The following is transcript of Beverage Digest's podcast, The Breeze, Episode 2. Duane Stanford invites beverage industry expert (and former Beverage Digest publisher) John Sicher to discuss the lemon-lime category's past, present and future. PepsiCo is starting from scratch and creating a brand new lemon-lime soda: Starry. After dominating the segment for thirty years, Sprite now has a new competitor. Do we have a legitimate lemon-lime war again? Duane Stanford invites beverage industry expert (and former Beverage Digest publisher) John Sicher to discuss the lemon-lime category's past, present and future.

During an interview at Future Smarts last month, a Wall Street analyst said he would have been laughed off the stage several years ago had he predicted US carbonated soft drink pricing growth of +15% without a troubling pullback in volume. No one is laughing now.
             Consumer acceptance of significant pricing growth across major beverage categories has shocked even the most seasoned industry watchers. Despite the price escalation, CSD volumes declined at a manageable -1.4% last year. Energy drink makers, who are generally slower to boost prices in a booming category with lots of new entrants, raised pricing by +6.3% and still added +3.5% more volume.
While Sports drink category ...

Consumers cut their carbonated soft drink consumption at US retail during the first nine months of 2022 relative to the same period in 2021. Strong pricing growth of +14% for the total CSD category drove dollar sales almost +12% higher, according to BD data. Volume declined -2.0% (decelerating from -2.2% for the first six months of this year), reflecting a...

Carbonated soft drink (CSD) pricing at US retail for the first six months of 2022 jumped more than +13.0%, and that was before pricing increases that were added this month by...

You’ll note an extreme focus on carbonated soft drink pricing in today’s newsletter. That’s because there is no shortage of news, and soft drinks remain a massive and profitable category for US manufacturers and retailers.

On page 7, bottlers discuss the recent Memorial Day holiday weekend and how soda consumers and retailers are responding to higher list prices and fewer “hot” promotional deals. BD shares what we learned from an informal survey. The news so far is positive, even if precarious.

On page 10, we publish our annual soft drink concentrate pricing review, which reflects the inflationary environment facing the industry and its stakeholders. Increases for major soda brands like Coca- Cola, PepsiCo, and Dr Pepper as high as...

Private label carbonated soft drinks (CSD) at US retail were unable to make progress in the first quarter of this year even though shoppers are facing unprecedented inflation at the grocery. As shown in the table, Private label CSD dollar sales barely grew in a category that was up more than...

The return to restaurants in 2021, following pandemic lockdowns the year before, helped generate good news as you will see in today’s special issue and BD’s newly released Fact Book 27th Edition.

All major beverage categories, including carbonated soft drinks, posted...