It’s been another surprising year in beverages.
As hemp-based THC beverages race past $1 billion in sales, Congress has threatened to end the party a year from now, as we detail starting on page 3 of today’s newsletter. This emerging category, constructed on a Farm Bill loophole, has been building for a few years now before exploding this year into the mainstream. Traditional retailers including...

Our Future Smarts 2025 speaker lineup is set. Get ready for a power packed day on Dec. 15 in New York City.

Just this week, we announced PepsiCo Beverages US CEO Ram Krishnan. He joins the conference as investors pay renewed attention to PepsiCo’s performance and structure. On stage, Ram and I will discuss the product, consumer, retail, and economic changes that are shaping PepsiCo’s beverage business.

Last week, we announced the addition of Keurig Dr Pepper CMO Drew Panayiotou. He, too, joins at a pivotal time, as KDP looks to close the $18 billion acquisition of JDE Peet’s before separating its coffee and refreshment beverage businesses. We’ll discuss how Drew’s team is enticing consumers of both portfolios.

We’ll also spend time with another high-profile marketing leader: Coca-Cola Global CMO Manolo Arroyo. Of high interest in this discussion is how technology, such as AI, and social media are influencing marketing investment and organizational decisions.

And this will be compelling: Monster Beverage Co-founder Rodney Sacks will discuss the soaring energy drink category he helped forge over two decades on the way to building a $7.5 billion global powerhouse with a $65 billion market cap. I will be honored as well to present Rodney with the Beverage Digest Visionary Award. Past honorees have included the late PepsiCo CEO Don Kendall and the late Coca-Cola President and COO Don Keough.

No Future Smarts event is complete without the presence of our beverage bottling community. This year, we’ll hear from Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages President Jean Claude Tissot, as well as from Kelly Clay, president and CEO of Pepsi bottler Admiral Beverage. These leaders are experts on local market execution, the retail landscape, and just about anything else beverage related.

We’ve also assembled a panel to dissect one of the hottest beverage trends: Hemp-based ready-to-drink THC. The category is on a regulatory roller coaster ride. Brand owners Drea Groeschel of Better Than Booze and David Mukpo of Pamos Cannabis Cocktails & Spirits will illuminate this challenging and potentially lucrative category. To help make sense of the ever changing regulatory haze, cannabis and hemp Attorney Seth Goldberg of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden will join the panel as well.

Experts from our conference sponsor EY will share insights on industry disruptors and the future of beverages. You’ll hear from Americas Beverage Sector Leader Sean Harapko, EY-Parthenon Partner and Beverage Transactions Leader Greg Miller, and Former Chief Digital Transformation Officer and EY Executive in Residence Dan Werth.

Future Smarts 2025 will tackle regulatory issues and Wall Street views, too. Our popular sell-side analyst panel will feature Kaumil Gajrawala from Jefferies, Bonnie Herzog from Goldman Sachs, and Nik Modi from RBC Capital Markets. In an additional session, Nik will use data to dive into several topics our readers often ask us about. Plus, American Beverage President and CEO Kevin Keane will help assess everything from ingredient regulation to SNAP soda bans and what’s being done to create a constructive outcome.

This is another Future Smarts you don’t want to miss.

I’ve never been a pot smoker, aside from some low-key experimentation in college. The idea of trying hemp-based THC drinks was daunting, I’ll admit.

As a 55-year-old who came of age during the Reagan “Just Say No” to drugs era of the 1980s, there is still stigma and apprehension attached to marijuana for me. That’s despite 15% of US adults telling Gallup last year that they smoke marijuana, up from 7.0% in 2013. Forty-seven percent of Americans said they have tried marijuana. THC is now legal in some form in all but four states.

Meanwhile, the

I had a great podcast conversation late last week with my friend and former Beverage Digest Publisher John Sicher to discuss a series of big industry developments in the past month. The coming Keurig Dr Pepper coffee-soda split. PepsiCo’s sale of Rockstar Energy and an additional investment in Celsius Holdings. Elliott Investment’s case for refranchising and value creation at PepsiCo. Coke shopping Costa Coffee. The ripples from these deals and actions will last for years. Check out the podcast HERE, and forward the link to colleagues or up-and-coming leaders who like to think about how these developments fit together.

To that end, we are now up and running with a new Beverage Digest Enterprise License that is proving to be popular with early adopters. I love that companies can now provide the Beverage Digest Newsletter and other products to their c-suite, management teams, and rising leaders with an easy interface and no friction.

In fact, some customers, such as beverage bottlers, have extended this market intelligence to front line workers, as a source of brand data and industry grounding that is connected to the bigger picture.

Conversations with our podcast fans revealed a hunger among young industry managers for connection between big industry developments and their day-to-day jobs. That’s where budget-friendly access to Beverage Digest comes in. We structured the Enterprise License to make the newsletter more accessible as a training, development, and intelligence tool for all employees.

Drop me an email or let us know HERE if you want to take a deeper look. We’d love to welcome your associates into the Beverage Digest community.

Besides being beverage industry icons, what will the late PepsiCo veteran Don Kendall, the late Coca-Cola veteran Don Keough, and Monster Beverage Co-founder Rodney Sacks soon have in common? All three will have received Beverage Digest’s Visionary Award.

I will be honored to present Rodney with our highest award during the Future Smarts conference in New York on Dec. 15. He and I will then sit down for an on-stage conversation about...

It was the cane sugar post heard around the world. On July 16, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social: "I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!"

The post generated a...

As Poppi’s CMO leaves the prebiotic soda company following PepsiCo’s recent $1.95 billion acquisition of the brand (page 10), it reminded me just how far Poppi has come from its origin.

When founders Stephen and Allison Ellsworth appeared in late 2018 on ABC’s Shark Tank — a show that is like red meat for start-up dreamers — the glass bottled product they hawked was Mother. Infused with

We thought we’d have some fun in today’s newsletter reminiscing about the 40th anniversary of Coca-Cola’s dramatic reversal of the New Coke formula change in 1985. Check out the story on page 11. Beverage Digest Founder Jesse Meyers writes about a meeting in Rye Brook, New York with Coke legends Roberto Goizueta and Donald Keough, where the executives confirmed the top-secret New Coke project. You can also read (and see) Beverage Digest’s original reports on the New Coke launch and the company’s reversal less than three months later.

The New Coke episode came during...

I returned last week from a 2,000-mile motorcycle trip to a Harley-Davidson rally in Springfield, Missouri. For those interested, I ride a 2025 Street Glide Ultra. Our route took us through Tupelo, Mississippi to see Elvis’ birth home, and then to Elvis’ Graceland...