Soda's Ongoing Seismic Shifts

The beverage world always tells quite an exciting tale. There’s never a dull moment in a realm where people have historically accepted everything but the kitchen sink—for a time, at least. That can mean fortification, flavors, formats—what have you.

But thriving in retail beverages can prove difficult (to say the least). It’s kind of like hot sauce. Take in the offerings at the local supermarket—or better yet, a specialty hot sauce store—and the sheer volume of available products instantly baffles. But rest assured, only a very small handful of those sauces have displayed any sort of large-scale commercial success.

The wake of our current migration away from traditional, full-sugar (OK, full-HFCS...) soda has revealed a handful of promising emerging categories. One that has piqued my interest is sparkling waters in a range of adult-oriented flavors (think summery, female-leaning types ... cucumber pops up a lot). This is going one step further for some (greener-leaning) folks who eschew the whole bottled thing and are making their seltzers at home. (The retail angle there? Flavor packs sold in the store next to CO2 cartridges for the machines.) Such products have popped in and out of the market before, but I think they have more potential now than ever before as we continually face our daily caloric intake via omnipresent obesity chatter and the whole silly, unscientific HFCS thing (nevertheless, we should have learned by now that each individual's perception is their version of reality...).

As I walk the NRA aisles in the next handful of days, I fully anticipate hearing much more about beverage-based seismic shifts. Stay tuned for impending impressions.