Plant Press is a new line of low calorie sparkling beverages that aims to provide “clean caffeine” with one 12 ounce can equaling the same caffeine as a cup of coffee. 

The lineup currently has three flavors: Grapefruit Ginger, Passionfruit Peach and Watermelon. The products are sweetened with a blend of agave, stevia and monkfruit, with each can containing 20 calories and 3 grams of added sugar.

In addition to the 100 mg of caffeine (from green coffee beans), they’ve also added electrolytes and vitamins, including D, C, E, and B vitamins. Plant Press also promotes their products for what’s not in it – namely preservatives, gums and sugar alcohols.

Despite not calling itself an energy drink, that’s really what this product is, both in terms of functionality and flavor. 

So let’s talk about the flavor. All three drink like a low-calorie energy drink, with a blend of fruit flavorings and noticeable functional bite. The sweetener blend definitely is effective, with minimal aftertaste..

The three flavors both combine wellwith the base flavor of the drink and provide a decent amount of variety for the consumer.  Grapefruit Ginger provides notes of citrus and spice, Passionfruit Peach provides sweet tropical fruit flavor, and Watermelon has a pretty clean watermelon flavor.  

When it comes to branding and packaging, Plant Press has a colorful and clean aesthetic. Each flavor gets its own background color (yellow, orange, or red) and matte finish label. There are three core areas to the front of the label, including the top area which has the Plant Press logo (a simple outlined rectangle with “PLANT” and “PRESS” in it), a center callout for “Clean Caffeine” and “electrolytes + vitamins,” and a bottom area that has the flavor name and a callout for 20 calories. 

While this is pleasing to the eye, we feel as though a more direct statement of what this product is would be helpful as “Clean Caffeine” could be any number of things - a coffee, a tea, or anything that uses caffeine derived from natural sources..  As mentioned earlier, the product avoids using “energy drink,” which we still feel is the easiest way to describe this – although we certainly get the reasons that one might want to avoid it.  One thing that might help would be to make “sparkling” more prominent as this would help the consumer quickly get a better sense of what’s inside the can.

In the end, Plant Press is a pretty compelling alternative to traditional energy drinks. Instead of going full zero calorie formulation, they’ve gone with an approach that’s probably low enough for most consumers while achieving flavor that beats most, if not all, of the zero calorie products out there.  We still think there’s some room for development of the branding and messaging, but it’s a very strong first effort.