While still early, there is growing evidence that leveraging established brands for new alcohol products is a winning way to break through tired or saturated categories.

As you will read in today’s issue, demand for PepsiCo’s Hard Mtn Dew appears to be outpacing the company’s ability to add distribution (story below). That’s a nice place to be and likely not by accident. PepsiCo and partner Boston Beer have launched in states where non-alcoholic Dew is already a strong seller, so there is built-in demand.

This week’s issue covers important discussions swirling within the US bottling systems for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. One story relates to Coke’s new alcohol beverage strategy (pg. 6). The other involves to PepsiCo’s distribution strategy for Gatorade (pg. 2). Make sure not to miss them. Separately, recent product launches including Coca-Cola Starlight (pg. 15) and Nitro Pepsi (pg. 16) got me thinking about how important it is for snack and beverage brands to reach young consumers. As a beverage writer, I am fortunate to have a built-in focus group...

The New York Times recently published a story under the headline, “Beverages With Benefits: Do They Really Work?” The piece addressed what it described as the “flourishing” functional beverage market, made up of everything from prebiotic sodas for gut health to nootropics for brain acuity. The newspaper rightly points out that such products are an extension of the health supplement market that has generated profits for decades. As this functional beverage market grows, entrepreneurs and large beverage companies alike have been...

One of the big themes BD will mine this year is the new aggressive approach by non-alcoholic beverage powerhouses to find revenue growth in the alcohol beverage market. What appeared last year to be an experiment is quickly looking like strategy.

Of particular interest now are the divergent paths taken by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Monster Beverage, spurred by the fragmented nature of the US alcohol distribution system.

Coke has quickly expanded its Topo Chico licensing test started a year ago with Molson Coors. That deal now includes Simply, a household name in the chilled juice segment. And Coke has partnered with a second brewer and spirits company, Constellation Brands, to create a canned cocktail headlined by Fresca. In both cases, distribution will be handled by the brewers’ networks.

PepsiCo’s go-to-market strategy couldn’t be more different than Coke’s. The company has opted to build its own alcohol distribution and merchandising network around a flavored malt beverage called Hard Mtn Dew. (Be sure to check out our Blue Cloud map published last month and available only to subscribers.) Boston Beer will develop and produce the drink under license from PepsiCo.

Monster Beverage has chosen yet another path....

When we cancelled our family trip to San Diego last year, I didn’t imagine that we might have to consider postponing again this year. Yet here we are, facing a new Covid-19 variant. We aren’t cancelling our trip, though. We fly out Monday. Experts guided us all that this pandemic would present ups and downs. They said variants of Covid could turn the virus into an annual consideration like the flu. This is becoming the reality. As we watch the spread of Omicron, experts see evidence in South Africa that the variant isn’t hitting people as hard, as measured by the number ...

Walmart recently made interesting changes to its grocery app in the wild west of ecommerce. Previously, grocery orders for curbside pickup or courier delivery were transacted separately from e-commerce orders shipped by traditional means like FedEx. Now, Walmart has stitched those silos into a single experience for grocery shoppers that encourages them to become agnostic about ...

With our Dec. 6 Future Smarts conference a little more than a month away, this is a great time to share a few of the themes we will explore this year. We are in a pivotal reset period for the global beverage industry following the extreme disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. To help sort it out, we’ve assembled an exceptional lineup of speakers who are well-placed to evaluate the implications of the past two years and share insight on what to expect. They include leaders ...

One couldn’t help noting the array of hard seltzer introductions shown last week at the National Beer Wholesalers Association meeting.

Sonic Hard Seltzer takes cues from the fast-food chain’s non-alcoholic limeade fountain of- ferings. Reality TV chef Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Seltzer, with flavors like Berry Inferno and Knicker Twist, touts the drink as ...

This week’s issue touches on a couple of important beverage industry themes that we’re paying a lot of attention to these days. The first is the blurring of product and distribution lines between non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverage categories. Driving this trend is a need by scaled players in both ...

We’ve added a new category to the Beverage Digest Awards. Best Powdered Functional Beverage. In January, I wrote about the emergence of single-serve powdered beverages and one analyst’s view that the category could become...