Here’s what the entrepreneur Tal Shub imagines: A patron walks into a café holding a stylish, re-usable cup that includes a built-in lid and retractable straw. The consumer inserts their cup upside down into a port that resembles a shallow automobile cup holder. In seconds, the port.......this company offers a window into a beverage frontier where entrepreneurs are leveraging consumer concern over plastic waste and looking beyond the bottle to create new commercial opportunities...

Late last year, Coca-Cola Bottling United opened a new $86 million sales and distribution center in the metro Atlanta town of Union City, just south of Coca-Cola headquarters. The 456,000-sq-ft facility serves 10,000 retail customers in metro Atlanta, covering 2.8 million consumers. As many as 750 employees will manage the warehousing, picking and delivery of 36 million beverage cases per year. Manual order picking has been converted to an automated process built by System Logistics. Marketed as “Vertique,” the system is “an organized, more ergonomic and efficient sequential operation, with less stress on associates and not as labor intensive,” according to Coke United (click HERE for a video of the system). The Union City facility is among a series of investments by Coke United to modernize its distribution system since acquiring new territory, including Coke’s flagship metro Atlanta market in 2017. Last month, Coke United broke ground for construction of a $60 million, 300,000-sq-ft warehouse and sales center in the South Georgia town of Tifton, about an hour’s drive from the Georgia-Florida line. The facility will consolidate inventory from eight older and smaller facilities into a single automated order picking location when it opens by the end of 2021. Birmingham, Alabama-based Coke United, with franchise roots dating back to 1902, covers territory in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The company is Coca-Cola’s fourth largest US franchise bottler (after Coke Consolidated, Reyes Holdings and Arca’s Coke Southwest Beverages). United distributes 11% of Coca-Cola system bottle/can carbonated soft drink volume in US. Last week, Coke United CEO John Sherman and East Region VP Mike Succo joined officials at the new Union City center for a grand opening attended by Coca-Cola North America President Jim Dinkins. BD sat down for an interview with Sherman.

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Reed’s, which made its name selling high-intensity ginger beers, is looking to capitalize on a much bigger and faster-growing category: ginger ale. The company is readying ...

In October, Simon Lowden was named PepsiCo’s first chief sustainability officer. The job made sense for Lowden, whose 23 years at PepsiCo has included leadership posts in food, beverage and international. Lowden’s most recent prior role was as president of PepsiCo Global Foods. Previous roles have included chief marketing officer for PepsiCo North America Beverages and before that PepsiCo International.

This story is a recap of highlights from his Future Smarts conference appearance Dec. 9 in New York.

7-Eleven hosted its second-annual “Brands With Heart” event to get an early and organized look at the crowded pipeline of US food and beverage startups. BD spoke to Harkness to better understand 7-Eleven’s strategy around emerging brands.

On October 29, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper announced a joint US initiative organized by the American Beverage Association to reduce plastic waste from bottles. The program, called “Every Bottle Back,” will incorporate expertise from the World Wildlife Fund, the Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners, according to the ABA. A key pillar of the initiative will be to reduce the use of new plastic for beverage packaging. Progress toward that goal will be measured with a tracking tool being developed by the World Wildlife Fund. BD wanted to know more about the tool, so we spoke to WWF Materials Lead Alix Grabowski.

BD caught up with Celsius and A Shoc during the recent NACS show in Atlanta. Celsius CEO John Fieldly said the company has embarked on aggressive plans to...

In 2015, UK-based Seedlip pioneered a now small but fast-growing category of distilled non-alcoholic drinks that mimic spirits. Sometimes referred to as “alternative spirits,” these drinks have tapped into the growing consumer desire for low- or no-alcohol bar choices. The alternative spirits category is far less defined in the US, which is why startup Ritual Zero Proof caught our attention after its launch last month. According to co-founder and crime novelist Marcus Sakey, Ritual soon will announce “significant” funding from a strategic investor. We reached out to Sakey to learn more about the category. The following interview is edited for clarity and space...