Beverage Digest hosted its annual Future Smarts conference last December in New York City. The day’s lineup of speakers included leaders from three of the largest US beverage companies — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper. The executives sat for interviews on stage with Beverage Digest Editor & Publisher Duane Stanford. Here are highlights as the speakers looked ahead to 2025...

As promised, Suja Life has relaunched former PepsiCo brand Slice as a functional “healthy” soda with prebiotics and probiotics. Suja enters a gut soda market lead by brands such as Olipop and Poppi and replete with incoming competition. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo also are expected to enter the segment this year. Launched by PepsiCo in 1984 as a fruit flavored soda with 10% juice, Slice was...

Coca-Cola will launch an “evolved” formula for its Costa ready-to-drink canned coffee at Target nationally by March. The restage includes a name change from “Iced Coffee Latte” to “Iced Coffee.” Costa and Target have agreed to a multi-year program to support the product, according to Coca-Cola. Direct store delivery for the reformulated product will be piloted with Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling on the West Coast and Great Lakes regions. Costa Iced Coffees will ...

Retailers Amazon, Walmart, Costco Rose as Shoppers Sought Value, Online Convenience

Shares of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper all underperformed the S&P 500 Index and the Consumer Staples Index in 2024. As shown in the table below, Coca-Cola was the only one of the three companies to post a gain. Top-3 energy drink makers...

Consumers cut back on ready-to-drink coffee at US retail during the first nine months of this year, according to BD data. The category, led by a joint venture between PepsiCo and Starbucks, declined by volume (-2.6%) and dollars (-3.2%), as shown in the Coffee Green Sheet with this story. Pricing for the category was down slightly by -0.6%. PepsiCo’s Starbucks portfolio posted a -9.1% volume sales decline as dollar sales dropped -6.3% as pricing rose +2.7%. Frappuccino, which accounted for more than a ...

Keurig Dr Pepper has added Snapple Zero Sugar Peach Tea to fountain drink dispensers at 7-Eleven, Speedway, and Stripes convenience stores nationwide.

Dunkin’ has added a limited-edition Peppermint Mocha flavor to its line of Dunkin’ Spiked Iced Coffees. The canned hard coffee drink, which contains 6% alcohol by volume, will be available at grocery and package stores across 28 states during the holiday season....