Ethan's MCT Shot

by Ethan's LLC

Review: Ethan’s MCT Shots

Posted: Sep 11, 2018 at 3:21 PM (Last Updated: Sep 13, 2018 at 5:07 PM)

Covers Products: Matcha, Tumeric Ginger, Coffee, Orange Cacao

Announced in August, Ethan’s MCT Shots is the follow up to the brand’s line of apple cider vinegar (ACV) shots that they launched last year. Available in four USDA Certified Organic varieties, including Turmeric Ginger, Orange Cacao, Coffee, and Matcha, the 2 oz bottle touts 8 g of MCT as its key benefit.

To achieve this, the products all contain coconut cream and coconut MCT oil. These ingredients impact both the flavor (coconut is present throughout) and give the shots their rather viscous body. From there, each flavor takes on its own personality with a variety of high quality ingredients.

We'll start with our favorite, Turmeric Ginger. This product combines honey, ginger juice, lime juice, turmeric, himalayan pink salt, and black pepper to create something that is truly delicious and very on-trend.  We really enjoyed the bright taste of the honey and how well it pairs with the other ingredients to create something that’s basically a golden milk. Plus, this flavor could definitely translate into a larger format beverage.

Next up is Matcha, which very much follows the honey-forward flavor of Turmeric Ginger. There are also heavy notes of coconut cream and matcha -- and the two help balance each other out. It’s a really well executed formulation all the way down to the touch of salt at the finish.

The final two, Orange Cacao and Coffee, feel as though they need a little refinement. In both cases, the added flavors (cacao and coffee) just don’t mesh well with the natural tang of coconut cream. They both feel as though they need something else. And while there is an alternative  in the form of orange in Orange Cacao, we don’t feel as though this solves the problem. Plus, orange and chocolate is a combination that we think will be challenging from a sales perspective.

Taking a look at the packaging and positioning, Ethan’s has done a nice job creating something that feels like an extension of their ACV shot line with a clean and simple front label that states what it is from an ingredient perspective. They’re steering away from speaking to the functionality on the front of the label, which, especially for a small format product, is probably a good thing.

Overall, Ethan’s has done a really nice job with its MCT Shots. While there’s some room for improvement with two of the SKUs, the Turmeric Ginger and Matcha varieties are perhaps the best tasting MCT enhanced products that we’ve tasted to date.


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