Beverage Digest hosted its annual Future Smarts conference last December in New York City. The day’s lineup of speakers included leaders from three of the largest US beverage companies — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper. The executives sat for interviews on stage with Beverage Digest Editor & Publisher Duane Stanford. Here are highlights as the speakers looked ahead to 2025...

As Coca-Cola begins the national rollout of its Simply Pop prebiotic soda, a flood of other brands are announcing gut pops of their own. They include Popwell by Talking Rain, Bloom Pop by Keurig Dr Pepper partner brand Bloom Nutrition, and Daytrip Prebiotic Soda by the maker of CBD sodas. Meanwhile, Halfday prebiotic tea has rebranded. And, on an adjacent front, Spindrift has launched a ...

Keurig Dr Pepper has announced several launches in addition to the rollout of new permanent flavor Dr Pepper Blackberry. They are 7Up Tropical, Snapple Peach Tea & Lemonade, Bai Simbu Strawberry and Bai Shala Coconut Strawberry, A&W Ice Cream Sundae, and RC Cola Zero Sugar. (For more on brand Dr Pepper’s success in recent decades, listen to BD’s newest Episode 21 of the Breeze podcast HERE.)

Molson Coors has now launched a Simply Spiked Bold variant of the flavored malt beverage marketed under a brand license from...

As promised, Suja Life has relaunched former PepsiCo brand Slice as a functional “healthy” soda with prebiotics and probiotics. Suja enters a gut soda market lead by brands such as Olipop and Poppi and replete with incoming competition. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo also are expected to enter the segment this year. Launched by PepsiCo in 1984 as a fruit flavored soda with 10% juice, Slice was...

Concentrate list pricing for flagship Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and other carbonated soft drinks produced by US Coke bottlers rose...

Retailers Amazon, Walmart, Costco Rose as Shoppers Sought Value, Online Convenience

Shares of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper all underperformed the S&P 500 Index and the Consumer Staples Index in 2024. As shown in the table below, Coca-Cola was the only one of the three companies to post a gain. Top-3 energy drink makers...