Next month, PepsiCo will launch a new sports drink, Gatorade Juiced, aimed at youth athletes and earmarked for the juice aisle. In an exclusive interview, Gatorade Senior Vice President and General Manager Brett O’Brien said the brand is looking to expand its base by creating a sports drink for pre-high school consumers that includes an ingredient profile attractive to their adult caretakers. “It’s bringing younger athletes into the portfolio with a product that their moms, dads and coaches feel great about,” O’Brien said. “We’re not asking them to step up into base Gatorade at an early age. We’re now creating this product specifically for this generation of athletes.” The launch comes as a critical time for the Gatorade brand...

Late last year, Coca-Cola Bottling United opened a new $86 million sales and distribution center in the metro Atlanta town of Union City, just south of Coca-Cola headquarters. The 456,000-sq-ft facility serves 10,000 retail customers in metro Atlanta, covering 2.8 million consumers. As many as 750 employees will manage the warehousing, picking and delivery of 36 million beverage cases per year. Manual order picking has been converted to an automated process built by System Logistics. Marketed as “Vertique,” the system is “an organized, more ergonomic and efficient sequential operation, with less stress on associates and not as labor intensive,” according to Coke United (click HERE for a video of the system). The Union City facility is among a series of investments by Coke United to modernize its distribution system since acquiring new territory, including Coke’s flagship metro Atlanta market in 2017. Last month, Coke United broke ground for construction of a $60 million, 300,000-sq-ft warehouse and sales center in the South Georgia town of Tifton, about an hour’s drive from the Georgia-Florida line. The facility will consolidate inventory from eight older and smaller facilities into a single automated order picking location when it opens by the end of 2021. Birmingham, Alabama-based Coke United, with franchise roots dating back to 1902, covers territory in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The company is Coca-Cola’s fourth largest US franchise bottler (after Coke Consolidated, Reyes Holdings and Arca’s Coke Southwest Beverages). United distributes 11% of Coca-Cola system bottle/can carbonated soft drink volume in US. Last week, Coke United CEO John Sherman and East Region VP Mike Succo joined officials at the new Union City center for a grand opening attended by Coca-Cola North America President Jim Dinkins. BD sat down for an interview with Sherman.

The following has been edited for clarity and space:

Coca-Cola’s Powerade will reassert itself in the US this year with increased marketing and advertising spending, and two major product introductions. A new Powerade Power Water will go head-to-head with PepsiCo’s Propel fitness water for the first time since Propel’s introduction 20 years ago. Like Propel, the sugar-free electrolyte- and vitamin-enhanced Power Water will target lower-impact workout occasions or casual daily hydration. The second new product, Powerade Ultra, will focus on endurance workouts ranging from triathlons to body building...

Pepsi Café. PepsiCo has announced a new coffee-infused cola to launch in April. Pepsi Café will be sold in 12-oz slim cans in original and vanilla for a limited time. The drink comes with almost twice the caffeine of a regular Pepsi, according to the company. The product appears to...

This year's NACS trade show in Atlanta, with exhibits that covered the space of almost two football fields, offered a first look at innovation being sold into retailers for 2020. The products pictured are some of the newest innovations from Coke, PepsiCo, Keurig Dr Pepper and Nestle. These products mostly launch late this year and early next year.

Bodyarmor sports drink has agreed to re-evaluate several of its advertising claims related to PepsiCo’s market-leading Gatorade following a dispute that reached the Federal Trade Commission. According to a Sept. 13 letter by the FTC, Bodyarmor has agreed to...