New Beverage Showdown 23 - Semi-finals: Fresh Fizz Sodas

Speaker 1 [00:14] Uh, moving on to our next semi-finalist, we have Yoni Schwartz, who is the president of Fresh Fizz Sodas. Come on up. Hello, OK, you can grab that one and just please keep it on your timer.

Yoni Schwartz [00:28] Good afternoon. I'm Yoni Schwartz. I'm the, uh, founder of Fresh Fizz Sodas. Fresh Fizz sodas are a line of 100% natural sodas sweetened with honey and flavored with fresh herbs and spices. What do I mean flavored with fresh herbs? I mean our lemon mint flavor. We use actual mint leaves, not natural flavors, not extracts. Our jalapeno lime, we use real chopped jalapeno peppers, and our hibiscus ginger, we use real, uh, fresh ginger. Not only do we use these ingredients, that's pretty much all that's in there. The, uh, the ingredient panel on these products is, uh, just water, juice, honey, and the, the fresh herbs and spices. So the label is super clean. Very clean, so clean, in fact, I like to say it doesn't have any buzzwords. It's not prebiotic or probiotic because the, uh, the better for you soda category right now is very focused on function. It's prebiotic, probiotic, gut health, fiber, adaptogenic, neurotropic, awagandha, mushrooms. There's, there's always something else happening in the product. Fresh fizz sodas are not about that. They're about quality, taste, flavor, things that you can only get from using real ingredients and, uh, no sugar substitutes sweetened with honey, so. Um, we are on the shelf at Arawan. We are on Amazon Freshruit sodas.com, and we're out here in the, in the fridges. Please, uh, try it out. Enjoy, and let me know if you like it or if you don't like it. I wanna know about it. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [01:56] Well done. Uh, David, another soda brand, um, this one very much focused on the flavor. What are your initial thoughts on Fresh

Speaker 3 [02:05] Fizz? Uh, my initial thoughts is, um, yes, it is very on trend utilizing spices and herbs, uh, for, for the category. I do think, um, it, it just, it, it needs a little bit of work on the visual identity system, um, you know, the, the brand name doesn't really come through, uh, which is very important if you're trying to build a

Speaker 1 [02:27] brand. Allison, did you get to try these products? And if so, what do you think of Fresh Fizzes variety?

Speaker 4 [02:33] Yeah, I think I agree. It's, it's hard to see what the logo is or what the brand is. It's really small, the fresh fizz up top, I think, you know, I've personally played around with jalapeno while formulating, and it's a very hard, um, product to work with. It's very volatile, and so I, I don't know if I could like drink the whole can as far as that goes, but I, and I think the sugar was a little bit high, but I think that the idea around it is really great.

Speaker 1 [02:58] Simplicity here seems to be the goal even though these are uh more nuanced flavors, but Brittany, um, again, consumers, are they looking for flavors like you see in Fresh Frizz's lineup?

Speaker 5 [03:08] Totally. I think it has a big bold flavor. I love the packaging, how that's actually front and center, um, to the prior comments though the branding needs to be the visual key though and really the, the come through. Um, I thought it was great though. I really did.

Speaker 1 [03:24] Jackie, you know, this notion of just using real ingredients and, you know, uh, delivering on flavor seems to be something that we're also seeing, you know, a more of an interest in, um, in terms of fresh fizz and their just general business strategy, do you agree with that approach? Do you see that as being, having a long runway for growth?

Speaker 6 [03:40] Yeah, I think the, the flavors definitely came through. They were very bold and I think that's why some of us thought that we wouldn't be able to drink the whole thing. It was almost too much flavor, so we're thinking, I mean, maybe it's a great mixer, you know, I could put tequila in that jalapeno lime and be delicious cocktail, um, but yeah, I think there's a space for it, um, just tweaking some things and he could have a great product.

Speaker 1 [04:02] Outstanding all right.