BevNET Magazine January/February 2024

The First Drop

The Monster at the Podium

UFC Middleweight Champion Sean Strickland sat behind a bottle of Monster Energy last week while he preached a sermon of intolerance and hate. Even worse, it appears, Monster plans to continue to stand behind Strickland.

For those of you who aren’t up on your cage fighting, Strickland is a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter whose thoughts and opinions are delivered with the same violence as his kicks and punches. He gladly wears the mantle of the MAGA dream, bashing through spoken and posted insults enemies like working women, immigrants, liberals, gays, and anyone who doesn’t fit within his limited worldview.

Strickland is also one of several MMA fighters who are sponsored by Monster Energy – a company that has never shied from an edgy aura itself, but one that has never taken too strong a political stance in any situation.

Strickland, on the other hand, has a strong political stance on just about everything, and that includes the LGBTQ community.

In early 2022, Strickland tweeted, “If I had a gay son I would think I failed as a man to create such weakness.”

Shortly before the fight, when asked by a reporter about that remark, he replied, “You’re a weak f—ing man.”

He then went on to expand his tirade to the transgender community.

“Ten years ago, to be trans, was a mental f—-ing illness,” Strickland brayed, going on to attack the reporter. “And now all of a sudden people like you have weaseled your way into the world. You are an infection, you are the definition of weakness. Everything that is wrong with the world is because of f–king you.

“The world is not saying, you know what, you’re right, chicks have dicks. The world is saying, you know what, there are two genders. I don’t want my kids being taught about who they could fuck in school … being taught about their sexual preference. This guy is an enemy.”

Now, it’s no secret that UFC is the sporting equivalent of a Trump rally – to the point where president and CEO Dana White has effectively turned UFC fight cards into Trump rallies by walking into the arena with the former president, Kid Rock, and Tucker Carlson. The right wing flaps so hard internally that even when the UFC struck a sponsorship deal with AnheuserBusch for its struggling Bud Light brand – a recent punching

By Jeffrey Klineman

bag for conservatives over its brief marketing relationship with transgender celebrity Dylan Mulvaney – Strickland didn’t get in trouble for swearing he would continue to attack the beer company, tweeting that “women are born not made, transgenders are mentally ill, and society should never accept this as normal.”

After the fight – which Strickland lost, I am glad to report –White flew to the defense of those who might have criticized the fighter, saying the organization promotes free speech and expression from its fighters (note that in previous interviews, White has said he doesn’t want politics from the podium, a view that has clearly changed). The UFC clearly knows its audience!

But what about Monster? Didn’t anyone at the company realize they were backing a guy who has admitted to going through, he said, “this weird neo-Nazi, white supremacist phase when I was younger, and I got kicked out of school for, like, hate crimes, all this crazy sh*t.”

Maybe Monster feels compassion for Strickland, who has said that as a child he was abused by his father and believes he has PTSD. After the “crazy sh-t,” the fight game turned Strickland’s life around, he said. Now he only attacks reporters, the LGBTQ community, Palestinian UFC fighters, “cucks,” women, Democrats, Native Americans, Globalists, and anyone else out there who may be perceived as “woke,” verbally and on social media. Quite a turnaround. Instead of perpetuating crimes against them himself, he – jokingly, of course – encourages his followers to do it.

When I heard about Strickland’s statements, I reached out to Monster CEO Rodney Sacks – who had actually name-checked Strickland during an investor meeting that same week as a “great champion” – to see if the company was considering dropping him. Here’s the terse response I received from Monster spokesman Sam Pontrelli.

“Monster sponsors thousands of athletes all over the world. As such, every once in a while, comments made by one individual will be in contrast to the values of the company. We have no other comment.”

Thanks, guys. Here’s my response to Monster’s response: Your company’s got a hate-monger on your payroll. You can do better. I have no other comment.

By Barry

Guarded Optimism

On the heels of December’s wildly entertaining BevNET Live, I can say that things are looking up for the industry. It wasn’t just the 800 strong that attended the event and the hundreds who followed our live stream, that led me to come away with that conclusion, but the breadth of those attendees. We had the great fortune to welcome back our regular standard-bearers, those who have attended almost all of the 20 plus conferences. They come for the knowledge, but just as importantly, to see old friends. But there was a larger portion of the attendees, I’ll call them the new breed, who were bold in their intentions, and fearless in launching the next wave of beverages, who had me even more excited. Yes, I’m considered old – being 75 qualifies me for that – but I was struck how young they were.

If you sampled from our coolers, you knew there was no shortage of variety in the product cohort. There was a strong representation of the stalwart: Soda is back in full force, which I’m excited to see. I was impressed with the taste of all these offerings. Energy was back in full force, and juice variations were everywhere, as well as exotic formulations. Water and

its variations continue to grow unabated. Low- to zero-calorie drinks continue to thrive, but with a new focus, taste. Over the past few years, I’ve commented in my columns that the tastes have not caught up to the efficacy and functionality promised by the new brands. This new generation is getting closer to achieving that holy grail, great taste and oh so good for you.

This all sets the tone for 2024. In my initial conversations with marketers over the past few weeks, I was happy to hear mostly optimism from the ranks. Money is coming in, distributors are taking in new brands, and retailers are expanding their offerings. Hope springs eternal right now, but it’s too early in the year to know if the reality will match the optimism.

We will have a better sense of the battle between reality and optimism in a few weeks, when Expo West Is here. It is the bellwether of the state of the industry. If we all come away from Anaheim feeling as positive about the industry as I hear now in conversation, it’ll be a banner year indeed. Hopefully we can all celebrate our success.

By Gerry Khermouch

Can’t Beat Them? Buy Them

A couple of years ago, seeing an unmet need, Glazer’s Beer & Beverage decided to step up on the non-alcoholic beverage distribution front in north Texas by acquiring a couple of smaller houses and promising an upgrade to a truly full-service operation. That meant stepping outside its beer footprint in the state, a move that likely made its core suppliers uncomfortable, as it meant Glazer’s was now competing, at least with NAs, against their franchised partners in Dallas/Fort Worth. So it was an experiment that drew both enthusiasm and some degree of skepticism. But the new house, named Jumbo after a key brand in a predecessor company of Glazer’s, soon onboarded an impressive array of fast-growing brands, including those energy growth stars Celsius and C4, and had suppliers believing that maybe there finally was a committed and well-resourced unaligned operation available to them in the area if they weren’t aligned with a strategic like Keurig Dr Pepper, one with extensive reach into both large-format and small-format retailers.

Sadly, that experiment was ending just as I was writing this column. Celsius and C4 exited nearly simultaneously to the Pepsi and KDP systems, respectively, and more recently Congo Brands abruptly shifted its Prime and Alani brands elsewhere. As a standalone NA house without the support of an established beer business, that left Jumbo without the necessary scale to support its ambitions. Rather than regress to sparse coverage, Glazer’s shut the doors effective Feb. 29. Apparently, the Congo move was the last straw.

Longtime watchers of the beverage business may say, ‘that’s how the business works and Glazer’s should have expected this.’ NAs lack the franchise protection of alcoholic brands, but Glazer’s knows that by virtue of working NAs in its 12 beer markets, which it will continue to do. Besides, NA-only houses in other markets like Big Geyser in New York, B&E Juice in Connecticut and Intrastate in Detroit have managed to weather this cycle of arrivals and departures without the stabilizing effect of franchised soft drink brands.

Still, it’s a troubling pattern. After all, these unaligned distributors represent a key pipeline for new innovation to get to retail. At this point, wholesalers have no reason to believe the heartfelt assertions of new-brand owners that they’re here for the long haul. (A few actually seem to be, but wholesalers have no reason to believe any of them.) Their contractual terms are getting increasingly stiffer as they factor in the accelerating speed with which igniting brands are grabbed by strategics. Sadly, history shows that even brands that have been reliable, trustworthy partners are liable to chisel the wholesalers on the way out, if not on the buyouts then on ancillary items like billbacks and inventory. Meanwhile, few of these strategic exits prove to be a platform for an enduring brand. Look at the biggest exits of the past decade and a half: Vitaminwater essentially is inert within the Coca-Cola portfolio (though its sibling Smartwater has fared better), Bai has proved an embarrassment to the KDP team that inherited it from a prior regime and Body Armor almost immediately moved into decline following Coke’s pickup, though it’s still early days and the soda giant is making an earnest effort to get it back on track. Many end up killed outright.

Currently, the industry is exceedingly excited by a new class of gut pops, led by Olipop and Poppi, that seem to be having success poaching drinkers directly from the ranks of CSD users, despite a much higher retail price. Olipop isn’t a DSD play, but Poppi moves through the ranks of many of the same wholesalers who’ve helped

ignite brands like Monster, Bang, Celsius, C4 and Prime, and they’re expressing palpable anxiety to me that it might be the next one to flee. Ditto Congo’s Prime and Alani brands, though Congo has proved to be an unpredictable partner, as Jumbo discovered, and most distributors don’t seem to be baking a long-term relationship into their calculations.

When one takes a longer perspective, one can wonder what all this activity means. As noted earlier, it’s hard to think of many strategic acquisitions that have kept those brands on their disruptive course. Would those brands have gotten further on their own? As family-operated businesses, AriZona Iced Tea and Milo’s Sweet Tea seem to have maintained their special sauce, though AriZona has struggled to make a dent in the healthier side of the segment. Red Bull remains a dazzling growth engine, even through the demise of its founder Dietrich Mateschitz. And Monster Energy may be aligned with Coke, but by continuing to operate independently, generally in control of its marketing and production decisions, it remains a coveted source of margin and growth to its retail partners. Its acquisition of the craft beer collection once called CanArchy (now Monster Brewing) has now given it a distribution system independent of Coke’s, for both alcohol and NA brands, that offers a new avenue for experimentation.

Back to the strategics: they rarely seem able to continue the momentum of their pickups, as the stream of impairment charges they often quietly take attests. I continue to believe that most go into these deals believing in good faith that they can find a way to be good stewards going forward, devising clever ways to incent the founders to stick around a while and to keep the operations out of their bureaucratic maw. But despite good intentions, I believe, it almost never pans out quite that way. Inevitably, the founders move on, compromises are made to the recipes and inertia creeps in. Is that such a terrible outcome for the acquirers, though? A new brand that might have caused severe disruption to the acquirer’s core brands has been neutralized, unwittingly or not. Certainly, for the publicly traded strategics, Wall Street doesn’t seem to exact any great punishment for these misfires.

Hence that concern about the fate of Olipop or Poppi: the risk that they may pose a genuine threat to the core CSD business of Coke, Pepsi and KDP certainly baits those companies to pay – or overpay – for those brands. That way they can either ride the wave or neutralize it. It should be worth a billion or two to avert any threat these brands pose.

Is this an area that the empowered trust busters in the Biden administration should be monitoring? There might be a germ of evidence, assuming the president wins another term. It materialized recently when the Federal Trade Commission moved on some of the major tech players over their investments in generative AI companies and major cloud service providers. “Companies are deploying a range of strategies in developing and using AI, including pursuing partnerships and direct investments with AI developers to get access to key technologies and inputs needed for AI development,” the agency said, and it wants to see what competitive impact this is having. It doesn’t seem like a huge leap to apply that reasoning to other categories of goods and services, especially if the AI investigation bears fruit. Meanwhile, there’s no reason to expect the cycle to stop, at continued cost to the wholesalers who help foster beverage innovation.

Longtime beverage-watcher Gerry Khermouch is executive editor of Beverage Business Insights, a twice-weekly e-newsletter covering the nonalcoholic beverage sector.

Nutpods Sells to Kroger-Backed MPearlRock

Nutpods, the plant-based coffee creamer brand founded in 2013 by Madeline Haydon, was acquired by Kroger-backed investment group MPearlRock, helmed by former Keurig CEO Brian Kelley, in January. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Having emerged as an early entrant in the non-dairy creamer category, Nutpods bridged the gap from e-commerce exclusive product to develop into a national player with a presence in 15,000 retail stores, and is the top-selling plant-based creamer within natural retail, according to the brand. The company took on investment from VMG Partners in 2019, and has since expanded into ready-to-drink products and collaborations with brands like Chamberlain Coffee.

“We are proud to join MPearlRock in the next stage of our brand’s evolution. Brian’s background with leading global consumer brands

Diageo, Diddy Settle Discrimination Suit

After nearly nine months of an ugly public legal battle, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Diageo settled their dispute over allegations from the music mogul that the brands he collaborated with Diageo on— Cîroc Vodka and DeLeon Tequila— received worse treatment because of his race.

The parties “have now agreed to resolve all disputes between them,” read a statement from Diageo and Combs, issued January 16. “Mr. Combs has withdrawn all of his allegations about Diageo and will voluntarily dismiss his lawsuits against Diageo with prejudice.”

The statement continued that Diageo and Combs have “no ongoing business relationship, either with respect to Cîroc Vodka or DeLeón Tequila, which Diageo now solely owns.” Diageo currently and always has fully owned Cîroc, and the group previously partnered with Combs on brand marketing.

The battle began last May when a complaint was filed by Combs Wines and Spirits, a company owned by Combs, in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan against Diageo’s North American business. Among accusations of racial discrimination, the lawsuit also said Diageo has put more resources into the portfolio’s other tequilas, including fellow celebrity George Clooney’s Casamigos, which Diageo acquired in 2017 for up to $1 billion.

The filing stated that Combs Wines and Spirits planned to seek “billions of dollars in damages due to Diageo’s neglect and breaches” in a separate lawsuit.

Diageo responded in June by severing ties with Combs, ending the two parties’ 15-year business relationship and claiming that the allegations were false and defamatory. Diageo asked the judge to send Combs’ lawsuit to arbitration or dismiss the complaint entirely.

coupled with MPearlRock’s capabilities and resources makes them an ideal growth partner for us,” Haydon said in a statement. “We are excited to reach more consumers in new channels and new product verticals who allow us to become part of their daily coffee ritual.”

The deal marks an auspicious debut for New York-based asset management group MPearlRock, a partnership between PearlRock Partners (a division of Kroger) and New York-based asset management group MidOcean Partners that’s described as “a strategic collaboration to introduce emerging consumer packaged goods (“CPG”) brands to new customers.”

Announced a week prior to the nutpods deal, the new entity aims to pair MidOcean’s investment expertise with consumer brands and “Kroger’s deep retail and CPG experience” through the leveraging of retail data science and insights its from in-house analytics team, 84.51°

“We have been following nutpods for the past few years and have been impressed with Madeline’s vision and disciplined approach and how she built strong customer loyalty by developing and marketing a truly superior product,” said Kelley.

He continued: “nutpods is a remarkable entrepreneurial success story that exemplifies the businesses and management teams with whom we seek to partner. We are thrilled to support the next chapter in nutpods’ evolution and are delighted to work with Madeline and her team to accelerate growth and provide the resources to best position the brand to deliver unique, healthy products to loyal and new customers.”

The mogul scored a temporary legal victory when the Supreme Court of New York denied Diageo’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and its motion to force the case into arbitration. In October, Diageo responded by countersuing, and said Combs leveraged allegations of “racial animus” to extort the firm.

While not named as a cause for settlement, the saga was made even more complicated after the spirits company used the sexual assault lawsuits against the music mogul to bolster its case.

Combs is often credited with illustrating the power of celebrity backing to boost spirit sales. In 2007, Diageo enlisted Combs to develop its Cîroc brand, at the time a low-ranked vodka. After Combs took charge of the brand’s strategic marketing, Cîroc ascended to a top seller within a few years, growing from a 50,000-case-per-year vodka into nearly 2 million-per-year. It has since released several product variations, including ready-to-drink line CÎROC Vodka Spritz.

The success of that collaboration spurred Diageo to form a joint venture with Combs in 2014 and to purchase DeLeón, a boutique high-end tequila brand.

Non-Alc Retailer Boisson Sets Course for Wholesale Expansion

In the thick of Dry January, leading nonalc retailer Boisson announced an expansion of its national wholesale business.

Since launching in NYC in 2021, Boisson has been an influential voice within a new generation of businesses growing the burgeoning no-and-low alcohol segment. After expanding to eight storefronts and growing its e-commerce program, the company will leverage new partnerships with KeHe and craft wine and spirits distributor LibDib to cement a national footprint in wholesale distribution.

The announcement follows Boisson’s $5 million bridge funding round landed in September from Convivialité Ventures, the VC arm of Pernod Ricard, and Connect Ventures. That funding coincided with the appointment of a new CEO, Sheetal Aiyer, to further the company’s long-term ambitions of becoming a three-pronged business: retailer, e-commerce site and wholesale distributor. But it looks like distribution will be the company’s next big frontier, with plans to grow its wholesale business by 70% in 2025.

The new push is being helmed by recent hire, Jill Sites, vice president of wholesale, whose resume includes national sales director for Betty Buzz as well as stints at Breakthru Beverage and Redwood Brands. Boisson aims to build on its consumer insights to offer retailers and on-premise more insight into the emerging category.

“Existing spirits and beer distributor networks are phenomenal – I worked for one of the best for almost a decade – but most are just starting to figure out NA, while Boisson brings years of 100% dedication to the category,” said Sites. “We know that we are small, but we are mighty and we see this as the perfect moment to give NA a seat at the big table of industry wholesale distribution.”

The national account strategy with KeHe and LibDib involves “curation and consolidation,” said Sites, acting as the single point of contact with distributors and taking care of paperwork, discounts, pitching to customers and attending shows, in addition to handling shipping and purchase orders.

In September, Nick Bodkins, founder

and president of Boisson, described the company’s next stage of growth as furthering its “verticalized approach to the market” and leveraging Boisson’s flexibility outside of the three-tier system to continue to sell direct to consumers, into bars and restaurants, and specialty grocery.

Boisson has no plans to move away from its retail platforms, which Sites said is the company’s most important channel. But taking a shot at a larger share of the food and beverage market will include expanding to more national retailers, grocery, bottle shops, and entertainment venues. In order to be successful in a low margin, high volume channel like wholesale, the company needs to drive it, said Sites.

“We are never going to beat big BevAlc at what they do, they’re great at it,” said Sites. “But we are looking to work at specialty grocery, natural grocery and fill in holes where we can.”

At independent liquor and some big liquor chains, Boisson is aiming to curate non-alc sets and increase education about non-alc. The company has a more curated and specific wholesale portfolio than the selection in Boisson stores. As certain products grow within the category, they may move to the three-tier system with a larger wholesaler, said Sites, and Boisson will rotate new products in.

Distribution will focus on key growth markets, including New York, California and soon to be Miami, where Boisson has physical retail locations.

Expanding further into retail with specific non-alc sets and finding inroads into the bar have been priorities for non-alc brands as they look for growth. Non-alc beverage sales were about $510 million in the 52week period ending July 29, up 31.2% versus a year ago, marking the category’s largest year of absolute dollar growth in five years, according to NIQ data.

Oatly Launches Two New Milks

After several years focused primarily on innovating in the food space, Swedish plant-based products maker Oatly is getting back to basics with two new oat milk launches: Unsweetened Oatmilk and Super Basic Oatmilk.

Initially announced during the company’s Q3 earnings last year and launched nationwide in January, Unsweetened and Super Basic add better-for-you options to the brand’s flagship oat milk line. Unsweetened contains zero grams of sugar and 40 calories per serving, while Super Basic – true to its name – simplifies the ingredient panel by removing all oils and emulsifiers, containing only water, oats, sea salt and citrus fiber.

Each SKU is available in 64 oz. cartons and will retail in line with the rest of Oatly’s plant milk portfolio, priced around $5.99.

According to Oatly’s North America president, Mike Messersmith, the company had been limited in its ability to innovate within the oat milk space by its myriad sup -

SYSTM Foods Acquires Humm Kombucha

SYSTM Foods, a joint venture between SYSTM Brands and CPG investment firm GroundForce Capital, acquired Oregon-based Humm Kombucha in January. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2009, Humm produces a variety of low- and zero-sugar kombuchas and functional beverages, including a line of probiotic sodas and seltzers. The brand will join a portfolio of other SYSTM acquisitions, including Chameleon Organic Coffee and functional beverage brand REBBL.

The acquisition is another step in SYSTM’s “strategic objective of creating a leading functional beverage platform” that aligns with its better-for-you CPG portfolio and bolsters its position in refrigerated RTDs, per a press release issued this morning.

“Today’s consumers are seeking healthier, lower-sugar beverage options with functional advantages, ranging from digestive health to immune support, that don’t sacrifice taste or quality,” said SYSTM Foods CEO Andy Fath-

ply chain and manufacturing hurdles. With the brand now confident in its ability to produce and deliver beverages throughout the U.S., Oatly is once again focusing on innovating in its flagship category.

“They [the new oat milks] both represent abilities for us to go deeper with existing customers, and also expand our overall distribution footprint and bring more delicious plant-based oat milk products to more people,” Messersmith said.

Both innovations were responses to consumer feedback, he said. While the brand has received some media criticism in the past over the sugar and oil content of its plant milks, the Unsweetened and Super Basic varieties are a reaction to requests from its existing customers. In the case of Super Basic, Messersmith said the company saw a number of videos on social media of consumers making their own homemade oat milk and recognized an opportunity to produce a more convenient alternative.

“I’ve had friends that showed me their own homemade oat milk, made with cheesecloth and a sieve, and I’m just like, ‘We can do that better for you! It will be easier and taste better,’” he said.

Messersmith said the launch was timed for January in order to be ready for retailer resets, adding that the company’s commercial team made a “concerted effort” to ensure the innovations are available in as many chains as possible at launch. The drinks are currently rolling out now nationwide in retailers including Albertsons, Publix, Sprouts and Target stores.

Additionally, Messersmith said Super Basic will be available in Whole Foods, Meijer and Shop Rite accounts and Unsweetened will add Kroger, Stop and Shop and H-E-B stores among others.

ollahi in the release. “HUMM provides SYSTM Foods with unique capabilities and adds another incredible brand to our portfolio.”

According to Circana, Humm’s refrigerated kombucha products grew dollar sales by 18.5% to $23.4 million in the 52-weeks ending October 8, 2023 in U.S. MULO and c-store retail accounts. That data does not include ecommerce sales or all product lines sold by the brand.

Acid League Closes Online Store to Focus on International Retail Growth

Condiment and beverage brand Acid League is closing its online store at the end of January, pivoting to focus on the expansion of its international retail line.

In a statement posted on its website, the Toronto-based company said maintaining an online inventory of 17 different products – each SKU requiring its own rare and unique ingredients – while simultaneously expanding an international retail line of 28 other products became “totally unsustainable.”

According to co-founder and chief product officer Allan Mai, Acid League agonized over the decision for months, as the brand’s ecommerce site is “such a pure expression of who we are.” In the end, the brand’s decision was rooted in economics.

Acid League’s online products became too expensive to produce due to factors like inflation and updated iOS terms, Mai said, which compounded in such a way that was unsustainable. Though the brand’s director-to-consumer business was smaller than its retail side, the use of specialized ingredients made its management more complex.

“Ultimately, a business needs to scale at one point in order to have enough money to reinvest into the business and continue its mission,” Mai explained to Nosh in an email. “We were over-indexed on putting out so many products that it got in the

way of us developing the distribution that would allow more people to access our offerings.”

Additionally, consumers expressed frustration over difficulty getting their hands on Acid League’s products, either because they were often sold out online or because retail assortment was inconsistent. To offset the closing of its online store, Mai said the company will expand its brick-andmortar distribution throughout North America.

“Regrettably, we know that for some people right now the online store is the only place they can buy our products, and we are gutted [by] this reality, but our hope is that by focusing on getting into more retailers we’ll be able to show up where they grocery shop soon enough,” he said.

Launched in 2020, Acid League produces a portfolio of hot sauces, mayos, ketchup, BBQ sauces, salad dressings, cooking sauces, beverages and, most recently, time-saving shortcut sauces. In 2022, the Torontobased brand closed a $6.2 funding round aimed at supporting expansion into new product categories and strengthening its manufacturing and marketing efforts. To date, the company has raised approximately $11.5 million, reporting revenues upwards of $10 million.

There is still hope for the online store. According to Mai, the team initially con-

sidered simply raising prices on its existing site before quickly pivoting to envision what “DTC 2.0” will look like for the company. As for Acid League’s online-exclusive products, the brand hopes several community favorites will eventually make their way into retail.

Acid League isn’t the only DTC-born brand eliminating its online store in favor of sales in the physical realm: In December, tahini brand Soom shut down its digital storefront as DTC accounted for just 5% of the brand’s revenue, but 24% of its warehouse’s workload consisted of packing orders.

But Soom isn’t ditching omnichannel just yet; the products will remain available on Amazon, Thrive Market and Misfits Market.

Though Acid League plans to dive back into innovation eventually, its current focus is on retail, where supply chains are more predictable and the company can better keep up with consumer demand. Currently, the brand’s products are available at retailers such as Harmons, Sprouts and Whole Foods Market, among others.

“At the end of the day, we decided we had enough products to share, and although we’ll get back to developing new products, that we should focus in the immediate future on making our products as easy to grab [as possible] for more people,” said Mai.

Whole Foods Updates Forager and Local Brand Designations

Whole Foods Market has modified the definition of its Forager, Local and Global brand designations, bringing increased clarity between the former two emerging brand-focused programs.

The move follows a slate of organizational structure updates from the Amazon-owned natural retailer, which redrew its regional map in April.

To now qualify as a Forager brand, a supplier must sell its products in about 50 stores or less. During a supplier summit presentation earlier this month, Lee Robinson, VP of Merchandising for Grocery, Refrigerated and Frozen, explained that local Forager teams will also complete an assessment of the brand prior to the final decision.

Forager brands benefit from reduced fees and waived expenses on retail costs like free fills and promotional spend. Brands continuing in the Forager program will receive a notice from Whole Foods by the end of the year and the local forager will remain the supplier’s primary point of contact.

Whole Foods will not accept requests for a brand to be designated as a Forager brand. Any brand that is sold in more than 50 stores will now be deemed a Global brand and the cost of maintaining their spot on shelf will follow Whole Foods’ standard fee structure.

Brands tagged as Local have also been given updated guidance: the definition now covers companies growing, raising or manufacturing their products within the state the product is being sold, or within 275 miles from the store. The company’s headquarters will also have to meet those requirements.

“We are committed to working with you on your growth path and will provide the right support along the way,” Robinson said.

Local brands will now automatically join the Forager program. Previously, brands selling in three Whole Foods regions or less could be considered a Forager brand while suppliers selling in more than four regions were considered Global brands.

By evolving the definition of a local brand, Whole Foods is also hoping to shift the focus from suppliers to products. According to Robinson, these changes were made in response to feedback garnered by its recent supplier Sentiment Survey.

“We’re also evolving our Local marketing to enhance the immersive local experience for our customers,” Robinson said. “We are reimagining how Local shows up through signage and other marketing efforts to connect customers to Local products available in new and more impactful ways.”

Danone to Divest Horizon Organic, Wallaby to Private Equity Firm growth priorities.”

Danone has found a buyer for its premium dairy brands Horizon Organic and Wallaby, announcing in January it has agreed to sell the businesses to investment firm Platinum Equity.

The French multinational corporation previously said in January 2023 that it intended to divest its U.S. organic dairy portfolio review and asset rotation program, which had been announced in March 2022.

In a February 2023 report, the company said Horizon and Wallaby represented around 3% of Danone’s total revenues and “had a dilutive impact on Danone’s like-forlike sales growth and recurring operating margin in 2022.” However, in a press release, Danone CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique said the brands “fell outside” its “priority growth areas.”

“Today marks an important milestone in delivering this commitment while giving the Horizon Organic and Wallaby businesses the opportunity to thrive under new leadership,” de Saint-Affrique stated. “This sale, once completed, will allow us to concentrate further on our current portfolio of strong, health-focused brands and reinvest in our

Danone will keep a non-consolidated minority stake in Horizon. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A pioneer in organic dairy products, Horizon Organic launched its first USDA-certified organic milk in 1991 and today markets a full line of products including creamers, yogurt, cheese and butter. Danone acquired the brand in 2016 as part of its $12.5 billion purchase of WhiteWave Foods.

According to Circana, retail dollar sales of Horizon’s white milk were up 4.4% to over $665.8 million in the 52-week period ending October 8, 2023. Its ready-to-drink milk beverages were down -2.7% to $119.3 million and yogurts/yogurt drinks rose 63.5% to $8.1 million. That data is not representative of Horizon’s full line of products.

Wallaby Organic is an “Australian-inspired Greek-style yogurt” brand which produces a variety of flavored yogurts including whole milk and lowfat offerings.

Platinum Equity is a California-based private equity firm. According to its website, it manages a portfolio of assets worth over $47 billion across numerous

industries, including European sweet biscuits maker Biscuit International, seafood provider Iberconsa, pet products brand Petmate, and the Detroit Pistons NBA franchise; Pistons owner Tom Gores serves as chairman and CEO of the firm.

“Horizon Organic is an iconic name in dairy that is well recognized and beloved by consumers,” Platinum Equity co-president Louis Samson said in a press release. “The brand has earned a reputation for quality and innovation that is unmatched in the industry. We appreciate Danone’s confidence in our ability to build on that legacy and support Horizon Organic’s growth as a standalone company.”

In the release, Platinum Equity managing director Adam Cooper stated that Horizon Organic will operate as an independent business.

“We have a lot of experience supporting food and beverage businesses,” Cooper said. “We look forward to partnering with Horizon Organic’s management team to ensure a seamless transition and chart a path for continued growth and expansion.”

Popping Into New Ownership: Legacy Popcorn Maker Acquired By Private Equity

The popcorn category got a shake-up in January as Weaver Holdings, the largest manufacturer of popcorn in the U.S., was acquired by AUA Private Equity Partners for an undisclosed amount.

According to a press release, West Palm Beach-based AUA aims to inject “efficiency” into Weaver and take the fourthgeneration, family-owned business “to the next level” by adding capital resources and bringing executive experience to its board of directors.

“We are tapping into our bench of operating partners to enact meaningful change at the Company,” said VP of AUA Private Equity Charlie DeVries in a press release statement. “We’ve added Mike Tracy, formerly the SVP of Supply Chain at Conagra, and Ted Schouten, formerly the president of TruFood Manufacturing to the board of directors. Both individuals will help oversee the investment and augment governance.”

The announcement did not include details on any immediate changes to Weaver’s business or manufacturing structure.

AUA currently manages other CPG food manufacturers including Epic Baking Company, specialty food holding company Gourmet Culinary Partners, and Latinx branded and private-label dessert maker Raymundo’s. It has closed partnerships over the years with other CPG producers like Pittsburgh-based TruFood, Indulge Desserts Holdings and frozen Asian appetizer maker Water Lilies Fine Asian Cuisine.

Sales of ready-to-eat popcorn/caramel corn reached $2.1 billion in the 52-week period ending November 10, growing +9.3% year-over-year, according to Circana omnichannel data. Micro -

wave popcorn sales rose 2.6% and kernel popcorn increased 8% during the same period.

Founded in 1928, Van Buren, Indiana-based Weaver is a private label manufacturer and co-packer of ready-to-eat popcorn, popping corn popcorn snacks and microwave popcorn for national brands and foodservice clients. The company also makes the Pop Weaver brand popcorn.

The popcorn category continues to rise for private label brands with sales up for microwave (2.3%) and kernel ((17.8%) in the last 52 weeks, according to Circana data. Yet, Pop Weaver’s microwave popcorn sales were down -6%, with volumes down -7.4%.

It has been a year of change for Weaver, which agreed to sell two co-packing facilities to The Hershey Company in April. The Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Whitestown, Indiana facilities manufactured the SkinnyPop brand, owned by the chocolate and confectionery giant.

Hershey’s chief supply chain officer Jason Reiman said in a statement at the time it was part of the company’s plan to “continue to evolve our supply chain, making significant investments in the size, scale and capabilities of our network, improving resiliency” by controlling its manufacturing and prioritizing its snacking portfolio.

“By building on the foundation that the Weaver family put in place, AUA Private Equity will allow us to expand our capabilities operationally and increase the pace of product innovation,” Weaver CEO Jason Kashman said in a statement. “The resources that AUA Private Equity brings will ultimately benefit our customers and associates at Weaver.”

Craft’s 2023 Through the Numbers

The final Circana beer report for 2023 has arrived and it’s time to see how the category and its segments fared in scans, starting with a look at craft.

Of note: Circana includes craft brands owned by large manufacturers in its craft data set, and its definition of “craft” differs from that of the Brewers Association (BA).

Craft finished 2023 with dollar sales down -0.9%, with more than $4.71 billion in sales year-to-date (YTD) through December 31 in multi-outlet plus convenience channels. The decline was in spite of an average price per case increase of $1.50, to $42.62. The decline was also significantly smaller than the -4.4% YoY decline recorded in 2022 and -4.6% decline in 2021.

By comparison, total beer dollar sales increased +2.6%, while the average price per case increased by $1.28, to $29.89.

Craft volume, measured by case sales, declined -4.4%, with a loss of more than 5 million cases. The decline was significantly larger than the -1.7% decline recorded by total beer, but smaller than the -8.6% craft volume decline recorded in 2022.

In the final four weeks of 2023, craft dollar sales declined -1.3% year-overyear (YoY) and volume declined -2.6%. In the last 12 weeks, dollar sales were down -1.5% and volume was down -3%.

Craft’s share of total beer dollars in 2023 declined -0.37 share points, to 10.3%, continuing to fall after declining -0.61 share points in 2022, to 10.63%. Craft’s share of total beer volume declined -0.2 share points, to 7.22%. Flavored malt beverages (FMBs), which increased volume share +0.93 share

points in 2023, to 7.12%, are now nipping at the heels of craft for the fourth largest share of beer volume.

In the convenience channel – the strongest growth channel for beer –craft dollar sales increased +4.5%, to more than $1.63 billion. Overall beer growth in the channel was even larger (+5.2%).

Four beer segments outpaced overall beer in the channel: Imports (+15.1%), FMBs (+19.1%), hard cider (+7.6%) and non-alcoholic (+28.2%). Domestic subpremium (+1.6%) and domestic super premium (+0.2%) were also in the black, while dollar sales for domestic premium (-1.6%), hard seltzer (-6.2%) and assorted (-73.9%) all declined.

Imports recorded the largest increase in share of beer dollar sales, claiming an additional 2.27 share points for 26.19% share, just below No. 1 shareholder domestic premiums (-1.8 share points, to 26.38%).

Craft volume was also in the black, increasing +0.7% versus 2022, above channel trends for overall beer (-0.4%).

The average price per case of craft beer increased by $1.70, to $46.51, slightly above total beer price increases (+$1.67, to $31.66). Craft is the second most expensive beer segment in c-stores behind hard cider (+$2.78, to $50.56), passing assorted, which declined its average case price by $17, to $45.67.

Craft’s share of total beer sales in the channel declined -0.04 share points, to 6.31%. However, craft’s share of c-store beer volume increased +0.05 share points, to 4.3%. Still, the segment has a small share of the pie, with less share than the majority of beer segments oth-

How Other Segments Fared in Overall Scans

Five beer segments recorded dollar sales growth in 2023 in multi-outlet plus convenience channels: Imports (+11.8%), domestic sub-premiums (+2%), FMBs (+17%), hard cider (+1.7%) and non-alcoholic (NA) beer (+29.3%).

Three segments also gained share of total beer dollars:

• Imports (+1.96 share points, to 24.05%);

• FMBs (+1.17 share points, to 9.53%);

• NA (+0.16 share points, to 0.79%).

Of the five beer segments to record declines, craft had the smallest dollar sales loss YoY, followed by domestic premi-

er than hard cider (0.36%), NA (0.15%) and assorted (less than 0.01%).

In grocery, craft dollar sales declined -3.3%, to nearly $2.6 billion. Craft’s share of total beer sales in grocery declined -0.43 share points, to 19.63%, falling to the No. 3 largest share in the channel. Imports overtook craft for the No. 2 spot, increasing dollar sales +6.4% in the channel, to nearly $2.73 billion, and share of beer dollars +1.49 share points, to 20.61%. Domestic premiums maintained the No. 1 spot, despite a -1.8% decline in dollar sales, with 23.08% share of beer dollars in the channel.

Craft volume took a large hit in grocery, declining -6.3%, marking a loss of more than 4.2 million cases. Price per case in the channel increased by $1.29, to $41.49. Craft is the third most expensive beer segment in grocery, behind hard cider (+$1.47 YoY, to $48.39) and assorted (+$1.89, to $46.76).

Craft case share in grocery declined by -0.29 share points, to 13.92%, maintaining the third largest share of beer volume in the channel behind domestic premiums (-0.41 share points, to 30.45% share) and imports (+1.42 share points, to 17.95%). Domestic sub-premium isn’t too far behind, increasing its own share by 0.23 share points in 2023, to 13.33%.

ums (-1.2%), domestic super premiums (-1.5%), hard seltzer (-13.6%) and assorted (-20.2%).

Imports (+7.9%), FMBs (+13%) and NA (+19.7%) were the only segments to increase volume in 2023 versus 2022. Assorted beer recorded the largest decline (-23.4%), followed by hard seltzers (-18.2%), domestic premium (-4.9%), craft (-4.4%), domestic super premium (-3.6%) and hard cider (-2.3%).

Imports recorded the largest beer volume share gain (+1.76 share points, to 19.65%), while hard seltzer recorded the largest share loss (-1.21 share points, to 6%).

New Belgium and Bell’s Claim 9 Craft Top 30 Spots

Molson Coors’ Blue Moon Belgian White is still the No. 1 craft brand in Circana-tracked channels, despite continued losses. The brand recorded a -3.2% decline in dollar sales, to nearly $267.9 million, and -6.9% decline in volume in 2023. It was the third consecutive year of dollar sales decline for Blue Moon, following losses in 2022 (-1.3%) and 2021 (-8.5%).

The No. 2 best-selling craft brand was once again Kirinowned New Belgium Brewing’s Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA, which increased dollar sales +12.4%, to $171.37 million, and volume +7.9%. Voodoo Ranger Juice Force hazy imperial IPA was No. 3 after only its second year in the market, increasing dollar sales +75.4%, to nearly $128.36 million, and volume +75.1%.

No. 4 Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA (+7.5%) and No. 9 Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) Elysian Space Dust IPA (+0.3%) were the only other top 10 craft brands to record dollar sales gains YoY.

The rest of the top 10 craft brands performed as follows:

• Boston Beer Company’s Samuel Adams Seasonal (-4.9%, to nearly $99.25 million);

• Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (-2.3%, to $87.34 million);

• Shiner Bock (-1.4%, to nearly $85.75 million);

• Molson Coors’ Leinenkugel’s Shandy: (-0.6%, to nearly $82.6 million);

• Heineken’s Lagunitas IPA (-11.9%, to nearly $70.85 million).

Five other New Belgium brands made Circana’s top 30 craft brands list: No. 15 New Belgium Voodoo Ranger Fruit Force hazy IPA (launched at the start of 2023); No. 18 Voodoo Ranger Hoppy Pack (+13% YoY); No. 19 Fat Tire Amber Ale (-17.7%); No. 21 Voodoo Ranger Juice Haze IPA (-12.3%); No. 25 Voodoo Ranger IPA (-14.6%).

Kirin-owned Bell’s Brewery also had two entries in the top 30: No. 14 Bell’s Two Hearted (+5.6%) and No. 30 Bell’s Seasonal (+11.2%).

Only four other top 30 craft brands recorded YoY dollar sales gains: No. 11 A-B’s Kona Big Wave (+41.7%, to $67 million); No. 17 Monster-owned Cigar City Jai Alai IPA (+1.1%,, to $39.8 million); No. 24 A-B’s Goose Island Tropical Beer Hug double IPA (+90.3%, to $28.6 million); and No. 27 A-B’s Wick-

ed Weed Pernicious IPA (+8.5%, to nearly $25.7 million).

Nine of the top 30 recorded YoY dollar sales declines:

• No. 12 Firestone Walker 805 (-3.8%, to $64.3 million);

• No. 13 Founders All Day IPA (-6.2%, to $62.1 million);

• No. 16 Samuel Adams Boston Lager (-3.5%, $46.5 million);

• No. 20 Blue Moon Light Sky Citrus Wheat (-22%, to $38.6 million);

• No. 22 Lagunitas Little Sumpin Sumpin (-15.9%, to $33.6 million);

• No. 23 Samuel Adams Variety Pack (-1.1%, to $32.8 million);

• No. 26 Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA (-3.6%, to $28.3 million);

• No. 28 Sierra Nevada Big Little Thing imperial IPA (-10.8%, to $23.5 million);

• No. 29 Goose Island IPA (-17.3%, to $23.2 million).

Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA finished 2023 maintaining the No. 1 craft spot in c-stores by dollar sales, increasing dollar sales +15.3%, to nearly $96.6 million. Blue Moon Belgian White was No. 2, with dollar sales declining -3.1% in the channel, to nearly $94.7 million.

Blue Moon remains the No. 1 craft brand by volume, despite a -6.8% decline in case sales. Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA increased case sales +9.9% YoY.

Four craft brands made the top 30 in c-stores that weren’t in the top 30 overall:

• Rhinegeist Truth IPA (+8.6%, to $11.7 million)

• Georgetown Bodhizafa IPA (+29.4%, to $9.1 million);

• 10 Barrel Pub Lager (+29.4%, to $8.48 million);

• And Tilray-owned Sweetwater 420 extra pale ale (-9.6%, to nearly $7.8 million).

In grocery, Blue Moon was the No. 1 craft brand by dollar sales (-2.9%, to $122.7 million), followed by Samuel Adams Seasonal (-5.3%, to $59.4 million) and Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA (+5.8%, to $56.2 million).

Tilray-owned Shock Top Belgian White Ale (formerly owned by A-B) was the only yet-to-be-mentioned brand to make the top 30 list in grocery, ranking No. 27, despite a -23.5% decline in dollar sales, to $12.1 million.

5 Athletic Non-Alc Offerings Among Top 25 Craft Growth Brands of 2023

Seven of the top 25 craft growth brands in 2023 were NA offerings, according to BWC.

Five of those brands belong to dedicated NA brewer Athletic Brewing Company, including Run Wild IPA (No. 5 growth brand and No. 25 overall craft brand), Free Wave Hazy IPA (No. 10), Upside Dawn Golden (No. 12), Cerveza (No. 22), Athletic Lite (No. 25).

Athletic capped a big year as the No. 15 craft brand family in sales, which increased +80.6%, as volume measured

in case sales increased +79.2%. Athletic was the No. 2 craft growth leader in 2023, increasing sales by more than $35.4 million, to $79.3 million, trailing only New Belgium Brewing, which increased sales +18.2%, to $514.8 million, adding more than $79.3 million in sales last year.

Of the top craft brand families, Athletic gained the most category weighted distribution (CWD) last year (+9.4%, to 27.4%). New Belgium was second (+3.7%, to 72.6%).

The other NA beers to make the cut as top growth brands in 2023 were Boston Beer’s Samuel Adams Just the Haze IPA (No. 15) and Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher assorted pack (No. 18).

Bump Williams Consulting: 2023 a ‘Mixed Bag’ Year for Craft

Bump Williams Consulting (BWC) described 2023 as a “mixed bag” for the overall craft segment across channels.

In NIQ-tracked off-premise channels (total U.S. xAOC plus liquor plus convenience), craft dollar sales edged close to flat, declining -0.3%, while volume dropped -3.8%, according to the firm, citing NIQ data ending December 30. Craft dollar sales in convenience increased +6.5%, while grocery (-1.4%) and liquor outlets (-5.6%) both declined.

The declines of mainstream craft brands accelerated (-7.5%) in 2023 compared to 2022 (-4.9%), the firm reported. National (+5.8%) and regional (+2.6%) posted dollar sales growth. However, local craft continued to decline, -2.9% in 2023, following declines of -7.1% in 2022 and -4.7% in 2021.

Just two regions eked out craft dollar sales growth: the Mountain region (+0.1%) and New England (+0.4%). The biggest sales declines occurred in the West North Central region (-4%), East North Central (-3.3%) and the Pacific region (-2.4%).

The number of craft brands and SKUs declined -4.4% and -4.9%, respectively. There were 19,722 craft brands at the end of 2023, down from the 20,637 craft brands in 2022, and nearly on par with the 19,718 craft brands in 2021.

The number of SKUs dropped to 24,796, well below the 26,079 in 2022 and 25,238 in 2021.

The number of new craft brands and SKUs in 2023 declined -37% and -35.8%, respectively, compared to 2022. The 2,018 craft brands in 2023 was down from 3,202 in 2022 and 3,022 in 2021. The 2,632 craft SKUs in 2023 fell from 4,099 in 2022 and 3,776 in 2021.

BWC founder Bump Williams noted that beer shelf space remained “stagnant, with existing space instead being reallocated across segments.”

Imports, FMBs and NA beer gained shelf space across all channels, while craft and cider singles gobbled up space in convenience.

ENERGY

GURU Organic Energy has expanded its punch lineup in the U.S. with the introduction of Peach Mango Punch. Each 12 oz. can contains 140mg of natural caffeine and has just 50 calories. The new flavor is available online via the brand’s website for $29.99 per 12-pack or $56.99 per 24-pack. For more information, visit guruenergy.com/en-us.

First teased last year, Florida-based functional beverage maker Odyssey has unveiled its latest innovation, the 222 line. As its name suggests, the new collection features 222mg of caffeine derived from green tea paired with the brand’s proprietary blend of Lion’s Mane and Cordyceps. Available in four flavors at launch – Blue Raspberry, Cherry Lime, Strawberry Watermelon and Pineapple Mango – the energy drinks are crafted with fruit juice concentrate and naturally sweetened. Odyssey’s new 222 line is available via the brand’s website for $41.99 per 12-pack of 12 oz. cans. For more information, visit odysseyelixir.com.

G FUEL is looking to take consumers back in time with the release of its new Atari 2600+ collection. The G FUEL Atari 2600+ Collector’s box ($99.99), which resembles the vintage gaming console, includes a 40-serving tub of the themed flavor, an Atari x CX40+ joystick tumbler, an Atari keychain, and three 15-serving tubs of some of the console’s most-played cartridges: Asteroids (sour grape), Centipede (strawberry, pineapple and coconut) and Pong (blue raspberry). Consumers can also purchase a standalone Atari 2600+ 40-serving tub for $35.99. For more information, visit gfuel.com.

CANNABIS

Boston-based cannabis drink producer KELIA has introduced its newest signature flavor, Watermelon Coconut. Each 12 oz. can of the beverage, crafted with watermelon juice and coconut water, contains 5mg of THC and also has added electrolytes. Watermelon Coconut joins KELIA’s other signature flavors, Pineapple Jalapeño and Grapefruit Ginger. The beverage is available at select dispensaries across Massachusetts. For more information, visit keliadrink.com.

SPORTS DRINKS

BodyArmor has announced the launch of its own zero-sugar sports drink. The new line uses only natural sweeteners, no carbohydrates and more potassium than Gatorade’s zero-sugar variety. BodyArmor Zero Sugar will be available in four flavors (Fruit Punch, Lemon Lime, Orange and Cherry Lime) and will come in 16 oz., 6-packs of 20 oz., and 28 oz. formats (except Cherry Lime, which is only available in 16 oz.). For more information, visit drinkbodyarmor.com.

PRIME Hydration – which recently sold its billionth bottle – has launched a new Cherry Freeze flavor featuring a color-changing label. Like the rest of the brand’s hydration beverages, the new flavor features BCAAS and B Vitamins and has just 20 calories. The “cold-activated” bottle features a label that starts with red at the bottom and fades to white, but when cold, the very top changes to a light blue. PRIME’s Cherry Freeze is currently only available for purchase in-store. For more information, visit drinkprime.com.

NON-ALC

Just in time for Dry January, readyto-drink mocktail brand Mockly has released its newest SKU, Madame L’Orange. The new elixir is the first launch in the brand’s new low-sugar, low-cal “Second Line” and features tasting notes of smoked orange, allspice, golden honey and ginger. Mockly’s Madame L’Orange is available for purchase online for $15.99 per 4-pack of 12 oz. cans. For more information, visit drinkmockly.com.

Hiyo has unveiled Strawberry Guava as its newest non-alc social tonic flavor. The new offering features functional ingredients lemon balm and passion flower, which have been shown to help alleviate anxiety and depression, the brand claims. Hiyo Strawberry Guava is available exclusively through the brand’s website for $44.99 per 12-pack of 12 oz. cans. For more information, visit drinkhiyo.com.

DAIRY

Seattle-based dairy producer Darigold has unveiled its newest brand, Belle. The new line of 28 oz. dairy-based coffee creamers is made with just five simple ingredients including real cream. Available in four flavors – Vanilla, Sweet Cream, Hazelnut Latte and Caramel – the lactose-free creamers are now rolling out to grocery stores and other food markets across the Northwest. For more information, visit darigoldbelle. com.

Organic Valley’s latest innovation, Family First Milk, seeks to give families a new way to add DHA Omega 3 into their day. Offered in Whole Milk and 2% Reduced Fat Milk varieties, the milk provides 50mg of DHA Omega 3 per serving as well as 12 essential nutrients. Organic Valley’s Family First Milk will appear on retailer shelves nationwide beginning this month with a SRP of $5.99-$6.99 per 64 oz. carton. For more information, visit ethicallysourced.organicvalley.coop.

California-based Straus Family Creamery – known for its sustainable and regenerative carbon farming practices – has launched organic low fat kefirs in Plain and Blueberry flavors. Both varieties boast 11 different beneficial live and active cultures and deliver 20% of the recommended daily value of calcium. Straus Family Creamery’s Organic Lowfat Kefirs are now available at select Whole Foods Markets and independent retailers across Northern California with a SRP of $6.49 per quart. For more information, visit strausfamilycreamery.com.

JUICE

Juice giant Tropicana has introduced “Tropcn,” a new limited-edition packaging removing “AI” from its name to celebrate the brand’s natural ingredients and highlight the fact there’s nothing artificial inside. The brand debuted the new packaging earlier this week at the largest consumer electronics event, CES 2024. For those who were unable to attend CES, Tropicana has hidden bottles

of “Tropcn” across participating Kroger banners nationwide. For more information, visit tropicana.com.

Uncle Matt’s is encouraging consumers to “support your sport” with the launch of its new Ultimate Athlete Juice Shots. The 2 oz. pre-workout shots are crafted with a blend of beets, orange juice, coconut water, lemon and ginger. According to the brand, a recent study shows that beets boost athletic performance and reduce muscle soreness. Uncle Matt’s Ultimate Athlete Juice Shots are available on the brand’s website for $24 per 6-pack. For more information, visit unclematts. com.

Capitalizing on the growing consumer demand for premium juices, Ocean Spray has unveiled its new Revl Fruits brand. Available in four flavors – Boldly Cran, Tart Cherry, Berry Wild and Truly Tropical – the product is crafted with 100% juice and a splash of coconut water and contains no added sugar. Revl Fruits is available on Amazon for $4 to $8 per 32. Oz. Tetra Pak carton depending on the variety. For more information, visit revlfruits.com.

SPARKLING WATER

New year, new flavors! Aura Bora has announced its first flavor of the month for 2024: Cherry Key Lime. As its name suggests, the new dessert-inspired sparkling water variety is crafted with bing cherries and key limes, resulting in the brand’s “sweetest flavor yet.” Though currently out of stock, Aura Bora’s Cherry Key Lime will soon be available for purchase via the brand’s website for $33 per 12-pack of 12 oz. cans. For more information, visit aurabora.com.

Continuing on its quest to help consumers murder their thirst, Liquid Death has announced the launch of three new sparkling water flavors: Cherry Obituary, Squeezed to Death and Grave Fruit. Like the rest of the brand’s sparkling water portfolio, the new varieties have 20 calories and 4g of sugar (from agave) per 19.2 oz. tallboy can. For more information, visit liquiddeath.com.

SPOTLIGHT CATEGORY

Coconut Milk and RTD Coconut Milk

Sure, we’ve gone from Soy to Almond when it comes to dairy substitutes, but what comes next? For a long time, it looked like Oat Milk was going to be the big winner, but growth slowed to a pedestrian 7% last year, although Oatly and Chobani outpaced the category. Look at Coconut Milk and there’s a bigger growth story emerging – one that features many of the same labels established in the alt-milk category (Silk, So Delicious, Rebbl, Califia). With Starbucks bringing a flavored RTD Coconut Milk to the masses, the training wheels are on – will it manifest in the dairy aisle as well as the to-go cooler?

RTD COCONUT MILK

TOPLINE CATEGORY VOLUME

NONFLAVORED STILL WATER

CANNED/BOTTLED TEA

FLAVORED STILL WATER

RFG KOMBUCHA

CHANNEL CHECK

ENERGY DRINKS

FLAVORED SELTZER

SPORTS DRINKS

CRAFT BEER

BevNET, NOSH and Taste Radio will be interviewing, broadcasting and filming throughout the event. If you’re attending or exhibiting, let’s connect! Reach out at news@bevnet.com, news@nosh.com, or ask@tasteradio.com

The venue may have changed from Santa Monica to Marina Del Rey, but the 2023 edition of BevNET’s annual winter conference in Los Angeles brought the expected high levels of energy and excitement across the two day event in December.

A wide range of topics were discussed but the recurring theme among beverage business entrepreneurs, investors, experts, distributors and retailers presenting on-stage was how to succeed during a difficult environment to raise new investment and how to maintain growth with less.

In a panel discussion that kicked off the first day, a diverse group that included Buster Houston, VP of national merchandising at Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions; Mike Burgmaier, the managing director at Whipstitch Capital; Shannon Deary-Bell, president and CEO of Nor-Cal Beverage Company; and Jessica Pratt, chief sales officer at Pop & Bottle, deliberated over the difficulties emerging brands had in 2023 weathering the “semi-recessionary” climate for raising capital.

Despite the high inflationary environment, the group noted, some of the beverage industry’s recent unicorns – like Essentia and Celsius – emerged after playing the long game and building businesses that endured economic downturns.

All the panelists agreed that pricing will play a key role in determining success as 2022’s runaway inflation continues to dim. Buster Houston, VP of national merchandising at Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions, said that the retailer has identified driving cost savings relative to each category, rather than macroeconomic factors, as key to winning. Successful operators, he added, understand that price decisions should be made both by looking at individual SKUs and also from a distribution standpoint, region-by-region.

Later in day, Nick Giannuzzi, founder and managing partner of CPG focused law firm Giannuzzi Lewendon, and Dr. Andrew Abraham, founder and CEO of Orgain, took the stage to discuss the strategy around Humble Growth, the $312 million fund they co-founded this year.

With Peter Rahal, founder of RxBar, in place as managing partner and the acumen of CPG veterans Mike Repole, Gary Hirshberg and Jared Smith, Humble Growth is targeting opportunities to finance and grow the next generation of early to mid-stage brands.

Abraham highlighted that gross margin, and projections for improvements as the brand scales, remain fundamental to securing investment.

“Unfortunately, I think we need to get to a place where that path [to profitability] becomes tangible earlier,” Giannuzzi said. “We see that a little bit, especially now that investors are hesitant – they’re careful, they’re being very strategic with their money.”

As the team works to build its investment portfolio, Giannuzzi and Abraham emphasized that they are seeking to develop strong relationships with the leaders of those businesses so that they can trust one another’s advice, understand both side’s decision making

process, and avoid invoking things like blocking rights down the line.

Closing out Day One, Hella Cocktail Co. co-founder Jomaree Pinkard talked about his work as CEO and managing director of Pronghorn (he left the company later in December) which has invested about $200 million to empower growth among Black spirits brand founders. Pinkard explained how the investment group is building a template for category disruption among underrepresented groups.

For the first time, BevNET Live also built out a space for emerging brands to talk to and pitch their drinks to retailers throughout both days of the event. The Retailer One-On-One Meetings allowed beverage entrepreneurs to talk to executives, buyers and distributors from the Albertsons Company as well as the L.A. Vibrations team and DSD distributor HiTouch Libations.

Day Two got rolling with a presentation from SPINS Markets Insights Director Scott Dicker who explained what the consumer data analytics company has seen over the last year with disruption and how that is building momentum in certain arenas of the beverage industry.

“We’ve been saying this for years that the life cycle of innovation and brands has been speeding up, and it’s really at warp speed now,” Dicker said. “So, brands enter the market and make a big splash, and on the flip side it’s easier to be forgotten if you’re not executing right away.”

As far as more specific, product-level trends go, Dicker pointed to an embrace of “global” flavors helping to drive trial and discovery as American consumers look for more Asian, Mexican and other international cuisines in their food and drinks.

Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman, named BevNET’s Person of the Year for 2022 for his work bringing Just Ice Tea to the market, sat down with Editor-in-Chief Jeff Klineman to discuss the lessons he has learned launching a beverage brand for a second time. Although the industry has changed since Goldman launched Honest Tea over 20 years ago, Just Tea has been able to build an early following and is already leaning into the new age of beverage marketing to capitalize on its momentum.

“It’s impressive to see what social media can create,” he said, answering a question about influencer marketing in CPG. “Yet, just as quickly as it can create, it can undo it. What [Just Tea] is about is authenticity. That never goes out of style.”

For those seeking exit opportunities, a panel composed of Caroline Levy, founder of consumer advisory firm CLAS; GroundForce Capital co-founder and managing partner Mark Rampolla; and Nutter partner Jeremy Halpern had some advice for brands looking to stand out as attractive prospects for a sale.

Rampolla suggested that the strategic beverage buyers today need to see at least $250 million in revenue and existing profitability in order to make an acquisition. He said that what has long been missing between the larger players and small startups is a serious

“middle market;” yet, that market may be beginning to emerge as multi-brand management groups can successfully house numerous brands in the $50 million to $250 million range. Rampolla pointed to Suja’s acquisition of Vive and how Tropicana now operates multiple brands as examples of how these middle market businesses could serve as buyers for rising startups.

Closing out the event, Los Angeles-based hemp-derived THC company Calexeco took home the New Beverage Showdown trophy in a tight contest that included five other finalists including another hemp-infused option Magic Cactus, “clean caffeine” energy drink Plant Press, Spade sparkling premium soda, Erva Brew Co. yerba mate and Fang recovery tonic.

Nosh Live 2023 Recap

Nosh Live came to its new home in Marina Del Rey, California on November 30 with a blockbuster list of presenters discussing the most pressing issues in consumer packaged food. Industry leaders, entrepreneurs and investors brought their experience to the stage giving attendees valuable insight into how to succeed in the rapidly evolving natural food industry.

In the first panel discussion of the day, investor Wayne Wu of VMG Partners, Whole Foods VP of dry grocery Dan Epley, and two brand executives with That’s It – chief sales officer Katie Eshuys and The Good Crisp Company co-founder and CEO Matt Parry – came to the stage talking about the post-pandemic era of CPG.

While there continues to be strong innovation in the industry, Epley told the crowd, brands that stick to their core, rather than branching out into numerous categories, tend to have stronger foundations that can lead to longevity in retail.

“There’s lots of times where brands get excited about that shiny thing, and that distracts them from the core and if they miss the core then the whole thing falls down,” he said.

Looking ahead, the panelists also discussed the impact of high pricing on the industry, including lower volume sales. With an expectation that the worst of inflation is likely now passed, Wu said that retailers are beginning to push for lower prices but brands should focus on moving units instead of increasing dollar sales.

“I think we’re gonna see the strength of brands come to light by next summer,” Wu said. “If you’re seeing brands still truly growing on a same-store velocity basis. And so we’re really focused on looking at unit growth.”

Later in the day, Kevin Lee, co-founder of plant-based ramen startup Immi, discussed how the company bootstrapped until closing a $3.8 million seed round in 2021 and a $10 million Series A round earlier this year. Lee leveraged his background in venture capital and sitting on the other side of the table to help the brand raise new capital.

“I wouldn’t say that I am particularly proud of having to raise money,” he said. “Who wants to give up equity? It’s not really a great thing.”

But Lee did concede that it is oftentimes a natural path to increasing a brand’s growth and trajectory as a disruptor in an established category.

Discussions around raising capital and the power of disruption continued into the second day of Nosh Live. Two of the founders and general partners of the Family Fund came to the event to talk about the newly formed $25 million fund’s investment strategy in early stage brands.

Launched in March by former SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly, ForceBrands founder Josh Wand and Vital Proteins founder Kurt Seidensticker, the Family Fund writes “smaller checks” to founder-led brands in the late seed to early series A stage investment rounds. Kelly and Wand emphasized that the true value is in operating as a sounding board and support system for CPG leaders.

“How do we help founder performance? A lot of founder performance is on the personal side. It’s the mental, it’s emotional, it’s the spiritual, it’s helping them if they’re having massive personal challenges,” Kelly said.

Part of its role is coaching founders through the fundraising process which Wand called a “scary” and “lonely journey” rife with rejection. The Family Fund not only attempts to ease that burden on new entrepreneurs to the food industry but help set realistic goals that will build to success.

In another panel discussion, a trio of successful entrepreneurs and founders presented their respective experiences navigating the aforementioned “lonely” journey of leading a brand. Nature’s Bakery CMO Vilma Livas, Partake Foods founder and CEO Denise Woodard, and Arnulfo Ventura, former CEO Alter Eco Foods and Beanfields, talked about the lessons they learned from working within large CPG companies and how that shaped their leadership strategies at smaller brands.

Being flexible and easily adapting to change was a common theme among the leaders.

“Keep questioning…It’s never static,” said Livas, who managed brands at Nestlé for over nine years. “It’s something that you have to continue to iterate as the needs of your business and the complexity of your business change.”

Describing it as working from within or “a game of double dutch,” Ventura said that “before you want to come in and add a new move you have to first jump in and get with what’s going on and get with the program.”

Woodward came to her leadership style through her time working at Coca-Cola and the lessons she learned from her entrepreneurial father who started his own trucking business. She added that knowledge is power and having an in-depth understanding of a brand’s business economics will help build a strong foundation for future growth.

In 2023, Nosh honored KIND founder and co-founder of SOMOS Foods Daniel Lubetzky as the Person of the Year and Rao’s Homemade as the Brand of the Year with its annual Best Of awards. Last year’s Rising Star brands were Ithaca Hummus, Once Upon A Farm and frozen treat brand DeeBee’s Organics.

In a crowded field six finalists competed for the title of Nosh Pitch Slam winner 2023. The winner was Lentiful — high protein, high fiber lentil-based meal cups available in seven flavors. The other five competing brands were luxury baked goods maker Lexington Bakes, Maazah Afghan-style sauces and dips, Fair & Square gut-friendly crackers, Zwita ancestral Tunisian foods and Confusion Snacks, an Indian-American fusion snack brand.

The last year brought a sea of craft leadership changes, mergers and acquisitions, crossover product innovation and more. As the bev-alc marketplace becomes increasingly noisy and overwhelming, the unofficial theme of the 2023 Brewbound Live business conference was “focus.”

Leadership at Rhinegeist Brewery kicked off the conference in Marina del Rey, California exploring the transition at the top of the Cincinnati, Ohio-headquartered craft brewery following its own leadership changes.

Adam Bankovich, who was named CEO in October, gave the keynote address and explained how Rhinegeist is getting focused and simplifying its commercial strategy in 2024.

Bankovich admitted that the notion of Rhinegeist – which is also in the business of T-shirts and merch, distribution, private events and marketing, among other things – getting focused might sound rich to some. But in a dynamic industry, those things can both be true. He pointed to RGBevs, Rhinegeist’s attempt at playing in the flavored malt beverage (FMB) space.

“I asked a lot of questions around this when I started,” Bankovich said. “And this was a sales plan that I inherited when I joined the company in October 2022.

“The more I unearthed when I was asking questions around RGBevs – how did we make the decisions to enter this space, how did we make the decisions on the flavors and the liquids, what consum-

How to Get Mindshare & Sell More

Beer, with Stone Distributing, Breakthru Beverage & Tryon Distributing

Landing in a wholesaler’s warehouse is a big win for a supplier, but it’s often just the first step in a journey that ultimately ends in a consumer’s fridge.

Stone Distributing general manager Brian Fried, Breakthru Beverage California director of beer Sinead Carey and Tryon Distributing director of beer Elledge Davis shared the questions and tasks suppliers need to ask and accomplish along the way.

“As we think about new item launches and new brand launches, what we like to really think about is the end consumer,” Fried said. “As you’re thinking about your portfolio and you’re thinking about your approach to the market, be thinking about what role does that brand play with the consumer? What whitespace does it fill? What niche, what consumer needs is it going to meet?”

When exploring new offerings and new partners, Breakthru deploys a “very robust brand evaluation process” that ranges from market data to fundamental business questions, Carey said.

“We’re using data and analytics to tell us what’s going on in the market,” she said. “We’re also asking some really solid questions of potential partners and potential brands, as in,

er understanding did we have – it was really clear to me that there was no focus in this product line and it was potentially set up for failure,” he continued.

Much of the 2023 business plan that Bankovich inherited was banking on a big year for RGBevs. Citing Circana data through mid-November, the FMB brand family was down -47.4% (a decline of $1.7 million), while its beer brand family was up +14.6% (a gain of $3.6 million).

“We were betting on a lot of growth for our FMB line this year and it didn’t materialize because it was not focused,” he said.

Bankovich shared a slide that showed the percentage of resources – time, energy and money – devoted to the FMBs was outsized compared to its return on investment as the Truth brand family accounts for 56% of Rhinegeist’s volume, compared to 26% for other beers and 13% to FMBs/refreshment.

Bankovich and Rhinegeist co-founder Bryant Goulding also discussed the leadership transition, creating space for leaders to create new pathways and much more in a Q&A following Bankovich’s keynote address.

what are you looking to do? What channel are you trying to focus in on? Do you have some financial support? And are you financially stable, particularly if it’s a smaller supplier?

For Tryon, the first task in building a relationship with a new supplier is to “make sure their vision of success for the launch makes sense with our go-to-market strategy and our capabilities,” Davis said. “After compatibility is established, more complexity can be layered on.

“From there, you can add in the pieces of price promotion or incentivizing but making sure you’re in alignment is the first step,” he added.

At the conclusion of each year, BevNET honors the companies, brands, individuals, products, ideas and trends that have helped drive positive growth across the industry over the last 12 months.

And in 2023, positivity is a truly valuable commodity. It felt something like a culmination of the seismic events of the past few years, as post-COVID market trends crashed into the choppy economic waters and supply chain disruptions born from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Within the industry, conditions further stressed entrepreneurs by a collective pivot away from emphasis on raw growth and towards profitability. Beverage founders and operators have suddenly been asked to rewrite the playbooks that had brought them to prominence. Optimistic projections for endless future growth suddenly didn’t seem so certain.

What was predictable, though, was the way in which those beverage leaders responded to the opportunities inherent in that challenge. Giant legacy brands like Gatorade, Monster and Red Bull now face substantial competitors in the guise of Electrolit, PRIME and Pepsi-aligned Celsius, which has been turned around under CEO John Fieldly to nearly $400 million in quarterly sales. The red-hot ‘adult non-alcoholic’ space has been a wellspring of inspiration for product innovators – how else would we get a zero-proof, olive oil-spiked martini? For the answers to questions about the viability of a canned plant-based milk for kids, or if there’s room on the shelf for more robusta-centric RTD coffees, just read on here.

The winners of BevNET’s Best of 2023 Awards embody that spirit and drive, combining inspiration with effort, style, dynamism and personality. Try to tell these brands that they can’t, and they’ll show you how they can.

BRAND OF THE YEAR

PRIME

Acknowledging the old timers we admittedly are, we won’t even pretend to understand all of the factors that create a media movement like PRIME, but we do know that there’s been an incredibly well-coordinated mix of execution and earned media that has allowed this brand to be as disruptive in the hydration and energy categories as Van Halen opening for Black Sabbath upended the heavy metal game. They’ve activated a new set of fans, getting them early, making it the must-have beverage for the cool kid at the soccer field.

What they’ve done right: on the marketing side, they’ve leveraged a pair of international media stars to create a youth movement on both sides of the Atlantic, have those stars continually promote the brand to a tween- and teen-age audience, spend on high-profile partnership targets that match that demographic (Arsenal, FC Barcelona, NASCAR, UFC, the LA Dodgers). On the manufacturing side, Congo Brands has kept product flowing –after a short scarcity issue that had shop owners acting like they were selling a Sony PS5.

Roll in a little bit of pearl-clutching in the U.S. Senate to give the new energy drink SKUs some extra heat, and in two years the brand has reached more than a half-billion at retail, with a run rate expanding like a whale’s maw in a krill colony. In other words, it sounds like it’s PRIME Time indeed.

PERSON OF THE YEAR

John Fieldly, CEO, Celsius

It’s a landing worthy of Top Gun. Celsius was coming in hot and the PepsiCo landing pad was already torn ragged from ongoing scuffles with previous energy drink partners, but John Fieldly and his team have managed to bring the brand into its new distribution system in as smooth a fashion as could be imagined.

In the year-plus since, Celsius has proven to be a partner worthy of the $550 million that PepsiCo invested in the brand, and the person at the center of that transition has been Fieldly, whose leadership has been steady, reliable, and consistent, focused on scaling with his partners as opposed to in spite of them. The brand has soared to an expected $1.15 billion in revenue this year – triple what it was two years ago and an incredible 10 times what it reported in 2020.

For bringing Celsius to a rapid boil – without getting anyone hot under the collar – Fieldly is an easy choice as BevNET’s Person of the Year for 2023.

BEST MARKETING

Tractor Beverage - “Escape the Ordinary”

In 1949, author and literary theorist Joseph Campbell introduced the idea of “The Hero’s Journey” – that most major works of storytelling follow a pre-existing arc in which the singular hero is called to adventure, undergoes trials and tribulations, and through metaphorical death and resurrection returns to the ordinary world triumphant and wiser. It’s a model that has been identified in everything from The Odyssey to Star Wars. So why not a 90 second animated commercial where the monomythical hero is a sentient plastic cup full of ice?

Tractor Beverage Co.’s first ever ad campaign, “Escape the Ordinary” is a psychedelic cartoon odyssey all its own, set to a rendition of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” performed by roots artist Valerie June, featuring urban dystopia, dreamscape wonderlands, and better-for-you craft soda fountains. The vivid animation and strange imagery (Why does every individual ice cube have eyes? What is with the faceless flying peach cherubs?) stuck in our minds all year long, and we can only hope it had a similar impact on the consumers who saw this ad in its various forms on streaming services, TV and movie theaters where the disruptive fountain beverage company placed this standout campaign.

RISING STARS

Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Spirits

Long before everyone you know was doing Dry January or Sober October, Lyre’s was already in the door. The Australian company’s innovative range of zeroproof spirits and canned cocktails has been winning fans since its introduction in 2019, but this was the year in which it truly broke through. Lyre’s has gone from strength to strength in 2023, closing a $34.5 million funding round in July and elevating CMO Paul Glosser to the chief executive position, all while deepening its presence across the Middle East to reach audiences eager for more alcohol-free options.

Its ties to live music also grew tighter, thanks to its role as an official sponsor of SXSW Sydney and through a partnership with French EDM DJ/producer David Guetta announced in November. Now standing at 11 SKUs spanning from an Italian bitter spritz to white rum and absinthe, Lyre’s was the top trending non-alc spirit of 2023 (per Drinks International’s annual brand report) and showing no signs of slowing down. What’s the secret? A simple approach, as, rather than teasing an original recipe or highlighting added functional ingredients, Lyre’s is positioned as a like-for-like replacement for traditional spirits.

Poppi

Tractor Beverage Co.

As a new generation of better-for-you fast casual restaurant chains like B.GOOD and Garbanzo have, over the past decade, remade the landscape of out-of-home dining, Tractor Beverage Co. has aptly sought to use this new wave in foodservice to remake the soda fountain. In a format long dominated by the major CSD conglomerates, Tractor – with the backing of one of those conglomerates in Keurig Dr Pepper – has been quietly sowing the soil in foodservice accounts across the country since beginning as a simple organic soda brand in 2014.

This year, the Idaho-based company kicked into high gear, unveiling its first ever ad campaign featuring a see-it-to-believe-it cartoon spot that hit movie theaters, TV and streaming services, in July as well as sponsoring surf competitions (take the farm to the beach, why not?). Meanwhile, behind the scenes Tractor has, in a matter of months, brought in a roster of experienced CPG executives to lead the fast-growing business. The company has previously indicated it has begun executing on an “aggressive” growth plan that will continue into the new year and as it continues to build its 25 SKU roster of sodas, teas and ades, those seeds are beginning to sprout.

Culture Pop

When apple cider vinegar drink Mother Beverage won BevNET’s New Beverage Showdown 12 in 2016, it looked and felt nothing like the brand it was about to become. But after an investment from Rohan Oza and CAVU Ventures (earned through a fortuitous 2018 appearance on Shark Tank) Mother dialed down the vinegar and re-emerged in 2020 as Poppi, now positioned as a gut health supporting prebiotic soda. Today, the functional soda set is among the most buzzed about emerging categories in the beverage industry and Poppi has surpassed $100 million in retail sales positioning it well, alongside friendly competitor Olipop, as a category leader. Under CEO Chris Hall, Poppi reported 148% growth in 2022, including 250% growth online, and scanner data suggests it’s on track to repeat triple-digit improvement this year as well.

Poppi didn’t reach its position overnight, but a few overnight growth spurts certainly helped; the social media savvy of cofounder and chief brand officer Allison Ellsworth propelled Poppi’s sales and awareness on TikTok soon after its rebrand and subsequent financing has helped drive new out-of-home marketing and retail expansion (hovering around 30,000 doors nationwide). While the brand now needs to prove it can maintain that momentum and continue its rapid scaling efforts, it’s fair to say Poppi has already made its name at the top of the pop set.

By the time Massachusetts-based Culture Pop emerged on the scene, the next-gen CSD movement was already well underway, thanks to the work of OLIPOP (a 2022 Rising Star winner), this year’s fellow honoree Poppi, and a slew of kombucha spinoffs.

But despite the frantic fight for space on the new frontiers of soda, Culture Pop has managed to hurdle much of the competition by taking a patient, simple approach, starting with liquid that eschews use of sweeteners or leaning into classic soda flavors in favor of adding a touch of juice and embracing botanical-fruit fusions (the latest being Black Cherry). After establishing itself in its Northeast backyard with key distribution allies like Big Geyser and Polar, national expansion picked up pace this year with a move into seven Whole Foods divisions and a growing cohort of regional DSD partners, all of which has been supported by its first formal marketing campaign (dubbed “Good For You, Soda”). Under the steady hand of beverage veteran Tom First, Culture Pop has found a cadence for scaling that bodes well for its long-term health and prospects. In other words, the bubble on this Pop is far from burst.

BEST PACKAGING

KIDDIWINKS

BEST NEW PRODUCTS Sanzo Pomelo

How do you get kids to drink a prebiotic plant-based milk? Not by touting sustainability credentials or ingredient claims, it turns out, but by viewing the product from a kids’ perspective: whimsical, wondrous and made exclusively for them. With its loopy characters and bubbly typography, KIDDIWINKS’ head-turning can design, courtesy of The Young Jerks, is a playful reminder that this category can (and should) be fun, too.

Illicit Elixirs

If you’re going to promise the kind of mindexpanding experience promised by Illicit Elixirs, you’ll need an equally creative package design. Consider that box ticked, and how: sporting a high-contrast, bizarro carnival funhouse vibe, Illicit feels both inviting and exclusive as it manages to clearly indicate its functionality and flavor amidst the cheeky, instantly memorable cartoon iconography.

Chamberlain Coffee

Emma Chamberlain’s arrival to ready-to-drink coffee couldn’t have come at a better moment: in a category crying out for visual innovation on-package, Chamberlain’s canned RTDs inject the same kind of warm, casual-but-quality appeal that have carried her bagged coffees to much success thus far. The result is thoughtfully crafted and approachable, feeling less technical and serious than many of its competitors.

One of the keys to Sanzo’s success has been its ability to introduce new fruit flavors to American audiences that require a sidestep rather than a giant leap, the latest being Pomelo, grapefruit’s slightly sweeter sister. And like the brand’s other SKUs, this one instantly vaults to the front of the flavor stakes with an offering that’s highly crushable, crisp and clean.

CHA by Better Booch

From concept to design to execution, everything about CHA embodies a clean and effective simplicity that we found irresistible. Artfully sweetened with agave and stevia, these drinks boast unexpected depth that comes alive with a kiss of carbonation, all put together in a modern, attractive package.

SANG Vietnamese Coffee

After honoring Nguyen Coffee’s RTDs last year, this year saw another woman-run Vietnamese coffee “Cà Phê Sữa Đá” startup steal the show. Fully embracing its deep roots in the national coffee culture, SANG reflects everything we love about Vietnamese coffee: rich sweetness, complex flavor, eye-popping energy and the joy of daily ritual.

HOP WTR Ruby Red Grapefruit

Blending function and flavor has been HOP WTR’s calling card from the start, but each new innovation reflects a tighter marriage between those two. Ruby Red Grapefruit provides maybe the best example yet of the brand’s penchant for bold yet balanced taste experiences, with big, juicy tart notes softened by bitter hops.

DRY GUYS - Graza

x Aura Bora

We’ll admit, we didn’t think any of Aura Bora’s outstanding sparkling waters were in desperate need of gourmet EVOO -- but we stand corrected. This carbonated collaboration captured us with its stylish can and on-trend positioning, but mostly because the combination of Graza Drizzle Olive Oil, yuzu extract and juniper oil in bubbly water tastes so damn good.

Equitea

Equitea’s founder

Quentin Vennie began his canned tea brand with a mission to promote health and wellness through organic ingredients. With a focus on functional adaptogens, botanicals and natural sweeteners, Equitea has succeeded across its lineup of sparkling beverages – which includes a focus-boosting Lavender Green Tea, antioxidant-rich Spiced Hibiscus, immunity support Peach Ginger White Tea and a refreshing and energizing Black Tea Lemonade – creating products that are both delicious and revitalizing and easily among the best of the year.

OLIPOP Crisp Apple

When it comes to flavor innovation, Olipop has been busy. The prebiotic soda maker began the year by debuting its Lemon Lime offering and hasn’t slowed down since, offering up Ginger Ale, Watermelon Lime, and our new favorite Crisp Apple. Released this fall, the soda is made with apple juice concentrate and delivers a lightly sweetened, at times cider-like fruit flavor. While it’s been great to see Olipop build out its position as a modern soda brand by filling in the blanks with its classic CSD flavor lineup, Crisp Apple stands out as one of its most unique innovations and for that it’s one of our Best New Products of the year.

Chamberlain Coffee

Emma Chamberlain’s arrival to ready-todrink coffee couldn’t have come at a better moment: in a category crying out for visual innovation on-package, Chamberlain’s canned RTDs inject the same kind of warm, casual-but-quality appeal that have carried her bagged coffees to much success thus far. The result is thoughtfully crafted and approachable, feeling less technical and serious than many of its competitors.

Nixie Black Cherry Lime

Innovation in the sparkling water category is often harder than it looks. For a beverage usually defined by the simple formula of low or no-calorie and carbonated, finding new flavors that differentiate a brand from the pack is no small task. Nixie, however, has repeatedly nailed the art of blending two flavors together to create a satisfying, unsweetened refreshment (that’s also organic and non-GMO certified). The brand’s latest offering – Black Cherry Lime – is as good as they come and a fine addition to Nixie’s portfolio, and to the sparkling water shelf writ large.

Wild Pop by Buchi

As the functional soda category has experienced no shortage of new entrants over the past few years, Buchi won us over with its take on the formula: Wild Pop. Made with prebiotics and probiotics, Wild Pop is organic and comes in Cream Soda Swirl, Lemon Lime Fizz, Strawberry Cream and Root Beer Float flavors that bring unique sweetness and full flavor to the space that we were more than taken with.

Ingredient

Ingredient Remix:

From Ube Lattes to Olive Oil Martinis

By Brad Avery

Ifit seems that Dry January is lasting longer and longer these days, it might just be the adaptogenics talking.

As some consumers look to drink less alcohol, they’re reaching more for complex and exotic flavor profiles, leading to a rise in more “sophisticated” natural ingredients, according to some of the U.S. food and beverage industry’s top flavor houses. And don’t forget the color purple! As we look further into the new year, we broke down a few of the top flavor and ingredient trends expected to play a big role in 2024’s new beverage innovations.

“Sophisticated Sips” Expand

The makers of ready-to-drink mocktails and other NA alternatives have increasingly sought to match the complexity and depth of traditional alcoholic drinks by substituting an array of rich and distinctive flavors, going beyond the traditional soft drink formulation to create a more premium sipping occasion. In its 2024 flavor trend report, Flavorchem dubbed the phenomenon as “Sophisticated Sips,” and while “mindful drinking” is one key trait of the trend, it’s reaching out far beyond the alcohol alternative space.

Flavorchem pointed to brands like Aura Bora, with its nonalc Olive Oil Martini, and De La Calle Tepache, with its Latin American inspired flavor profile, as examples of the trend playing out in two different emerging categories, noting that consumers are seeking drinks that “cater to the demand for variety, fun, and mindfulness.”

Rebecca Shurhay, senior marketing specialist at Flavorchem, noted that this macro trend covers a wide array of ingredients, including flavors that promote calmness and relaxation like lavender, chamomile, vanilla and berry blends, as well as tropical fruits which “have gained prominence throughout the energy market due to their distinct flavors, bright hues, and the craving for unique taste sensations” – think pomegranate, pineapple, guava, papaya and dragon fruit.

“Comforting flavors like honey, chocolate, mint, and banana feed into uplifting [moods] and may reduce the negative effects of stress on the body,” Shurhay added, noting increased attention towards mental health awareness and brain function are helping drive the demand for these flavors.

Many of those relaxation-minded functional traits find

“Ube offers a unique combination of flavors that can be described as nutty, sweet, and mildly earthy”

themselves being used heavily in the NA cocktail category in order to replicate the feeling of alcohol without intoxication, as seen with brands like De Soi and Ghia.

Among these so-called sophisticated flavors, Flavorchem pointed to Prickly Pear as another rising ingredient, meeting consumer interest in exotic fruits, “sweet and tangy” flavor profiles, and nutritional benefits, Shurhay said. The flavor is popular for both NA drinks (Caliwater, Pricklee) but also rises to the occasion for alcoholic RTD cocktails.

Meanwhile, Flavorman highlighted “sweet heat” flavor combinations as another rising trend in the adult NA space (see again, De La Calle, with its Mango and Pineapple Chili flavors, or hard canned cocktail brands like Faux Pas and Kickstand which have embraced spicy alcoholic recipes).

Ube Breakout

If you’ve walked the aisles of Expo, Fancy Foods or any other natural products trade show in recent years, you may have seen more than a few beverages cropping up making use of a vibrant purple Filipino yam known as ube. Over the past year, brands like Remedy Organics (with its Ubeautiful messaging), Twrl and Tea Drops have embraced the colorful vegetable. T. Hasegawa named ube as

its Flavor Trend of the Year for 2024, but it’s more than just a handful of companies: ube’s use has risen significantly in CPG and the culinary world.

Doug Resh, director of commercial marketing at T. Hasegawa USA, said ubeflavored products grew 250% between 2018 to 2022, with 143% growth in foodservice in that time and “70% growth in 2022 alone.”

The Japan-based flavor house noted that “Ube offers a unique combination of flavors that can be described as nutty, sweet, and mildly earthy” making it a versatile addition to desserts, savory dishes and beverages alike. Over the past year, Resh cited a 19.34% increase of ube in latte formulations, a 19.22% increase in berry flavors utilizing ube, and 14% growth in coffee formulations using ube. As well, he said ube is “predicted to outperform 88% of all other foods, beverages and ingredients over the next four years in terms of growth.”

“In addition to Ube’s unique flavor and bright color, the tuberous root also has many applications in vegan cuisine,” Resh said. “The fastest rising consumer need for Ube is within the snack category, but it has proven versatility in many other food and beverage categories.”

Ube lattes are also just one form coffee innovation has taken in recent months, and Flavorman sees other vegetables,

roots, botanicals and unexpected flavors to be part of the overall innovation trend for the category going forward. In a release, Flavorman director of business development Brad Nichols noted that “unconventional flavors like rose, pistachio, lavender, and rosemary have made their way into latte and syrup,” so ube’s addition to the category is by no means some random development.

As well, ube’s vibrant color shouldn’t be underestimated as an important reason for its popularity. Resh pointed to an increase in social media posts over the past year showcasing bright purple ube concoctions.

In its 2024 trend report, The ArthurDaniels-Midland Company (ADM) highlighted “luxe self expression” as another rising trend, as consumers look to use their food and drinks as a form of personal expression online. The report suggested that there may be “an unleashing of hedonistic taste and color … that manifest consumer emotions and identities through the bold and satisfying foods and flavors they gravitate to.” “Sensorial experiences” are likely to matter more going forward, and that can be seen in recent trends like online drink mix community #WaterTok which frequently accumulates likes and shares off of brightly colored beverage creations.

West World Grows Down South

Can a $300 Million Mega-Plant Make Westrock Coffee the New Kings of RTD?

By Martin Caballero

Over the phone, the faint noise of activity can be heard in the background. On the other end is Will Ford, Westrock Coffee Company’s Group President of Operations, speaking about his company’s crown jewel: a new 524,000 square foot, $300 million facility, itself located on a 45-acre campus in Conway, Ark., that promises to be the largest coffee roasting-to-RTD operation of its kind when it goes online this spring. Realizing that vision means bringing in a crop of top talent – and these arrivals have generated the feeling that something special is brewing in the city of roughly 65,000 residents located about 30 minutes north of Little Rock.

“I’m here today and every time I walk in, there’s new people and I’m like, ‘Tell me your story,’” Ford said. “And they’ll say ‘well, this is my fourth plant startup and I was at this plant before and I was in charge of this and then I learned that part here and I learned not to do this with these guys.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m so thankful you’re here!’”

Anecdotal for sure – but storytelling is just part of what’s helped to create the sense of a company on the cusp of an exciting new chapter. After a decade of growth, Westrock is preparing to solidify its position as a dominant force in North American coffee production, capable of serving all channels of trade. The timing appears to be fortuitous as well; Americans are increasingly favoring cold coffee over hot, RTDs are still growing and a new crop of celebrity and influencer-led brands have joined the fray. Westrock is poised to feed that demand with its high-volume, cross-format capabilities.

It’s a high-stakes experiment for the company, which went public via a SPAC merger in 2022. After suffering from a down year in 2023, it’s one that needs to work.

Roots & Rise

Like Lavazza, Massimo Zanetti and other global coffee giants, Westrock’s path to success began as a modest family business -- but it has developed on a much accelerated timetable.

When launched by Joe T. Ford, a former CEO of telecom giant Alltel, and his son, Scott Ford, in 2009, Westrock was set up as a premium exporter specializing in coffees from Rwanda, which remained its calling card for its first years. Over time that competency developed and expanded; Westrock currently has offices in 10 countries and sources coffee, tea and extracts from 35 origins across all channels of trade. From its Arkansas roasting facility, it makes branded and private label coffee for global retailers (Walmart, Sam’s Club) and hotel chains.

But the company’s most recent evolution began with its $405 million acquisition of S&D Coffee, a U.S. leader in custom coffee roasting serving the convenience and foodservice channels, in 2020. One year later, with liquid beverages continuing to vastly outpace traditional coffee in share of company sales, Westrock announced its intent to build the nation’s largest RTD coffee production facility in Conway, along with plans to expand its North Carolina extracts plant and build another roaster in Malaysia.

To execute that vision, new financial mechanisms were needed. In 2022, Westrock went public in a $1.2 billion SPAC deal, then picked up another $75 million in equity funding from HF Capital and Texas oil baron Herbert Hunt the following summer.

That hasn’t done much, however, to stem the immediate pain felt while awaiting the Conway plant’s opening. After reporting a $10.7 million loss in Q3 2023, CEO Scott Ford acknowledged that Westrock has prioritized the success of the facility over short-term earnings, while promising that the plant will “radically alter the overall profitability and trajectory of the company.” Against the backdrop of rapid collapse in demand for traditional ground and roast coffee, Westrock downgraded its FY 2023 outlook for Adjusted EBITDA in November to below its previously issued guidance range of flat to 10% over 2022.

Within the mix, though, Beverage Solutions has been a bright spot, generating over $176 million for Westrock in Q3. The company has been eager to meet demand for cold coffee formats in foodservice and retail, unveiling a suite of frozen and RTD products aimed at the segment at last year’s NACS show in Atlanta.

Under the Hood

As you might expect, Westrock’s new facility aims to be the ultimate coffee factory.

It all starts in the central “kitchen,” the “heartbeat and center” of the plant, which spokes out to the manufacturing lines. Liquids – anything from standard RTD cold brew to extra-strength concentrates for use as ingredients in other finished goods – can be packaged in glass bottles, cans, bag-inbox, pumps, totes, drums and single-serving pods, and other formats.

The facility has also been designed with the future in mind. The space has been preplumbed to house an additional four to six packaging lines (depending on size), and while initial demand has been driven by its traditional coffee partners, it can also produce teas and juice-based products. Having an FDA-approved product development lab on the premises should also help to create, test and produce new beverage offerings.

Ramping up scale also requires a significant investment in warehousing and distribution, which comes in the form of a just-completed 530,000 sq ft facility just two miles from the manufacturing center in Conway. All finished products shipped from its 72 dock doors will be ambient, with cold chain storage and distribution housed at the production center.

Its very existence underscores the fastmoving and changing nature of Westrock’s expansion strategy: the production center was originally slated to devote about 25% capacity towards liquid packaged products, another 25% to roasted and ground coffee, and the rest for distribution. But within 48 hours of the plant’s announcement in 2021, it was already oversubscribed with demand for liquid products. Switching to a 100% wet capacity required the construction of the separate warehousing hub, at the cost of $70 million.

“It wasn’t until we made that announcement that we realized this market is much, much bigger,” said Ford.

A bigger market doesn’t necessarily mean only bigger clients, though. Through its acquisition of Richmond, Calif.-based roaster Kohana Coffee in 2022, Westrock picked up a roasting facility that’s been designated as an RTD incubation center that can offer low minimum orders, all the better to develop and graduate young brands to one of Westrock’s other locations. Last year’s purchase of Bixby Coffee, the Los Angeles company that had been gaining traction as a partner for celebrity and influencer-driven startups, most notably Emma Chamberlain’s eponymous brand, also provides Westrock

with a pipeline to more specialized (and higher priced) RTD coffees to balance its portfolio of large-scale clients.

The numbers back up that approach: per Mintel, 60% of Gen Z consumers – the demographic driving much of the push from hot to cold – agree that TikTok is a great source for learning about coffee.

“We are now able to provide the whole breadth of different sized companies, which has been a great opportunity for making us remain flexible and keeping us on the forefront of new product launches and innovation, and then also sheer scale for those who need to be commercially competitive,” said Ford. “It has brought forward, I guess, the [opposite] poles of the industry and we’ve found a good sweet spot in providing for those in the middle as well, which I can’t say that we originally foresaw trying to do.”

Westrock’s new chapter also involves the aforementioned influx of new talent or, in some cases, new skill sets.

“Where we have changed and grown is really adding to the depth of the bench,” said Elizabeth McLaughlin, Westrock’s EVP of Sales. “Because these products are new, we have really spent time developing and hiring good talent, and through that learning, some of us who haven’t necessarily been knee deep in ready-to-drink or concentrate products are learning and understanding the products and technical details around that, so we’re more informed when we talk to our customers.”

That understanding will be critical in a tightening retail RTD coffee market in which large strategics like Coca-Cola (Costa), Monster and Chobani (La Colombe) are putting their

thumb on the scale. Spiking demand for more function, flavor and dairy alternatives in the category, as highlighted in Mintel’s Future of Coffee report from May 2023, is further shaping the space, and Westrock aims to be ready for anything.

“There’s going to be new unique things to come out which we think that we’re in a great position to capitalize on. But we’ve got to turn on this plant first,” said Ford. “I think we’ve got five- and ten-year plans that people would blush at, but we know that we have to start here.”

CAPPUCCINO/ICED COFFEE

RFG RTD COFFEE

Pull those tray tables down, because Stumptown coffee is now brewing on all Alaska Airlines flights. The custom blend specially crafted to be enjoyed at altitude—where taste buds react differently—is an organic coffee roasted deep enough to bring out notes of toasted marshmallow and dark chocolate while remaining exceptionally smooth and balanced.

Jibby is thrilled to unveil a significant strategic expansion into the world of functional beverages with the launch of their new Mushroom Coffee line, marking an exciting new chapter in the company’s journey. Their organic coffee powders are enriched with nourishing ingredients to help you start your mornings right – including mushrooms and adaptogens for clarity and focus, as well as collagen protein for healthy skin, hair, and joints. These easy-to-mix blends are not only glutenfree and dairy-free, but also contain zero artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors, or preservatives.

NuRange is expanding from 152 King Soopers and City Market Kroger locations to over 1,000 Kroger banner locations in April and is currently raising a 7-figure seed round with an anticipated Q2 2024 close.

Califia Farms launched its Matcha Almond Milk Latte, the first multiserve RTD plant-based matcha that offers an easy way to enjoy matcha at home – just shake, pour, and enjoy! Now available at Target, Kroger, and Publix.

Bauer’s Brew is proudly partnering with Gold Coast Distributors LTD. They will be offering Bauer’s Brew products to the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens area. The brand believes coffee is an art, not a commodity. This is the philosophy that guides our mission to craft products that give significance to the ‘special’ in “Specialty Coffee”.

4Jacks Nitro Cold Brew is now served in NY, NJ, CT, MD, NH, RI, DC and MA, and the brand is just getting started. The brand offers two dispenser options

to suit various needs: the patentpending chilled countertop for nitroonly and the standard dispenser for cold brew and nitro. Both options are portable, self-contained, and plugand-play, eliminating the need for nitrogen tanks or water lines.

Chamberlain Coffee has extended its ready-to-drink offerings, introducing its flagship line of RTD lattes to Whole Foods Market locations.

Simultaneously, the brand’s latest innovation, a series of canned Oatmilk Lattes, are now available in Albertsons Companies stores. The traditional RTD latte range features a blend of almond milk and coconut cream, presenting flavors such as Mocha Latte, Cinnamon Bun Latte, Vanilla Latte, and Cold Brew Latte. The newly introduced Oatmilk Lattes come in Salted Caramel, Mocha, Vanilla, and Cinnamon Bun variations, all sweetened with a combination of cane sugar and date syrup.

Available as of January 12, Verve Coffee’s Wilder Blend combines three beautiful Latin coffees each with three distinct coffee processing methods creating a beautifully vibrant cup. Earthy hints of Juniper meet the subtle tartness of Pomegranate and sweet Candied Citrus, making each sip reminiscent of drinking coffee in a blossoming orchard, down to the limited-edition packaging.

Wandering Bear has expanded its new 32 oz ready-to-drink multi-serve cold brew line with Whole Foods (five regions) and Sprouts (chainwide). The Sprouts launch includes the brand’s first-ever decaf cold brew!

Koia has introduced a packaging refresh for its acclaimed line of lowsugar, plant-based protein beverages. The streamlined look maintains Koia’s easy-to-spot rainbow of flavor offerings, with the fan-favorite Cold Brew Coffee protein shake featuring the same vibrant purple label. With clean lines, monochromatic color schemes, and increased text size

of the flavor names for easy grab-andgo packaging that looks as good as it tastes, the new lineup stands out in refrigerators in retailers nationwide.

Bizzy Cold Brew moves into 2024 with resounding momentum, boasting 20% distribution growth year-overyear. Now reaching 7,000 stores nationwide, strategic wins with major retailers included Costco, Kroger divisions, Meijer, The Fresh Market, Erewhon, and 200+ independent retailers. Key leadership additions, CFO Ryan Bennett, and VP of Sales Andy Blacklidge, bring a wealth of experience steering high-growth CPG brands.

Minus Cold Brew has launched a new flavor. Its beanless vanilla oat milk latte has proven to be just as rich and creamy as your traditional oat milk latte in the market but with a fraction of the environmental impact.

Now you can have your cookies and drink ‘em too! Chameleon

Cold Brew is the latest CPG brand to strike up a deal with Girl Scouts of the USA, announcing a 3-SKU line of Girl Scout cookie-inspired canned cold brews. All three flavors

– Thin Mints, Coconut Caramel and Chocolate Peanut Butter varieties –will be available in 8 oz. cans online beginning this spring.

illy launched a brand-new coffee using fully regenerative agriculture, called the Arabica Selection Brazil Cerrado Mineiro, created together with the Federation of Cerrado Mineiro producers. Through this new coffee, illy hopes to demonstrate its continued commitment to the Earth. This new coffee is part of a two-pronged launch of illy’s newest campaign, Quality Loves Details , which aims to communicate illy’s obsession with choosing the best beans to make the best coffee.

Mixers Find Synergy With Non-Alc Movement a Mocktail: Don’t Call it

By Lukas Southard

When the pandemic hit, bars closed, but the bottles didn’t. Forced into their homes, consumers began experimenting with making their favorite cocktails (and yes, we know a lot of you were doing it earlier in the day!). But too many Zoom-call hangovers meant that drinking at home had a behavioral backlash: many consumers began reevaluating their relationships with alcohol, with quite a few delving into what’s now called the “sober-curious lifestyle.”

Now that COVID’s impact on social settings has faded, premium mixer brands are taking what they learned during the pandemic back into onpremise locations, while also tapping a growing set

of consumers: the low- and no-alcohol community.

Premium mixer brands are not only cultivating partnerships with zero-proof spirit brands in DTC and physical stores, but are seeing opportunity in the proliferation of non-alcoholic options at finedining restaurants and bars.

Low-and-no alcoholic beverage consumers are demanding more than a soft drink or seltzer from the soda gun behind the bar, instead looking for equally high-quality cocktails, just with less alcohol – or none – as part of the recipe. No- and low-alcohol consumption volumes grew by +5% in 2023 fetching a valuation of over $13 billion, according to data from IWSR; almost a sixth (17%)

of all no-alcohol consumers in the past year were new entrants.

Thus far, much of this growth is being fueled from the NA beer category, where 72% of the volume resides; yet, the growing experimentation with NA spirits has become a boon to the mixer category: most zero-proof spirits require mixers to elevate the flavor profile when alcohol is removed or left out of a liquor.

The opportunity for mixers aligning with non-alcoholic spirits is “all about the experience,” said Joe Sepka, cofounder of beverage alcohol consulting group 3 Tier Beverages.

Mixology and inclusive socializing is a big part of the messaging among the nonalcoholic community. This fits nicely into the efforts of a new generation of mixer brands, who have tried in recent years to bring more consumers to mixed drinks.

Nuisance Attitudes Towards Drinking Breeds Innovation

In the past, mixers were meant to hide the alcohol with high sugar content and a “one size fits all mentality” where both low-quality and high-quality spirits could make the same drink, said Mark Tinus, founder of Ohio-based Simple Times Mixers.

Launched in 2017, Simple Times markets its products as clean-label, lowsugar mixers that fit into the evolution of the mixed drink category where consumers want “versatility” to create a better cocktail, either with or without alcohol.

‘Inclusivity’ might be a buzzword among the sober-curious community but Tinus said it is a hallmark of how the brand can “play a little bit of Switzerland” and let customers pair mixers with their spirit of choice.

“The whole point is to add value to these social occasions…and the reality is there is no one universal truth for everybody,” he said.

These days, among a group of friends, there are often a couple of people who are moderating their consumption of alcohol socially.

While Gen Z and Millennial consumers are largely driving the moderation trend, about 2/3 of adults say they are reducing alcohol consumption, showing clear evidence that people are drinking less

across generations, according to IWSR.

Moderation is leading brands to “adapt their long-term strategies to target the more health-conscious consumer,” IWSR COO of consumer insights Richard Halstead wrote. “It’s a trend that’s likely to continue, simply because people are changing their lifestyle habits.”

Taking that approach, Simple Times has partnered with non-alc brands like Drink Monday, Ritual and a shandy, NA beer collaboration with BrewDog. In a change from pre-pandemic times, Simple Times has also aligned with “dry” events this year in Kansas City and Philadelphia to work with NA spirit brands on new activations.

This strategy allows mixer brands to not only play in a new market of consumers but also bring new distribution angles in control states or during trendy “dry” months like January and October, when bev-alc distributors are starting to see sales slump as people take a month off from booze.

Although the NA spirits category is still the smallest segment of NA alternatives, dollar sales increased 94% among NA spirits compared to a year ago, according to NielsenIQ data.

Ritual Zero Proof, a leading maker of spirit alternatives, reported that it partners with mixer brands like Q Mixers,

Betty Buzz and Fever-Tree on activations. Through hundreds of sampling events, the company has tried to bring the NA category to new consumers through a pleasant cocktail experience.

“The premiumization of mixers recently only supports us because our whole thing is that we are not prescriptive. We’re not anti-alcohol in the least. We’re pro-options,” Ritual co-founder David Cooch said. “We just think you should be able to have your cocktail however you want, whenever you want.”

The On-Premise Play For Mixers

When Joshua Ellis and Bradley Ryan established WithCo. in 2017, it wasn’t with teetotaling in mind: the idea was to make a mixer brand for at-home cocktail drinkers that used real fruit juice, less sugar, and contained no preservatives or additives, Ellis said. The company has nevertheless found itself mixed into in the sober-curious movement unintentionally, he said.

“Where we have found ourselves was watching how our customers were consuming our product both in the home bar, as well as at the corner bar,” he said.

One of the lessons learned was that many consumers were enjoying WithCo. with NA spirits, including Grammynominated country music superstar

Dierks Bentley. When the brand heard that Bentley, seeking to balance his relationship with spirits, had been drinking the brand without alcohol for two years, WithCo. reached out.

Not only did Bentley become an “authentic” brand ambassador and strategic investor, but he helped usher WithCo. into Walmart by scheduling a meeting with Walmart U.S. CEO and president John Furner. “This is why we wanted him involved,” Ellis said. “This was the power of the story.”

One of the main issues plaguing the hospitality industry in a post-pandemic world has been labor shortages. When nightlife shut down, many workers left the bar and restaurant business, and they haven’t returned.

While it’s a challenge for restaurants, it’s developed into an opportunity for mixer brands, they believe. They’re pushing ready-to-pour cocktail mixers as a cost-saving, high-quality solution to making individual drinks without the need for as many bartenders. That extends to the NA space, but the through line is offering quality when it’s unexpected. WithCo. has found its way to providing its products to bars at the Florida

Panthers NHL arena and with NFL teams like the Carolina Panthers. The brand is targeting other hospitality accounts like hotels and restaurants as well as places where people “don’t expect to get a good cocktail,” like theme parks, Ellis said.

The strategy positions mixer brands to capitalize on the experiential nature of social drinking with the potential of a whole new consumer base that is finding different ways to enjoy a cocktail, with or without the booze.

Building brand awareness has been a big part of Fever-Tree’s expansion into the U.S., where it now has a larger market than its UK home. It’s also working to target NA consumers, via partnerships with zero-proof brands like Ritual or Lyre’s. These demos and endcap displays, featuring NA spirits with Fever-Tree’s various single-serve bottles of tonic, flavored sparkling waters and soft drinks, are intended to drive trial for all parties.

“It’s so important in the on-trade (onpremise) business as well,” said FeverTree North America CEO Charles Gibb. “We’re not so expensive for a consumer to try, but a bottle of non-alc spirit is quite expensive – so trying a single cocktail for $12 to $15 is a very good way to get in.”

The company’s bread-and-butter has always been its club soda and tonic water, where Fever-Tree occupies a 12% share of U.S. dollar sales in the category, but the brand has recently moved into high-growth varieties like ginger beer and, more recently, multiserve cocktail mixers ushered in when the brand acquired craft cocktail mixer maker Powell & Mahoney in September 2022. Earlier this year, Fever-Tree launched its own branded three-SKU line of mixers — Classic Bloody Mary, Classic Margarita and Light Margarita — to broaden its portfolio in the U.S.

For a legacy ingredient and foodser-

vice provider like Monin, launching a six-SKU line of HomeCrafted Cocktail Mixers (Margarita, Cherry Smash, Strawberry Ginger Lemonade, Mai Tai, Spicy Watermelon Margarita and Dragon Fruit Cosmo) positioned the brand for the at-home cocktail consumer during COVID. But even as people returned to bars and restaurants, Monin execs say they’ve seen the mixers drawing attention from clients in entertainment concessions and concert venues.

“You can actually choose your own adventure with how you want your happy hour to go,” said Monin SVP of marketing Stasha Johnston.

Monin’s products do well on ecommerce channels but are expanding into new brick-and-mortar retail doors and beginning to offer them to on-premise clients as “frictionless alternatives” for alcohol reduction, Johnston said.

Playing Both Sides

Sometimes it’s about playing both sides and leaning into semantics: some drinks can be served as a mixer or as a standalone non-alcoholic beverage.

UK-based brand Longbottom & Co. entered the U.S. market with its singleserve canned Virgin Mary Bloody Mary mix last year. Abroad the brand has developed a following as a “stand alone” beverage that is a “bridge” between the mixer and non-alcoholic alternative categories, said Diana Mora, GM of brand and marketing at Longbottom & Co.

“We also call ourselves a gateway to the Bloody Mary,” she said. Represented in the name, the 8 oz. slim cans are “virgin” drinks that can be enjoyed on their own or mixed with a consumer’s spirit of choice.

In the UK, the brand has an alcoholic version of its RTD and expects to eventually release it stateside but, for now, Longbottom has seen success among the NA community.

Mora sees Longbottom tapping into the no- and low-consumer by giving the consumer the versatility to use the product in multiple ways.

“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” she said. “It’s great to be able to say I want to have one with alcohol now, maybe the next one will be non-alc. I think that’s the most important point, to be able to play on both sides.”

Q Mixers, America’s leading premium mixer company committed to making your favorite drink instantly better, has announced a multiyear partnership with Tao Group Hospitality, the iconic hospitality group with venues like TAO, Hakkasan, Marquee, LAVO, and more, to become the exclusive mixer across 44 U.S. venues. Q Mixers will also be present at Tao Group Hospitality events, including TAO Desert Nights in Indio, CA (April 2024).

DYMA Brands, an industry leader in foodservice innovation and manufacturing, announced the launch of its new cocktail and mocktail dry-blend mixers under its Thirst Ease brand. The mixers will enable DYMA customers to expand their beverage menu by creating unique, on-trend offerings with minimal additional ingredients and at an attractive profit margin.

Ocean Spray has released a line of 32 oz. cocktail mixers made with real fruit juice. The mixers are available in three classic cocktail varieties: Strawberry Margarita, Rum Punch and – as should be expected from a major cranberry producer – Cosmopolitan. The mixes are available for purchase now online via Amazon and will be rolling out to retail in the near future.

Meet your new favorite brunch cocktail, the Bunny Mary! Mixly’s newest cocktail mixer features a vibrant blend of carrot sweetness, and savory dill to create a refreshing and elevated drinking experience. The Bunny Mary pairs perfectly with vodka, gin, tequila, or make it a zero-proof cocktail with soda water.

Global Brands, a leading independent drinks company and beverage distributor in the United Kingdom, is pleased to announce its pioneering tonic water and mixer brand, Franklin & Sons, has secured a variety of placements in key retail locations across the United States. With a history of creating remarkable, great tasting, premium drinks, ones that turn an ordinary moment into an extraordinary one, Franklin & Sons is now available at chain markets including The Fresh Market, Gelson’s Markets, Central Market, Zuppan’s Markets, and premium drinks chain Goody Goody.

Fever-Tree is mixing up its portfolio with its new cocktail mixer line. Available in three varieties – Classic Bloody Mary, Classic Margarita and Light Margarita –the new mixers are crafted with naturally sourced ingredients and come in 750ml bottles. The Light Margarita Mix contains just 50 calories per 4 oz. serving and has 58% less sugar than the Classic Margarita Mix, according to the brand. All three mixers are available nationwide at retailers such as Total Wine, Kroger and Albertsons for a SRP of $7.99.

Lady Bird Mixer Co. announced the launch of its lineup of premium cocktail mixers. Bringing a new approach to the mixer category with unexpected flavors and disruptive packaging, Lady Bird launched with four core flavors: Van Zandt Club Soda, Classic Tonic Water, Key Lime Ginger Beer, and Ruby Red Grapefruit Soda. Recognizing the need for something new in the mixer category, co-founders Atlas Cheek and Daniel Barnes looked to their home state of Texas for inspiration. With bold and diverse flavors like key lime, prickly pear, and ruby red grapefruit, the incredible plants and botanicals native to the state provide the direction for each product in the line.

FICKS Mixers, a premium low sugar cocktail mix brand, broke into the top 15% of cocktail mixers by retail sales in the U.S., a far cry from the company’s humble beginnings in the dorm room of its co-founders Ron Alvarado and Mike Williamson. The brand is now available in locations ranging from its home on the West Coast to the Midwest thanks to new launches with Kroger and Meijer.

Betty Buzz, a range of sparkling nonalcoholic beverages from entrepreneur and actress Blake Lively, announced its launch at Yard House restaurants throughout the United States. Yard House, known for its diverse menu of American fare and vast selection of craft beer, now serves Betty Buzz Sparkling Grapefruit at all 85 locations in their signature, handcrafted Grapefruit Paloma cocktail. This significant expansion of availability for Betty Buzz’s Sparkling Grapefruit allows the brand to reach new consumers in 27 states nationwide as it grows its national on-premise footprint.

By Ferron Salniker

You may have heard of other coffee-laced drinks— White Russian, Irish Coffee, even the Carajillo— but chances are if you’ve been in a cocktail bar in the last year, the espresso martini has been where booze and caffeine meet on the menu. Originated in the late 1980s, the buzzy martini has made a few comebacks in its lifetime. But why now, and how to explain its reign over other caffeinated cocktails?

After making its way onto the list of the top 10 cocktails served on-premise in 2022, orders for the espresso martini nearly doubled in velocity by mid-2023, earning quarterly growth of 11% and overtaking Long Island Iced Tea to become the sixth most popular cocktail, according to NIQ CGA’s cocktail tracker. Heading into 2024, the cocktail is still on-trend: it grew by 50% during the 12-month period ending September 30, 2023, right at the heels of the Old Fashioned, according to Union’s OnPrem Insights which gathers data from over 1,000 high volume accounts using the POS platforms at bars and restaurants.

But it’s not just bar goers. The fastest-growing subcategories compared to 2022 on Drizly were ready-to-drink (RTD) martinis, driven by the rise in RTD espresso martinis. Overall across off-premise, espresso martini RTDs were up 252% in dollar sales for the latest 52 weeks ending December 30, 2023 versus the previous year, according to NIQ data. In comparison, cold brew cocktail styles were up 13.9% and coffee and cream cocktails were down 79%.

More RTD brands have been getting in on the trend: the number of prepared espresso cocktail UPCs rose by 180% at the beginning of 2023 compared to the

same time the year prior. Post Meridiem’s Espresso Martini, launched in 2022, is one of them. The SKU just overtook the brand’s Cosmopolitan as a top-three variety. That may be due to timing: the espresso martini reemerged when drinkers were beginning to go out post-pandemic.

“The espresso martini is the Millennial Red Bull and vodka,” said Andrew Rodbell, co-founder of Post Meridiem. “It’s a more natural way to get a boost while drinking alcohol and aligns with their love of coffee culture.”

With its elegant, Instagram-ready presentation, the espresso martini has indeed become a go-to upper— and a platform for showcasing a shift in coffee and cocktail culture.

The Nexus of Coffee and Cocktails

When the espresso martini was born, U.S. coffee culture was still in its first wave, with Starbucks slowly leading the charge into the next era of flavored coffee drinks (the Frappuccino!) and inspiring consumers to care about where their coffee was coming from. The third wave flood of barista art, home coffee equipment, and independent roasters gave restaurants— and mixologists — more local and specialty coffee to play with, pleasing both the coffee and craft cocktail connoisseur.

“The market has witnessed a remarkable shift, with consumers becoming more discerning about their drink ingredients,” said Tony Abou Ganim, mixologist, author and cofounder of the TAG Global Spirits awards.

Now in the fourth wave, as companies bring coffee to the masses in pods, capsules and RTD products, the availability of coffee liqueurs can be included in that mass-scaling of highquality coffee beverages. The landscape for coffee cocktails has been transformed by espresso liqueurs like St. George Spirits NOLA Coffee Liqueur and Mr Black Cold Brew Coffee Liqueur, Ganim said.

After “flying the flag for the cocktail” for over ten years, according to founder Tom Baker,

Mr Black was acquired by Diageo in 2022, and the Australian liqueur brand has expanded into nationwide distribution in the U.S. with the goal to win the espresso martini in bars.

The availability of coffee-based spirits also coincides with the rise of other premium ingredients, such as the spirits catching up to vodka’s popularity. The ability to swap out vodka for tequila, gin, rum, or whiskey, makes the espresso martini one of the more popular cocktails taught by Willow Sprague and Jess Blakley, founders of the mobile cocktail class BarBees Bartending.

“The versatility of an espresso martini is what’s given it an edge over other coffee-based cocktails,” said Blakley.

Non-perishable ingredients and the availability of cold brew concentrate, for example, also make it an easy at-home cocktail to whip up, she added.

The Rise of The Martini

But the espresso martini is more than just a “hard coffee” drink or the Red Bull vodka, it’s the new classy version of a party drink, added Gary Ross, chief growth officer at Union.

“Compared to the espresso martini, other coffee cocktails just don’t appear as elegant because they aren’t in a martini glass and look more like a brunch drink,” he said.

Mixologists and brands are also able to get creative with the presentation, from the Parmesan-sprinkled version taking over bars to a limited-edition Gold Espresso Glitter Bomb from Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila.

The rise is also fueled by an overall boost in martini interest. The cocktail is seeing growth at all the bars and restaurants Union works with, reaching a growth rate of more than 10% for

basic martinis and a bump in the lemon drop martini, pornstar martini, and even a small resurgence for the appletini. Last year, the martini and Moscow mule were fighting for second highest selling cocktail on-premise, according to NIQ’s CGA.

Off-premise, sales were up 10.3% and 8.6% for prepared vodka and gin martinis respectively in the 52 weeks ending December 30, 2023, according to NIQ data. In 2023, martinis made up just 0.8% of total RTD cocktail share on Drizly, but have experienced 300% growth compared to the same period in 2022.

How Long Will The Buzz Go?

Will the espresso martini earn a permanent top cocktail spot like the straight-up martini, or will it be a passing fad? The coffee will stay, but the format might change, according to Ganim.

“Given coffee's enduring popularity and its unmatched versatility in mixology, the fascination with coffee-based drinks is here to stay,” he said, but added that he expects the drink to usher in the emergence of other less known coffee-infused drinks like Coffee Old Fashioned or Coffee Negroni. The Carajillo, a simple cocktail from Mexico that is traditionally made from espresso and a Spanish liqueur called Licor 43, has already been making foodie headlines since last year.

The founders of BarBees Bartending argue that the espresso martini has more runway still, and expect more complex iterations of espresso martinis on cocktail menus, rather than a branch-out to brand new coffee cocktails.

There’s another trend that could give it potential for longevity too, they say.

“We’d like to see more zero-proof espresso martini ingredients—making this cocktail without alcohol can be a challenge, especially when searching for a coffee liqueur replacement,” said Sprague.

In the meantime, Rodbell, Post Meridian’s co-founder, is seeing potential beyond the on-premise for his canned cocktail, predicting that more on-premise venues will want an effortless, fast-service alternative that tastes bar made.

“We do have on-premise accounts that feature our espresso martini without sharing that the drink originated in a can, but I don’t want to name names,” he said.

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Hop & Terpene Flavor Solutions

Abstrax Hops

Abstrax Hops provides cutting-edge research, products, and services that push the limits of brewing innovation. Its wide range of solutions encapsulates authentic varietal-specific Hop Flavors, Dank Flavors, and next-generation advanced hop products including natural hop aroma extracts.

Scientific & Regulatory

AIBMR Life Sciences, Inc.

AIBMR is an industry-leading scientific and regulatory consulting firm, founded in 1978. AIBMR offers key services specifically tailored to the natural products marketplace, including GRAS Independent Conclusions, FDA GRAS & NDI Notifications, toxicology studies, cosmetic testing, exposure estimates, label reviews, claims substantiation, FDA & FTC compliance, & manuscript preparation & publication

Great tasting & natural

Almendra Americas, LLC

Beer Fests, Together

Beerfests.com®

Your partner for innovation, reliability and quality. Almendra has been delivering consistently superior natural clean label ingredients to reduce sugar and improve taste of high potency sweeteners for more than 10 years. Proprietary Taste Technology A portfolio of patented and licensed taste modulation solutions. Global Service Stevia expert sales and support in the Americas, Europe and Asia

Need a Laboratory Partner?

AZ Laboratories LLC

We have been in this industry for over 10 years, and really boast our experience in laboratory testing! Need a laboratory partner that you can work with to help get your products tested? Feel free to reach out to us today. A lot of our experience includes beverage products, supplement products, and food testing. Reliability and quality is what we prioritize in our testing and laboratory results.

We're a full-service ticketing services company that brings brewers and enthusiasts together at beer fests. Our ticketing software has helped organizations pack the house with engaged consumers for over a decade. We’ve grown to now provide vital support to our partners—from new beer fest concepts to staffing, execution, and marketing that gets crowds excited. Let's see what we can brew together!

Connecting Nutrition & Health

Beneo Inc.

From energy drinks to protein and meal replacement beverages, low glycemic Palatinose™ (isomaltulose) opens the door to nutritionally optimised beverages. Its slow release of glucose…the main fuel for body and brain…supports blood sugar management while keeping you supplied with sustained energy, whether for exercising, training/competitions, or simply for those long, demanding days.

Certified Cider Professional Program

American Cider Association

Probiotic, Fiber, and Flavor Solutions to Elevate Your Beverage

B&D Nutritional Ingredients

Bacillus coagulans SNZ 1969® – The most researched Bacillus strain, stable and efficacious at a low dose to support a range of digestive health benefits, as well as immune and oral health.

Fiberest® Non-GMO soluble fiber – Resistant dextrin containing 90% fiber, supports digestive health and healthy blood glucose levels.

Nexweet® Allulose – Alternative sweetener about 70% of the sweetness of sugar, exempt from added sugar labeling requirements.

B&D Flavor Creations – Customized flavor solutions to differentiate your beverage, and enhance consumer experience. Low MOQ’s and quick turnaround times on flavor systems.

Package More Profit with Berlin Packaging

Berlin Packaging

Top Quality Beverage Logistics

Bettaway Beverage Distributors

Bettaway provides high-value beverage warehousing, fulfillment and transport service. We're centrally located in the hub of distribution for the Northeast. We are equipped for any beverage fulfillment need – from single case or item pick & ship, to large scale labeling, kitting and repack projects. Our capabilities include automated state-of-the-art Registered Shrink Film and Cartoner services.

Co-Packing & Co-Manufacturing

Beverage Venture Group

Co-packer & private label manufacturer in the Northeast for small to established brands. From carbonated & still beverages to energy drinks, RTD's, and spirits, we have the solutions and infrastructure to help grow your business. Capabilities include but not limited to: variety of canning and bottling capabilities, cartoning, tunnel pasteurization, lab testing, warehousing, & vacuum distillation.

Your Beverage Manufacturing Partner

The BevSource Advantage

BevSource

BevSource is the largest ingredient and packaging distributor exclusively focused on the beverage industry. In addition to supply chain assurance and access to suppliers, we provide beverage development, regulatory compliance, and operations support. With our deep experience in the beverage industry, we're well-positioned to anticipate & navigate growth opportunities and supply chain challenges.

Retort Beverages

Boombox Beverage LLC

Boombox Beverage is a retort beverage manufacturer with a book of innovative RTD recipes waiting to be customized for you. All you need to worry about is the graphics. Whether you're looking for co-man or private label, we've got the expertise and approachable minimums to provide your canning solution. We're FDA registered, SQF, Kosher, and offer dairy and plant-based milks. Let's can together!

We’re re-imagining the possibilities for functional beverages. Great things can happen when you sharpen your competitive edge with Bioenergy Ribose and RiaGev because our patented ingredients do more, and they do it better.

We use proprietary core technology and more than 30 years of experience to develop a variety of specialty ingredients and product solutions for healthier living. We help people of all ages feel, perform and look better from the inside out.

We’ve got you covered with innovative ingredients and technology to give you an edge in such high-demand categories as energy, sport performance, metabolism, healthy aging, digestive health, women’s health, cosmetics and personal care, and more.

In addition, we offer value-added services such as product concepts, formulation support, and small quantity batch custom blending. BLS can be your Total Solution Provider. We partner with you to develop or refine your formulations and line extensions with our gamechanging, branded ingredients.

Let’s take your business to the next level.

We turn up the heat

Blaze PR

Fresh and seasoned, BLAZE PR has established a sweet spot with beverage “challenger” brands looking for a meaningful piece of the market share.

Our team of PR practitioners are well versed in cutting edge PR strategies, tactics and executions, while keeping three steps ahead of the ever-changing media landscape.

“Scrappy,” is our favorite humble-brag. Our boutique size allows us to be accessible and nimble to trends, ideas, and opportunities.

For the last 10 years, BLAZE PR has repeatedly won “Best Places to Work” awards. The joy in what we do and who we work with extends to our clients and accounts. We relish in our client wins while geeking out on trend data, distribution expansions, and sales spikes.

No spin is required. We reveal the authentic storylines around our beverage brands in ways that connect with the media, buyers and consumers.

Let BLAZE PR turn up the heat for your beverage buzz. Beverage

Contract Production/Co-Packing Brew Hub

Your Trusted Supply Partner

Buck Creek Distributing

At Buck Creek Distributing, we're all about connecting with Brewers, Distillers and Beverage creators. A dynamic hub of collaboration and innovation, where we're not just a supplier but your entrepreneurial partner. We use our purchasing, distribution, and logistics know-how coupled with our industry expertise to make sure you've got top-notch access to quality ingredients and supplies.

Making Flavor Simple

Callisons

Callisons is on a mission to make the flavor process simple. For over 120 years we have innovated in the market and that journey has brought us to the flavor company we are today. We utilize our experience to proactively bring our partners a personalized flavor experience that meet their goals. Callisons is excited to take on the challenge of developing the perfect flavor for your newest beverage!

With over 75 years of experience, we are a worldleading coffee supplier. Experts in producing sustainable, innovative, and tailor-made coffee products for the beverage industry. Whether you are looking for cold brew, extracts, powders, or roast & ground coffee, we are your trusted partner to help you create the perfect solution. Contact us today to get started!

Connecting Brands to Copackers

Copack.Net

We provide services from ideation and product development to commercialization. We handle the product so you can focus on building your brand.

Colcafé

Colcafé: Your Coffee Partner

What does CO2Sustain do?

Opening a glass or plastic bottle (or even a can) doesn’t have to mean losing your fizz, no matter how many times your consumer opens the bottle. With CO2Sustain, every sip feels as fizzy as the first, so your drinks are refreshing for as long as you need them to be!

How do we do it?

The process is straightforward; we add an ingredient that coats the bubbles as a drink is opened, making them smaller and denser, stopping them from merging and creating bigger but less effective bubbles. This one simple ingredient helps keep the bubbles in your liquid and reduces the amount of foam and CO2 lost from your drink.

Happy consumers

With a carbonated drink containing CO2Sustain’s unique bubbles, your consumers don’t ever have to worry about losing that oh-so-special fizz they came for. Drinks burst with bubbles from the first to the very last sip.

Fizzier for Longer Carbonated Soft Drinks CO2Sustain

National Distribution Partner

Core-Mark's mission is to be the most valued marketer of fresh, food, and broadline supply solutions to the convenience retail industry. Our 45 distribution centers are strategically located across North America, and each uses state-ofthe-art logistics and supply chain management to deliver the products and services demanded by our 50K+ customers. Let us deliver your goods, you can count on us!

Natural Taste Solutions

Döhler North America

Döhler is a global producer, marketer and provider of technology driven natural ingredients, ingredient systems and integrated solutions for the food, beverage and nutrition industry. Our comprehensive portfolio is derived from natural raw materials, including natural taste solutions, colors, health ingredients, plant-based solutions, and all-in-one ingredient systems. We bring ideas to life.

Global event staffing and tech

Elevate Global

Elevate is a global staffing partner for in-person brand experiences. We connect people, data and brands to optimise impact for our clients. Providing staff for one-day to month-long campaigns at tradeshows, festivals, in-store and much more; with our carefully vetted staff network, proprietary data capture tools and national and global reach, we're taking brand experiences to new heights.

Alcohol & AAB Ingredients

FFP

At FFP, we’re proud of our proprietary research and product development capabilities. Our extensive expertise in beverage innovation supports everything from alcohol and functional beverages to low/no alcohol mocktails sourced from our botanicals. Our skilled team of flavor and technical experts provide openly collaborative, customized natural ingredient solutions from concept to completion.

Cream Liqueur & Emulsified Alcoholic Beverage Developer & Manufacturer Creamy Creation

Elevate Your Beverage Innovation Drink Labs

Healthier.

At Creamy Creation we develop and produce a wide range of cream-based alcoholic beverages and RTDs for customers around the world; from traditional cream liqueurs, vegan, oats, and egg nog options to mixable creams, as well as no- and low-alcohol drinks. We are the global leader in the B2B cream liqueur segment, while also specializing in other emulsified alcoholic beverages.

From ingredient solutions to tailor-made formulations, concept development & product launch support, we work with our customers to bring their ideas to life. To ensure a smooth launch, we offer support every step of the way by providing market and regulatory knowledge, quality assurance and technical sales support.

Our story started in 1979, in the heart of dairy country in the Netherlands and expanded from there. Flash forward to today, we have production facilities in both Rijkevoort, the Netherlands and Batavia, New York and a sales team that covers every corner of the globe.

More delicious. Better for people and planet. dsm-firmenich

Custom Flavor Development

FDI is continuously rethinking the way that flavor creation can be applied to today’s products and technologies. From flavor creation to manufacturing, we are committed to making sure that every step of the process represents consistent reliable quality assurance and food safety. Our library includes clean label, vegan, organic and Non GMO options. Our experienced team is up to any challenge.

Beverage Development Services

Flavorman

Creating beverages in every drink category is what we do—but it’s not all we do. With over 30 years in the business, Flavorman offers a wide range of professional services—from R&D, product re-formulation, and value-engineering, to shelf life testing, regulatory assistance, production support and planning, consulting, and much more. Partner with Flavorman and change what the world is drinking.

Custom Flavor Solutions

Foodarom powered by Glanbia

Beverage Flavor Solutions

FlavorSum

FlavorSum helps your brand grow with the flavor solution expertise and infrastructure required to keep pace with the changing needs of beverage buyers. We make flavor sourcing more efficient, effective, and enjoyable with best-in-class responsiveness, competitive lead times and thousands of flavors in water and oil soluble formats. Let’s create the delicious beverages your customers crave.

Flavors are our Forté

Forté Flavors, LLC

Join forces with Forté to craft a delicious tasting beverage that perfectly aligns with your vision! With our flavor expertise and passion for exceptional taste, our accomplished flavor experts are eager to collaborate with you and your unique concept to develop an exceptional beverage. Let's partner and turn your beverage dream into reality!

Integrity, Innovation, Insight

Foster Garvey PC

As trusted legal advisors to the food & beverage and CPG industries, Foster Garvey provides strategic, full-service counsel to early-stage ventures, established businesses and investors, aimed at minimizing risk and maximizing business potential. From corporate to intellectual property to regulatory matters, our attorneys ensure that our clients are positioned for success. Learn more on our site.

Coconut Ingredients

Franklin Baker, Inc.

Franklin Baker, Inc. is the largest processor of coconut ingredients in the Philippines as the premier supplier to the global beverage & food market. Franklin Baker offers an extensive portfolio of coconut products including Coconut Water, Coconut Milk/Cream, Coconut Concentrate, Creamed Coconut. Our extensive third-party certifications are unrivaled to the highest product standards.

Beverage-Ready Possibilities

FutureCeuticals

At FutureCeuticals, we are focused on discovering and delivering new possibilities through plant-based nutrition that positively impacts people's lives. We bring nature and science together through clinical research and ingredient innovation to offer customizable solutions for functional health and wellbeing beverages.

Cans You Can Count On

G3 Enterprises

G3, a leading packaging and logistics provider, offers cans and ends with brite cans sold by the pallet and printed by full truckloads. We have fast turnaround times as cans are sourced domestically from multiple manufacturing facilities: 12oz std & sleek, 16oz std & specialty sizes 237ml, 250ml and 330ml sourced internationally. G3 offers finished good transportation and national 3PL warehousing.

Beverage Packaging and Custom Supply Chain Solutions

Gamer Packaging, Inc.

Prickly Pear strengthens the Immune System. It is attributed with healing properties since it is rich in Bioflavonoids that have strong antioxidant properties and give this fruit its distinctive bright red-violet color, and help the body detoxify and reduce inflammation. GAIA fruits is your trusted supplier of prickly pear puree and concentrate as a functional ingredient with an exotic flavor

Nature Supplies, We Deliver!

Global Essence, Inc.

Global Essence, Inc. is a supplier of premiumquality ingredients to the flavor, fragrance, food, beverage, and allied industries. Our facility offers four designated warehouses, a regulatory department, and on-site full-service QC and analytical lab. We specialize in essential oils, aroma chemicals, citrus products, absolutes, natural custom blends, NOP Organics, and other flavor blending.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Glover Capital, Inc.

Glover Capital, Inc., negotiates the purchase, sale, merger or restructuring of industry-specific assignments that are national and international in scope. The company also advises owners and senior management on a wide spectrum of corporate financial issues including restructuring the ownership of the business.

EXBERRY® Plant-Based Colors

GNT USA, LLC

EXBERRY® by GNT is the leading brand of natural colors for the food and beverage industry. Our colors are non-GMO and derived solely from fruits, vegetables, and edible plants through a process of chopping, pressing, filtering and blending. Our team of technical specialists are available to guide customers through each stage of the formulation and upscaling process.

Nutritional Water Formulations

Hidell International

Hidell International is a fifty-five year old global consultancy. The company is one of the leading bottled water/beverage consulting groups in the world. The company has a number of health and wellness product patents for bottled water products. The company has on staff microbiologists, chemists, hydrogeologists, financial and market analysts to provide a wide range of professional services.

Ingredients & Processing Aids

HYDRITE

Hydrite offers expertise in manufacturing/ distribution, offering a variety of liquid and dry food/beverage ingredients, food/beverage plant sanitation, processing aids, commodities, foam control and water treatment chemistries. Hydrite provides creative solutions by offering an extensive product line coupled with technical support to address food safety and help maximize efficiency and quality.

Flat to Fab in 90 Seconds

Imagine

Need a quick display solution to capture some impulse buys? Check out SturdyStand™, the heavy-duty floor stand from Imagine--built to last and designed to maximize your budget. This display packs the muscle you need with easybreezy installation (we’re talking 90 seconds— flat!) Learn more at Imagine.

Mobile Canning Solutions

Iron Heart Canning Co

IHC is your solution to guide you through the canning process! With over 250 million cans filled to date, IHC offers unmatched Experience and Expertise. We service the Eastern US and deliver Quality you can count on – Guaranteed seams, All beverage types, All can sizes, Materials sourcing, & Co-Packaging Partners –whatever your situation we can get your product canned. IHC is your one stop shop!

Ingredient Supplier

IFPC

IFPC is your premier source for top-tier ingredients and customized blending solutions across the food, beverage, and dairy sectors nationwide. Rely on our expert team for strategic purchasing insights, tailored ingredient blends to boost efficiency, and formula enhancements for optimal food and beverage outcomes. With strategically positioned distribution centers throughout the country and a cutting-edge manufacturing facility in St. Louis, MO, we excel in simplifying ingredient sourcing. Our commitment extends beyond supplying ingredients; we actively support your product development and reformulation needs, ensuring a seamless and innovative partnership.

Aluminum, Plastic & Glass Beverage Packaging Supply

Illing Packaging

Filling & Packaging worldwide

KHS USA, Inc.

KHS is one of the world's leading companies providing innovative solutions for filling and packaging in the beverage, (non-)food markets. With headquarters in Germany and production sites all over the world including Waukesha (WI), KHS provides state-of-the-art, reliable and highly efficient turnkey lines, individual machines and conversions for filling and packaging in glass, PET, kegs, and cans.

Flavor & Taste Solutions

McCormick FONA

Consumers today want it all—you’re balancing the demands of great taste, supply chain challenges, regulatory hurdles and consumer acceptance. The experts at McCormick FONA can help. From ideation to launch, we can create a seamless, winning path for you. Design, develop and scale up using our Beverage Innovation Studio in Geneva, IL or Irvine. We’ll bring the best taste solutions to the table.

Flavor Manufacturer

Mother Murphy's Flavors

Mother Murphy's is a full-service flavor manufacturer dedicated to supporting customer needs through quality and flavor innovation. At Mother Murphy's we specialize in flavor and prototype development for the beverage industry and have over 60,000 flavors in our portfolio. With our expertise your ideas become the exceptional flavors that connect with consumers and create brand loyalty.

Your Cogs Matter To Us

Natuur Brands Inc.

Our Perfectly Dosed hemp cannabinoid emulsions power millions of hemp-infused beverages, food products, and more. We help you streamline your costs without compromising on quality through our industry-leading quality offered at accessible price points. Reach out today to learn more about how we can support your hemp-infused products, one perfect dose at a time.

Looking to safeguard the quality and shelf-life of your beverage and eliminate chilled chain distribution needs? LANXESS Corporation offers two unique and innovative technologies, Velcorin® and Nagardo®, which provide microbiological protection in a wide variety of beverages.

Velcorin® (Dimethyl Dicarbonate) is a cold sterilization agent that kills microorganisms during production, resulting in cleaner and more stable beverages.

Benefits of Velcorin® include:

• No impact on sensory profile

• Clean label solution

• Compatibility with all types of common packaging

• Cost-effective

• Application-specific advice and services from Velcorin® team

Nagardo® (Dacryopinax Spathularia) is a natural guardian that protects against beverage spoilage to secure and prolong shelf life.

Benefits of Nagardo® include:

• Achieve natural & consumer friendly claims

• Efficient control of a broad range of spoilage organisms

• No impact on sensory profile

• Broad application in a variety of beverages

• Easy integration into production process

• Application-specific advice and services from Nagardo® team

LANXESS Corporation hopes to conveniently meet all of your microbiological protection needs with our widely applicable technologies and services.

For more information on Velcorin®, please visit our website.

For more information on Nagardo®, please visit our website.

MATCHA.COM Organic Bulk Japanese Matcha - Best Price, Quality, Service MATCHA.COM

Why use MATCHA.COM for your Bulk or Private Label Matcha Needs?

• Largest Organic Matcha Production Facility in Japan

• Best Price to Quality Ratio on the Market

• U.S. Warehousing for Fast Lead Times and Guaranteed Availability

• U.S. Market Expertise + U.S. Based Operations and Support

• No order too big or small - We regularly fulfill 10,000KG+ POs

• Full Private-Label, Co-packing and Blending Capabilities

• Vertically Integrated Farms and Production Facilities

• All QA paperwork ready to go. Surpass strictest QA requirements

• Refrigerated shipping and warehousing = Longest Shelf Life & Freshest Matcha

Our services are approved by all major manufacturers, distributors, certifying bodies, and retail outlets. We are a vertically-integrated Japanese provider of both USDA Organic matcha, and conventional matcha. We leverage our capacity and custom quoting process to hit ANY price and quality your project requires. No order too large or too small or too big. From 1.1lb (500g) bags all the way to FCL (Full Container Loads). As the authoritative U.S. experts in all things matcha we offer advice and education to help you understand matcha in the context of your application as well as the history, production practices, health benefits, and anything else you want to know to help you create the most popular SKU and market it effectively to your customers.

*Contact bulk@matcha.com

Product Photos That Increases Brand Trust and Awareness

MisaHungry Media

Nutraceutical Ingredients for Successful, Nutritious Products

Nature’s Power Nutraceuticals

For over twenty five years NP Nutra® has supplied the finest quality plant-based nutraceutical ingredients. Our diverse catalog features more than 130 ingredients, and in addition to a unique Signature Ingredient line and an extensive certified Organic product line (Nutra Organics), our portfolio includes popular categories such as Nutra Protein, Nutra Flow, Nutra Pura, Nutra Ayurveda, SuperFruits, SuperGreens and Nutra Pet.

NP Nutra® strives to provide ingredients at the best possible price, and agreements established with growers worldwide ensure uninterrupted supply year-round, enabling us to offer customers the reliability that large projects require.

Prioritizing quality, NP Nutra’s Triple-T Verification® program follows industry best practices and ensures supply chain transparency, and ingredient quality, safety and traceability. As part of this program our carefully selected manufacturing partners comply with GFSI regulations and have passed a rigorous validation process.

NP Nutra’s ongoing commitment to purity, quality and reliability has earned the trust of the world’s leading functional food and beverage, dietary supplement, cosmetic and pet food manufacturers, who have become loyal customers. Our dedicated team is committed to satisfying your ingredient needs and building a lasting partnership.

Visit npnutra.com & request Free Sample.

Sustainable Ingredients

NURA’s diverse leadership team brings over 100 years of collaborative experience in procurement, quality, business development, and customer service within the food, beverage, and dietary supplements industries. Our team is committed to providing the highest quality ingredients, focusing on trends, sustainability, and innovation. Reach out to our team for samples and more information!

Retail Merchandising Support

Pack-Out Marketing

Pack-Out Marketing provides sales, marketing, and merchandising solutions to Emerging Suppliers, Distributors, and Retailers. Pack-Out Marketing deploys specialized in store support capable of Audits, Couponing, Sampling, Stocking Shelves, and Building Displays. In addition, we execute marketing initiatives and survey for competitive activity. All visits are recorded and shared. We fill the gap!

Steam Injection Liquid Heaters

Pick Heaters, Inc.

Pick Direct Steam Injection Liquid Heaters offers unique advantages to the food and beverage industry for applications including tank filling, CIP, pasteurizing, product cooking, heating jacketed kettles, can and bottle warming, and industrial wastewater treatment.

Your Partner in Growth

Propeller Industries

Thinking about profitability, extending your runway, and improving efficiency in your operations? Managing your company’s finances requires multiple skillsets. Propeller’s fractional model offers a dynamic solution that provides a cost-effective alternative to hiring full-time finance talent too early. Our fractional CFOs share a passion for helping entrepreneurs bring their vision to life.

NURA USA

100% Recycled Multipacks PakTech

A Century of Canning Expertise Scaled For Craft Beverage Pneumatic Scale Angelus

Beverage & Food Development

PTM Food is the ultimate product development and manufacturing support firm that offers unparalleled expertise, creativity, and development services to help you achieve a distinct competitive advantage. We leave no stone unturned in our quest to uncover critical industry insights and develop products that are truly cutting-edge. Our team is more than capable of delivering successful results.

Beverage Sanitation Programs

Rochester Midland Corporation

Rochester Midland Corporation’s BrandGuard® program is a HACCP and GMP-based beverage/food safety and sanitation program designed to support SQF, BRC and other GFSI standards. We partner with beverage and food manufacturers looking for a comprehensive and quality sanitation program focused on innovative chemical cleaning options, process improvements, training, and technical support.

We are your beverage enablers! QuantiPerm

Dedicated Contract Production

Sleeping Giant Brewing Company

Situated in Denver, we are the only dedicated contract brewery & beverage facility in the Western US. Founded in 2015 to address the shortcomings of the contract production model, SGBC emphasizes: quality, customer service, location & size. As a dedicated, turnkey contract outfit, your products are our singular focus. We produce beer, spirit based RTDs, hemp, NA beer, hard seltzer & NA beverages.

Insurance for Beverages

Specialty Food Beverage-PCI

We work with specialty beverage manufacturers and importers covering a wide variety of beverage types to include, alcoholic, non-alcoholic, functional, energy drinks and supplements. Policy types include General Liability, Product Liability, Excess Liability, Property, Product Recall and Ocean Cargo. Very familiar with wholesale and retail insurance requirements for many major vendors.

Multipacking Machinery for Cans & Bottles

R.A Jones, a Coesia company

Sailor Plastic Bottles: Quality Containers, Endless Possibilities!

Sailor Plastic Bottles

Partnership Makes all the Difference

Sensient Flavors & Extracts

Saxco is a full-service packaging solutions supplier. We have served the distiller, wine, and craft beverage community for more than 90 years, combining our expertise, passion, and commitment to your success with modern packaging technologies. We are uniquely positioned as your single source supplier, offering standard glass bottles and cans to fully proprietary packaging solutions, and in-house services ranging from artwork management, can sleeving, fully automated pack-outs, and more. We leverage a world-class global network of manufacturers to give you the surety of supply you can depend on. And with inventory planning and management, and flexible contract and credit terms, we make it easy to scale your business. Contact us today to receive a FREE consultation from a dedicated packaging expert.

Sensient Flavors and Extracts offers value-added flavors, systems and extracts that bring life to products. We inspire our customers to deliver products that offer multi-sensory experiences that are “just picked from nature.” Thanks to our wide-ranging products, development teams and cutting-edge facilities, we’re able to implement thoughtful solutions for complex challenges. With industry-leading expertise in the savory, beverage and sweet markets, we provide comprehensive solutions that meet our customers’ flavor, color, and functionality requirements.

At Sensient Flavors & Extracts, we use our advanced proprietary development technologies to create fresh, unique flavor systems. Additionally, we have a complete line of masking & flavor boosting technologies. Particularly in beverage, we have a TrueBoost portfolio that enhances mouthfeel & creaminess, and a natural extract portfolio from named sources.

We are experts in the science, art and innovation of taste. We are market-savvy influencers, grounded in facts and driven by the needs & occasion of our consumers. We are problem solvers, and you are what makes us a collaborator, and a true partner. Together, we can solve the most challenging product puzzles and together, we can make products that are delicious, craveable and truly inspired.

Blending and Process Experts

Statco-DSI Process Systems

Statco-DSI is a full-service equipment and integration service provider to the food and beverage industry, with specialties in dry powder mixing, continuous inline blending, as well as de-aeration and carbonation. Operating from 11 offices coast-to-coast, we are able to assist with all of your beverage processing requirements.

Fruit & Vegetable Ingredients

Stiebs

Stiebs, since 2005, has been devoted to sourcing, processing & delivering the world's finest plant-based products. We offer a full line of fruit & vegetable based ingredients as Single Strength Juice, Juice Concentrates, Purees and IQF Cubes. From the beginning stages of product development to delivering an on-going supply of premium natural products, our team is here to help you succeed.

We Design to Taste

Takasago International Corp

Built on technology, Takasago has an extensive innovation platform including true to nature VIVID® Natural Flavors, taste modulating INTENSATES® Flavors, Consumer Insights and Market Research, etc. Vertically integrated in citrus, coffee, tea, mint, and vanilla to drive quality and sustainable raw materials for flavor creations, we promise to deliver impactful flavors for your product development.

POS/POP Merchandising

TAP PRODUCTIONS

Need a quote or ready to launch a new brand or product line? We have you covered! With over 20 years of purchasing experience, we have produced a variety of custom decorated goods in print, premiums, wearables and displays for some of the best national brands, startup companies and everyone in between. We are a valued partner, that successfully delivers on-time and on budget materials. Call us.

So-Cal Distribution Solution

Tenace Incubation

Tenace Incubation acts as your supplier rep and at the same time is a full service DSD distribution partner in Southern California.  For the last eight years, we have been working with new brands to prove concept; working with existing brands wanting to get started and working with brands that already have distribution in KeHE or UNFI and looking for a solution to fill in the voids in the market.

Strategic Advisor to CEOs

The CPG Coach LLC

Gary Leibowitz: serving founders, CEOs and VCs in beverages, food, personal care, wellness. 29 years’ beverage/CPG C-suite experience: strategy, commercial, funding, M&A. Need strategic support... Unlocking your growth potential?

Prioritizing? Creating your execution roadmap? Winning in channels, customers and distributors? Positioning to investors, strategic partners or acquirors? Get in touch!

Sundried Fruit and Tomatoes

Traina Foods

From its family ranch in California’s Central Valley, Traina Foods grows, sun dries and produces premium sundried fruit for Industrial Ingredient, Foodservice, and Private Label customers around the world. Traditions include time-honored methods of sun drying tomatoes and a food-lover’s belief in the slower-is-better lifestyle, while embracing sustainable farming, zero food waste and solar energy.

The Formulation Experts

Trisolutions

Trisolutions is the top choice for your beverage development needs. Your project will benefit from our extensive expertise in all beverage categories. In our applications laboratory, our team of food scientists will develop your initial concept into a commercial reality, including full scale production support. Contact us to find out how we can provide the solution you are looking for.

The GRO Agency

Full Solution Powdered Beverage Manufacturer

The Jel Sert Company

Beverage Premix Solutions

TWG Health & Nutrition

Super Blend ® custom nutritional premixes can help overcome nutrient processing obstacles by delivering performance and stability in a customer’s end product. Our premixes respond remarkably well under certain processing conditions. Our SuperBlend ® premixes:

• Combine nutrients into a quality assured ingredient

• Mix coated SuperCoat® ingredients with uncoated nutrients

• Simplify ingredient procurement through one supplier for cost savings

• Better particle homogeneity by carefully blending ingredients

• Decrease warehousing and inventory costs

• Excellent flow properties for easy dispensing and packaging

Streamline Your Deductions

Vdriven

Trucent supplies, installs and services purposebuilt centrifuges, tailored for your needs. Whether a separator or clarifier, our wide variety fits operations of any size. Experience enhanced clarity and production efficiency with Trucent. Plus, our Centrifuge Parts & Repair division services all major brands with 20k+ parts in-stock. Call Trucent to discover all that a centrifuge can do!

New Beverage Help For Startups

US Beverage Manufacturing, LLC

The team at US Beverage Manufacturing has 21 years experience in the beverage industry where our prerogative is good work for our customers to be sure they are successful. USBM can help with all supply chain services from new beverage formulation of liquids & powders, label design, proof of concept services, sourcing of ingredients and materials, and determining where to manufacture your product

Enhance & Fortify Vitacyclix, Div of MORRE-TEC

Improve cash flow and save time with effective Deduction Management. Our team tracks, reviews, and categorizes each deduction, identifying and disputing any invalid ones. In 2023 alone, we recovered over $700K for our clients. We provide customizable, affordable solutions suitable for CPG brands of all sizes. Focus on your business and let Vdriven handle your deductions.

Solutions for Spirtless Brands

Venus Spirited Solutions (VSS)

Newly formed Flavor House focused on solution based ingredients and formulas made specifically for the Spirits Industry-- Including No and Low Proof Spirits-- Offering stock and custom formulations created by Grace Venus, utilizing years of experience collaborating with the best flavor chemists and ingredient suppliers in the industry. Visit our website to learn more.

MORRE-TEC Industries Inc., founded in 1987, has established a leading position as a global supplier of specialty vitamins and mineral supplements for the nutrition, beverage and personal care industries. With the acquisition of the Vitacyclix business in 2016, the company gained a unique technology for the production of water-soluble formulations for fat soluble vitamins, which is especially useful for the fortification of dairy products, functional beverages as well as other food and nutritional applications.

A complete selection of vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids and proteins as well both vegan and kosher options are available. We welcome the opportunity to develop custom formulations of blends for your specific needs.

For any questions or inquiries please visit our website, www.morretec.com; call 908-688-9009 or email sales@morretec.com

Custom Flavors & Pure Extracts West Coast Container, Inc.

'Combo' Can & End Shipments

Virginia Dare Extract Co.

Greater than flavor: a century of preferred taste and beverage expertise. More than a flavor supplier, Virginia Dare is your partner throughout the entire beverage development process. We're serving 100 years of conceptual foresight, smiledefining flavors, sustainable extracts, wellness leadership, and masking superpowers—all from our dedicated beverage lab and new customer collaboration centers.

We provide innovative and competitively priced aluminum can solutions. One of which, includes factory direct ‘combo’ shipments (24 can pallets + 1 end pallet). Setting up one shipment meets your material needs, simplifies logistics and reduces freight costs. ‘Combo' loads work for both Printed and Brite shipments. Call us for a quote, today.

Drain and compress filled cans in one easy step with a WEIMA E.200! WEIMA America, Inc.

WEIMA packaging presses, can presses, recycling presses and beverage drainers reduce the waste volume and the disposal costs for liquids.

The E.200 drainage press from WEIMA offers an efficient way to drain partially or fully-filled cans in one easy step, increasing quality control and decreasing waste.

Drainage press technology allows for rejected cans to be directly ejected into the machine’s hopper, which punctures them so the contents can be drained into its collection bin. The machine can also be hand-fed if necessary, and all rejected cans are easily compressed into Ø200mm discs for convenient recycling.

The compressed discs of aluminum take up significantly less space than partially filled cans, maximizing valuable floor space between trips to the recycler and increasing the value of the aluminum due to its compressed form.

For breweries and other packaging/canning operations, WEIMA’s drainage press technology allows more time to focus on what matters most: sustainably creating a delicious, quality product.

Water Treatment Solutions

WaterSurplus

WaterSurplus delivers sustainable water treatment solutions for bottlers across the country. Since its founding in 1989, innovation has driven WaterSurplus. Today, that means high-efficiency reverse osmosis systems, fouling-resistant RO membrane elements, PFAS treatment, pre-engineered filtration systems, a line of media, a rental fleet, and WaterSurplus’s original surplus marketplace.

ZUCKERMAN HONICKMAN

Zuckerman Honickman is a full service packaging company specializing in supplying glass and plastic bottles and aluminum beverage cans. With more than 100 years of experience our company prides itself in being experts in the supply side of the beverage industry. Our strengths are in our ability to provide beverage brand owners with many unparalleled advantages, such as volume buying, preferred production scheduling, custom packaging design, supply side networking, logistical planning, and much more. Our market expertise lies within our ability to supply a full spectrum of glass, plastic and metal containers to companies of all sizes. Our knowledge base gives us the unique opportunity to enable beverage brand owners to take their ideas from inception to reality to success. With hundreds of manufacturer supplier partners Zuckerman Honickman prides itself in being able to supply custom packaging, hard to find packaging, as well as stock packaging...all at a competitive price. Our National footprint enables us to supply packaging to all corners of the US and beyond. Zuckerman Honickman provides bottles and cans to all beverage verticals, including sports drinks, sparkling beverages, craft beer, craft soda, bottled water, tea, coffee, enhanced beverages, wine, spirits, and many more! Reach out to us and let’s see how Zuckerman Honickman can help!

A. Holliday & Company Inc.

Abelei Flavors

Abita Brewing Company

Abstrax Hops

AIBMR Life Sciences, Inc.

Almendra Americas, LLC

American Cider Association

AZ Laboratories LLC

B&D Nutritional Ingredients

Beerfests.com®

Beneo Inc.

Berlin Packaging

Bettaway Beverage Distributors

Christine Renken Toronto - (416) 225-2217 teacoff.com

Mike Allegretti North Aurora IL (630) 859-1410 abelei.com

Bryant Hauck Abita Springs LA (985) 893-3143 abita.com

Ross Hunsinger Tustin CA - AbstraxHops.com

Jared Brodin Seattle WA (253) 286-2888 aibmr.com

Eric Zabin Decatur GA (404) 395-0219 almendra.com

Michelle McGrath Portland OR (503) 593-1716 ciderassociation.org

Susan Vu Tempe AZ (480) 955-9870 azlaboratories.com

Brad Van Dyke Carlsbad CA (760) 445-7839 bdnutritional.com

Kevin Mardorf - - (800) 801-3378 beerfests.com

Kyle Krause Parsippany NJ (003) 216-8013 beneo.com

Jason Loper Chicago IL (312) 869-7501 berlinpackaging.com

John Vaccaro South Plainfield NJ (908) 222-2526 bettaway.com

Bev-Hub - Manhattan KS (316) 339-0360 Bev-Hub.com

Beverage Venture Group

Lisa Kelly Middlebury VT - beverageventuregroup.com

BevSource - Saint Paul MN (866) 956-4608 bevsource.com

BevWrap LLC

Big Day the Agency

Bioenergy Life Science (BLS)

Blaze PR

Blue Pacific Flavors

Boombox Beverage LLC

Brew Hub

Brother Mobile Solutions

Buck Creek Distributing

Callisons

CANOPOLIS

CanSource, a TricorBraun Co.

Caporale Consulting

CFT Packaging USA

Circle Beverage

CO2Sustain

Colcafé

Copack.Net

Ralph Drozt Elk Grove Village IL (773) 580-5434 bevwrap.com

Kristie Brown San Diego CA (512) 517-7369 bigdaytheagency.com

Michelle Wald Ham Lake MN (763) 746-3929 bioenergylifescience.com

Matt Kovacs Santa Barbara CA (310) 923-4366 blazepr.com

Roya Sayyah, Lori Banks-Keller City of Industry CA (626) 934-0099 bluepacificflavors.com

Paul Seeman Skokie IL (312) 607-1038 boomboxbeverage.com

Diane Schoen Lakeland FL (314) 406-9660 brewhub.com

Allyson Mausolf Westminster CO (720) 670-8375 brothermobilesolutions.com

Nick Wisniewski Solon IA (630) 400-9815 buckcreekhops.com

Justin Biza Olympia WA - callisons.com

Andrew Gravin Normal IL (309) 296-0235 canopolis.co

Robert Renfro Longmont CO (870) 329-4990 cansource.com

Mark Caporale Middletown CA (707) 987-9703 caporaleconsulting.com

Amanda Podwinski Vernon Hills IL (847) 247-0233 usa.cft-group.com

Carly Traub Indianapolis - (317) 709-9471 circlebev.com

Jonathan Stott Leeds - +4401132050971__ co2sustain.com

Nicolás Jiménez Vargas Medellín - +573218923593___ industriacolombianadecafe.com

Lance Schwarzkopf Mooresville NC - copack.net

Core-Mark International - - - - core-mark.com

Creamy Creation

Döhler North America

Drink Labs

Selina McJury Rochelle Park NJ (585) 820-0430 creamycreation.com

Döhler North America North Brunswick NJ (973) 575-4600 doehler.com

Dennis Morales Simi Valley CA (833) 437-4657 thedrinklabs.com

dsm-firmenich - Anaheim CA - flavors.firmenich.com

Elevate Global Meggan Ballard Gomez Atlanta GA (747) 273-7773 weareelevate.global

FFP William Kirkland Lake Mary FL (352) 357-4141 floridafood.com

Flavor Dynamics, Inc.

Colleen Roberts South Plainfield NJ (908) 822-8855 FlavorDynamics.com

Flavorman Spencer McGuire Louisville KY (502) 289-5549 flavorman.com

FlavorSum Rachel Zawistowski Kalamazoo MI (800) 525-2431 flavorsum.com

Foodarom powered by Glanbia

Forté Flavors, LLC

Foster Garvey PC

Franklin Baker, Inc.

Vanessa Chartrand - - (801) 975-2604 foodarom.com

Janet Guzman Valencia CA (661) 309-1163 forteflavors.com

Hillary Hughes New York NY (212) 965-4527 foster.com

John Slade Memphis TN (901) 881-6681 franklinbaker.com

G3

GAIA fruits

Gamer

Global

Glover

GNT

Hidell International

HYDRITE

Roberto Garfias San Luis Potosí - +524441595829___ www.gaiafruits.com

Henry Hidell Hingham MA (617) 823-9023 hidellinternational.com

Jeff McShane Brookfield WI (262) 792-1450 hydrite.com

IFPC Mathew Brady Fenton MO (800) 227-8427 ifpc.com

Illing Packaging

Keith Hemmig Milwaukee WI (262) 253-4252 illingpackaging.com

Imagine - Minneapolis MN (800) 942-7088 go.theimaginegroup.com

Iron Heart Canning Co

Roger Kissling - - (908) 619-5449 ironheartcanning.com

Kerry Amanda Wolff Beloit WI (608) 201-5107 kerry.com

KHS USA, Inc.

Krier Foods

Lanxess Corporation

Lion Beverage

MATCHA.COM

McCormick FONA

Mibelle Biochemistry

MisaHungry Media

Monin

Mother Murphy's Flavors

Nature's Power Nutraceuticals

Natuur Brands Inc.

Nugogo Branding Solutions

NURA USA

Ohanafy

Pack-Out Marketing

Hannah Tuenker Waukesha WI (262) 797-7200 khs.com

Zach Malin Random Lake WI (920) 994-2469 krierfoods.com

Michael Turpin Pittsburgh PA (817) 357-5851 velcorin.com

Andrew Van Blargan Pittston PA (814) 935-1355 lionbeverage.com

Team Matcha Tucson AZ (520) 273-2110 matcha.com

John Fishel

Geneva IL (630) 578-8638 fona.com

Alice Olufeso Buchs - +41628361731____ mibellebiochemistry.com

Sean Misa Kent WA (425) 686-9237 misahungry.com

Joe Smith Clearwater FL (727) 461-3033 monin.com

Michael Oden Greensboro NC (336) 273-1737 mothermurphys.com

Eric Guggenheim Gardena CA (310) 694-3031 npnutra.com

Nikki Childers Chicago IL (312) 929-2375 natuurbrands.com

Todd Gatzow Pasadena CA (626) 379-1700 nugogo.com

Caydie Carrizosa Irvine CA (949) 946-5700 nurausa.com

Kirsten Kalsky Wilmington NC (609) 792-5062 ohanafy.com

Anthony Ezzard Fort Worth TX (817) 803-5043 pack-out.com

PakTech - - - (541) 461-5000 PakTech-opi.com

Pick Heaters, Inc.

Pizzey Ingredients

Pneumatic Scale Angelus

Propeller Industries

PTM Food

QuantiPerm

R.A Jones, a Coesia company

Rochester Midland Corporation

Sailor Plastic Bottles

Saxco International, LLC

Sensient Flavors & Extracts

Sleeping Giant Brewing Company

Sovereign Flavors Inc.

Specialty Food Beverage-PCI

Statco-DSI Process Systems

Stiebs

T. Hasegawa USA

Takasago International Corp

Stephanie Crass West Bend WI (262) 338-1191 pickheaters.com

Mary Ekman - - (651) 797-3168 pizzeyingredients.com

Gigi Lorence Stow OH (800) 992-0491 psangelus.com

Propeller Team New York NY (888) 552-5710 propellerindustries.com

Don Rodgers Wall Township NJ (888) 736-6339 ptmfood.com

The QP Crew Chandler AZ (602) 903-2158 QuantiPerm.com

Rich Clifton Covington KY (513) 382-4544 rajones.com

Lauri Calarco Rochester NY (585) 336-2310 rochestermidland.com

Trevor Heeren Adrian MN (800) 380-7429 sailorplastics.com

- - - (877) 641-4003 Saxco.com

Rob Babikan Hoffman Estates IL (847) 558-0427 sensientflavorsandextracts.com

Matthew Osterman Denver CO (303) 859-1484 sleepinggiantbrewing.com

David Ames Santa Ana CA (714) 437-1996 sovereignflavors.com

Tom Wallace - - (866) 461-0709 specialtyfoodbeverage.com

Randy Smith Huntington Beach CA (714) 375-6300 statco-dsi.com

Brian Nova Madera CA (559) 661-0031 stiebs.com

Douglas Resh Cerritos CA (562) 302-5492 thasegawa.com

Walter Crawley Rockleigh NJ (201) 767-9001 takasago.com

PRODUCTIONS Terry Peterson Richmond Hill NY (718) 441-0382 tapproductions.net

Tenace Incubation

Tetra Pak

The CPG Coach LLC

Ken Tenace Anaheim CA (909) 486-0459 tenaceconsulting.com

Ross Peets

Denton TX (940) 977-0693 tetrapakusa.com

Gary Leibowitz Santa Monica CA (424) 436-1212 gary@thecpgcoach.world

The GRO Agency - New York NY (212) 725-6710 thegroagency.com

The Jel Sert Company

Traina Foods

Trisolutions

Trucent

TWG Health & Nutrition

US Beverage Manufacturing, LLC

Vdriven

Venus Spirited Solutions (VSS)

Kyle Harrington - - (630) 818-7374 jelsert.com

Tony Varni Patterson CA (209) 914-6959 traina.com

David Neely Vancouver - (778) 381-6060 trisolutions.ca

Jeremy Vogel

Dexter MI (734) 474-8554 trucent.com

Mike Lawrence Lafayette LA (337) 783-3096 twghealthandnutrition.com

Zach Mosesian Las Vegas NV (702) 476-1021 usbeveragemanufacturing.com

Luke Abbott Encinitas CA (858) 405-2726 vdriven.com

Grace Venus Santa Cruz CA (831) 359-7763 venusspiritedsolutions.com

Virginia Dare Extract Co. - Carteret NJ (718) 788-1776 virginiadare.com

Vitacyclix, Div of MORRE-TEC

Maria Jewelyn Mendoza Union NJ (908) 922-4409 morretec.com

WaterSurplus - Loves Park IL (800) 919-0888 watersurplus.com

WEIMA America, Inc.

West Coast Container, Inc.

Zion Packaging

ZUCKERMAN HONICKMAN

TJ Van Thullenar Fort Mill SC (803) 802-7170 weima.com

Kevin McInerney West Linn OR (614) 420-1830 westcoastcontainer.com

Gary Martin Corona CA (949) 842-1458 zionpack.com

Jon Zuckerman King Of Prussia PA (610) 962-0100 zh-inc.com

Optimum Nutrition Taps Rob Gronkowski to Inspire Americans to ‘Unlock More in ‘24’

Optimum Nutrition, part of Glanbia Performance Nutrition, is motivating fitness enthusiasts and wellness seekers alike to unlock their full potential in ‘24.

To fuel resolution goals and emphasize the crucial role of protein in achieving these milestones, the brand launched the #MuscleMics education series featuring elite athlete partners, including football superstar Rob Gronkowski, model Camille Kostek, ballet phenomenon Misty Copeland and soccer star Sydney Leroux.

With New Year’s resolutions underway, the series aims to support individuals on their health and wellness journey with athletes and influencer partners who have “mic’d up” their muscles to reach their goals. This exclusive behind-the-scenes series provides consumers with insights into their training routines, motivation and how they achieve their goals with the support of Gold Standard 100% Whey.

“Many people don’t realize that it’s more than what you put in at the gym,” said football legend Rob Gronkowski. “As an athlete, I understand having the right amount of protein taken over time combined with my training helps me build and maintain muscles, so I drink Gold Standard 100% Whey shakes daily. I get 24 grams of protein to support my workouts and muscle recovery. I want people to join me on this journey to unlock their fitness potential in ‘24 – let’s crush those resolutions!”

Fans are invited to join the #MuscleMics and #UnlockMorein24 conversation on Instagram and TikTok to share their fitness journeys, plans to stay active, and explore the benefits of fueling their muscles in the New Year.

Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey Protein has 24 grams of high-quality protein, which is equivalent to that of 4 medium eggs, 7 slices of ham, or a small bowl of Greek yogurt. Protein is important in any diet to support muscle health and recovery, serve as a snack between meals and is an essential macronutrient for everyday health. Whether consumers are simply looking for an extra boost of protein to help them meet their daily protein goals or to fuel their post-workout for muscle recovery to support their New Year’s resolution fitness goals, Gold Standard 100% Whey is a convenient way to add 24 grams of high-quality protein to one’s diet.

“At the start of the year, many embark on new wellness and fitness journeys, but often face challenges in reaching their goals,” said Optimum Nutrition Brand Director Jim Hogan. “In the #MuscleMics education series, our partners show how unlocking one’s fitness potential could be as simple as the right amount of protein intake – which people may be overlooking. We’re on a mission to educate how and why individuals need protein to meet their fitness goals.”

The ‘Unlock More in ‘24’ campaign builds off the brand’s global communications platform launched last year – ‘There’s more of you in you’ – bringing to life the idea that we all have more inside us, and Optimum Nutrition supports motivated athletes and fitness enthusiasts as they work to unlock their potential.

49ers Arik Armstead Joins Oobli’s Advisory Board as Athlete Ambassador

Arik Armstead, defensive tackle for the San Francisco 49ers, has joined Oobli, the leading global sweet protein manufacturer known for its healthy sugar alternatives, as an advisory board member and brand’s first athlete ambassador. Sweet proteins don’t affect blood sugar or the gut microbiome unlike other sugar alternatives. In this role, Armstead will advise on future product innovation and educating consumers about the game-changing potential of sweet proteins.

Armstead has experienced how too much sugar can impact his performance on the field, as well as his general wellbeing. The devastating effects of America’s sugar addiction also hits home for Armstead as several of his family members were recently diagnosed with diabetes. Fed up with unhealthy sugar alternatives that negatively impact our gut microbiome, Armstead discovered the world-changing potential of sweet proteins and wanted to support Oobli’s quest for revolutionizing the future of sweet foods.

Oobli’s sweet proteins are derived from small, rare fruits and berries that grow near the equator that are unsustainable to grow at scale. Leveraging precision fermentation, Oobli’s sweet proteins are brewed (similar to beer or cheese) rather than grown, making them a sustainable sugar solution. Sugarcane accounts for more than 65 million acres globally, causing both negative environmental and health impacts. Fermentation enables Oobli to replicate nature’s candy but without the adverse environmental impact.

Oobli was founded in 2013 by Dr. Jason Ryder, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the world’s leading experts on fermentation. Since then, the company has been perfecting the fermentation process to replicate and produce these sweet proteins.

Earlier this year, the company introduced the world’s first commercialized beverage using sweet proteins: Oobli Sweet Iced Tea.

“As a father of two young children and a professional athlete, I am passionate about

eating healthy and reducing our sugar intake,” said Arik Armstead, San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman and founder of the Armstead Academic Project. “Until I discovered Oobli, I had been frustrated with other sugar alternatives on the market. I believe sweet proteins have the potential to disrupt our global sugar habit.”

“Our goal is to reduce the sugar in a variety of heavily sweetened foods and beverages within the next several years,” said Ali Wing, CEO, Oobli. “As a Sacramento native, Arik was a natural addition to our Bay Areabased Oobli team. Leveraging his expertise on and off the field will help us not only spread awareness about sweet proteins to a mass audience but also help accelerate the endless possibilities for how sweet proteins can be incorporated into food and beverages, especially for athletes”

Oobli’s first two commercialized products, Oobli Sweet Tea and Oobli Chocolates are available for purchase at oobli.com, Amazon and local Southern California retailers.