Back in mid-2023, I wrote about a group called Save Tab Soda. They were cajoling Coca-Cola to revive the saccharin-sweetened diet cola that was discontinued in 2020 after almost 60 years on the market. Save Tab Soda went so far as to buy billboard space near Coke’s Atlanta headquarters to beg, “Please bring it back.” I referred to the Save Tab effort as quixotic. I still think it is.

That said, the tenacity and dedication of this band of hardcore fans and its followers is impressive. Just this past December, the group sent me a spiral bound 2025 Dreaming of Tab Calendar, with images of Tab in various holiday settings. They also shared “market research” and a survey of 206 people that they used to predict an initial market opportunity of almost $43 million should Tab return...

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...

Happy New Year! To kickoff 2025, I’ll tell you about a few emerging brands that intrigued me in 2024. I don’t review or endorse products, and I won’t now. But I do taste lots of new drinks annually, so standouts jump out at me. Foremost, that means delivering on taste, which these products do. While each promises functionality, I won’t vouch for their efficacy or eventual market success. I also won’t judge their pricing, which can be rich. In short, these products offered an interesting proposition and ended up tasting surprisingly good — to me at least. So, here we go:

Coca-Cola’s North America Operating Unit hosted executives and associates from its franchised bottling system in Las Vegas recently to discuss marketing, commercial and sales plans for 2025. The theme for the meeting was, “Above and Beyond,” as the system looks to...