For years, juice has been off limits for consumers who avoid sugar. Juice drinks, which generally contain very little actual juice and high sugar content, were certainly a no-no for these consumers. Then even 100% juice fell out of favor, despite a health halo, as warnings about sugar mounted, especially when it came to children. Sales of 100% OJ have declined for almost two decades, before the Covid pandemic brought a short reprieve. PepsiCo even sold off a majority stake of its Tropicana business to private equity firm PAI partners in 2021 to focus on higher growth products.

But there is now some innovation to keep an eye on, with major juice brand Tropicana recently launching a Zero Sugar line of lemonade and fruit punch juice drinks with no artificial sweeteners. The products contain either 3% or 5% juice and are sweetened with stevia instead of sugar. Tropicana marketers pitch the new Zero Sugar line as “guilt-free.”

I don’t usually review products, but I’ve tried the new Tropicana Zero Sugar line and the drinks are good. This is surely due to advancements in no-calorie sweetener technology.

Tropicana is no stranger to stevia, having launched a stevia-sweetened product called Trop50 way back in 2009 just after the FDA made no objection to the natural sweetener’s use in food. The lower-sugar product (50% less than pure OJ) became a bright spot for the brand’s OJ lineup — but it still contained sugar. Trop50 addressed not only the sugar barrier, but also an aversion to artificial sweeteners expressed by some consumers (whether justified or not).

Stevia technology — and sweetener systems in general — have come a long way since. Tropicana’s line of ...

Sales of Coca-Cola’s sparkling water brand, AHA, have deteriorated amid competition with PepsiCo’s growing sparkling water brand, Bubly, according to new BD data. Both brands were created to take on ... Table included:

Sparkling Water Brand Performance: Q1 2023

The following is transcript of Beverage Digest's podcast, The Breeze, Episode 4. Duane Stanford invites beverage industry expert (and former Beverage Digest publisher) John Sicher to discuss soda pricing power.

For decades, Coca-Cola’s Powerade existed to fight off US sports drink leader Gatorade, which created what is now at least a $12 billion category, according to BD all-channel data. In more recent years, Powerade all but faded into the background, overshadowed by a challenger called BodyArmor that pledged to displace PepsiCo-owned Gatorade with claims of better-for-you ingredients and an in-your-face marketing voice. That may now change. A year after acquiring BodyArmor and merging it into a standalone unit with Powerade, Coca-Cola is ready to get...

Global beverage volume growth for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo remained stable for the first nine months of this year in the aftermath of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Russia-Ukraine war, ongoing zero-covid policies in China, and unpredictable interest rate environments disrupted an otherwise strong period for global volume sales.The table below shows...

A collection of recent developments from around the industry to keep you up to speed...

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo reported mostly volume gains in various global markets for the first half of 2022. The table below shows volume performance for selected markets as reported by the public beverage...