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.
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...
Check out BD’s podcast this week if you haven’t. Former Beverage Digest Editor and Publisher John Sicher and I had a compelling discussion about gut sodas like Poppi and Olipop.
While the two products and a host of similar prebiotic and probiotic sodas represent only a share point or so of the carbonated soft drink category, they are grabbing an outsized share of attention on social media and at retail. Both Poppi and Olipop have been the subject of M&A rumors, which haven’t panned out and were likely premature. Poppi grabbed headlines early this year when it snagged a last-minute Super Bowl ad spot to cast the drink as “the future of soda.”
The question we explored on the podcast is whether the gut soda category has the kind of staying power that would make it attractive for companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper. We ended up seeing
The following is transcript of Beverage Digest's podcast, The Breeze, Episode 9. In today's episode, industry expert John Sicher joins Beverage Digest Editor and Publisher Duane Stanford to break down Tuesday's Coca-Cola earnings report, and PepsiCo's results earlier this month. Industry insiders have been surprised by the resilience of soft drink volume sales given the fast pace of rising prices. As pricing returns to normal, what does this mean for beverage makers? Can they stoke demand? Will "the other shoe drop," and if so, how should they prepare?...
The following is transcript of Beverage Digest's podcast, The Breeze, Episode 8. PepsiCo's announced investment in online grocery delivery service Instacart begs a question: Isn’t PepsiCo essentially competing now against some of its most important retail customers? Take Walmart, for example, which is aggressively expanding an online grocery delivery business of its own. There was a time when such a customer conflict would have been avoided. But PepsiCo isn't alone in tossing conventional wisdom these days. Coke is doing it, too. So what's going on?...
The following is transcript of Beverage Digest's podcast, The Breeze, Episode 7.
Bang Energy went from boom to bust within just five years. After mounting a successful challenge to the supremacy of Monster and Red Bull and capturing the attention of PepsiCo, Bang unraveled and went bankrupt. Now in the hands of archrival Monster and its distribution partner Coca-Cola, will Bang rise again? New challengers like Celsius may have something to say about that question.
Duane Stanford invites regular Breeze contributor and industry expert John Sicher to discuss the recent wild and crazy days of energy drinks. They also unravel what happens next in this epic competition.
The following is transcript of Beverage Digest's podcast, The Breeze, Episode 4. Today we talk with Sigi Hale, Principal Neuroscientist and Director of Research at market research and consulting firm Alpha-Diver. Sigi's work takes him deep into consumer behavior to understand why brand purchase decisions are made and how companies can act on that learning. Alpha-Diver, in partnership with Beverage Digest, just released the world's first ranking of beverage brands by consumer psychology. The Bev50 report and webinar are available for download here. During the episode, Duane and Sigi discuss the research findings and the ways neuroscience is illuminating consumer research.