As you’ll read in today’s newsletter, BodyArmor’s newest product is not a liquid. It’s a powder, packaged in a single-serve stick. The sports drink brand is the latest to add the format, which is catching on with consumers looking for convenient and highly portable functionality.

Analysts at Consumer Edge Research wrote in March that single-serve, non-ready-to-drink beverages — while small relative to the entire US non-alcoholic beverage market — were growing...

Wall Street analysts are on high alert for shifts in pricing and volume trends within the US consumer packaged goods sectors, including beverages. A worst-case scenario would be decelerating pricing growth without a corresponding bump in volume performance, which would depress dollar sales growth trends. In an Aug. 22 report, A/B Bernstein analyst Callum Elliott summed up the current state-of-play this way: “With the period of ...

Carbonated soft drink pricing at retail accelerated last month, according to new Nielsen data published by Goldman Sachs. As shown in the table, CSD pricing jumped +17.2% in the four weeks ending June 3, which included the Memorial Day holiday. That growth rate was faster than the +16.6% increase achieved in the latest 52-week period, according to the data, which covers...

Celsius moved up two spots to the No. 3 energy drink at US retail behind Monster and Red Bull after doubling sales during the first quarter of this year, according to BD data. As shown in the table... Table included:

US Energy Drinks at Retail: Q1 2023

If you haven’t yet listened to BD’s new podcast, The Breeze With Beverage Digest, I hope you will.

Our debut episode, “Is Gatorade Beatable?” explores Coca-Cola’s mission to use a combined BodyArmor and Powerade to overtake sports drink leader Gatorade in the coming years. Coke leaders are through being an also-ran in this category, and PepsiCo has no plans to give up its supremacy. That will make for great competition, even as the category shifts beneath both companies’ feet with the emergence of “rapid hydration.”

Episode 2, “Is Sprite Beatable?” delves into PepsiCo’s Starry lemon-lime soda launch and the company’s plans to disrupt the dominance of Coca-Cola’s Sprite. We discuss how Sprite spent decades embracing hip-hop and the NBA to build a loyal consumer base, and how PepsiCo has decided to start from scratch with Starry to reach Gen Z consumers after years of struggles with lemon-lime brands including Sierra Mist.

I’m joined for both podcasts by...