over to former Ben & Jerry's CEO Walt Freese. Hirshberg's sale of Stonyfield to Danone in 2003 -- and subsequent operation of the company as a unit with autonomy within that larger company -- is largely seen as a model for Goldman's sale of Honest Tea to the Coca-Cola Co. last year.

BevNET is now accepting listings for the 2012 Functional Beverage Guide. To be published as a special section in the March issue of BevNET Magazine, the Functional Beverage Guide feature functional beverage brands and their suppliers. Listed alphabetically, beverage brands will be tagged with functional attributes (i.e. energy, relaxation). Brands will be indexed according to function at the start of the guide.

It’s an interesting play in an expanding space: NEXT Proteins, the current project of Designer Whey and Detour Bar founder David Jenkins, is attempting to sell its collection of protein-centric…

With institutional investors getting a bad rap in beverages these days – the National Enquirer version of the complaint is they force you to juice your projections in order to get the deal done, then steal your company when you fail to hit those unrealistic targets – a lot of early-stage beverage companies have been in a quandary as to where else to turn once they’ve reached the limits of where friends-and-family and angels can take them.

The Coca-Cola Co. and Nestle have confirmed that Beverage Partners Worldwide — their 20-year partnership marketing Nestea in the U.S. has been fundamentally altered to focus away from North America.…