“The Decade In Beverage”

“The Decade In Beverage”

Understanding the beverages and brands that influenced trends, and identifying those we'll see more of in 2020. The past decade reaffirmed a desire for natural, "better-for you" drinks. It also gave rise to plant-based and CBD food & beverage movements, both of which will be even more influential in the new decade. The past 10 years made us examine gut health. And it reaffirmed that soda – in one form or another – is here to stay.

Maple water

I lead with maple water for a specific reason: it’s a textbook example of overly ambitious goals tied to a mediocre concept. The entrepreneurs behind maple water actually thought they were going to build a billion-dollar category. When the mini-parade of maple water brands marched themselves out circa 2012–14, along with other gems including artichoke water (why?), I admired them for one reason: they shrewdly positioned their drinks as “the next coconut water,” a category I proudly helped create and define. In marketing, contextualization that plays upon the familiar is critical. And attaching maple water to the 2010 juggernaut that was Vita Coco and coconut water was a smart marketing play to draw attention to a new, “natural” drink.

Flash forward to the start of 2020. We can confirm that maple water was never a sustainable or deeply influential trend in the beverage industry. Seven years after the category’s boldly-stated ambitions, maple water is estimated to generate just $100mm in annual category sales. That’s roughly $900mm short of the billion-dollars generated by coconut water in a similar eight-year window. And I think that maple waters’ $100mm is overinflated, if we actually dig deeper into the sales data. But why bother? At the heart of the issue: maple water had none of the desirable and need state fulfilling qualities we associate with functional beverages [which over the past decade, thanks to brands like LIFEAID Beverage Co. (a client), have become more focused on recovery]. And maple water could not shake the general perception that maple anything, is sweet and automatically associated with sugar (naturally occurring or otherwise). As Americans, the primary food product we associated maple with, is syrup. And then waffles. And if you’re like me, fried chicken on top of that maple-drenched waffle. You get my point.

Cactus water

See maple water. Less sweet, with more visually striking plant-sources that lend to cooler packaging design. Cactus as a standalone beverage was even less of a potential trend than maple. But cactus is superb as an ingredient in better-for-you beverages, including OLIPOP (a client). But as a solo drink, meh.

The lasting influence of both maple and cactus water is of course that they helped validate the plant-based drinks movement that we see expanding in 2020, even if either product sits in the backseat during that expansion.

Cold pressed juice

Did any beverage category have more buzz from 2012–17 than cold pressed juice? Some of the hype (and scrutiny), including from The New York Times, can be found here, here and here. After the early success of BluePrint Cleanse, the media and burgeoning Instagram influencer community breathlessly celebrated cold pressed juice. As consumers, we were inundated with such messages as “don’t use an ordinary blender for your juice, that will kill nutrients — it’s better to cold press it” and my personal favorite, that “cold pressed juice will clean all the toxins from your system” (which, if you understand basic human biology at a high school level, made cold pressed juice more effective at detoxification than the human liver) — sales soared.

The companies behind cold pressed juice brands, or those who acquired cold pressed juice brands, like Hain Celestial, even had the audacity to position cold pressed juice then as a “multi-billion dollar category.” Traditional and single-flavor fruit juices (orange, etc.) were and still are a multi-billion dollar category. Cold pressed juice by itself… not yet. Forbes journalist Chloe Sorvino asked the same billion-dollar question of cold pressed juice earlier this year. I want to be clear, I think cold pressed juice is a beautiful thing, when it’s fresh. However, bottled with a 3+ month shelf life and sitting on a chilled grocery shelf, it’s a pricey, colorful beverage choice that you can take or leave, decisively. Cold pressed juice isn’t going away, but to maintain the level of quality, taste and freshness “juiceheads” expect from an $8–14 drink, it’s as scaled as it’s going to be until the next major innovation in processing and packaging format. Technavio estimates the “global” cold pressed juice category (global in quotes because I work with clients in Europe and Asia and cold pressed is barely on their radar) will add $275.5mm in sales by 2023, a healthy growth estimate assuming consumers' tastes and spending habits don’t change dramatically in the new decade.

Kombucha

Simply put, kombucha is one of the most influential beverage trends to go mainstream in the past decade, marrying the consumer mind states of natural, "healthier," gut health and sparkling drinks. I admit I was not a fan of the earliest versions of commercialized kombucha. And I’m Filipino. We’re used to eating and drinking things that taste weird and have a strong smell. But working with the Health-Ade Kombucha brand this past spring, changed my mind. The authenticity of kombucha flavors and styles have been questioned, but it’s the popular leanings of those newer flavor profiles that gives this category the opportunity to evolve further: kombucha may be a viable alternative to soda , and is redefining what we consider a soda, to be. That’s no small achievement for a beverage that’s made with something as dramatic looking as a scoby. But kombucha benefits from a major shift in consumer tastes. The same shift is informing the rise of hard kombucha with higher levels of alcohol. Brands like KYLA Hard Kombucha (a client) are vying for beer, wine and spirits consumers.

Regular and hard kombucha are both benefitting from the maturation of Gen Z and a growing interest in gut health and the microbiome that will inform much of the food and drink we enjoy in the new decade.

The evolving perception of what a soda is as we enter 2020 is the same shift that helped make brands like BAI so successful: that the idea of a soda isn't limited to a can of sugar water. Spindrift is riding that same wave. That evolution has opened the door for brands like OLIPOP, a digestive tonic with the familiar taste profile of a classic soda, and two newer brands I am working with: SkinTe, marketed as the first collagen sparkling tea but with the taste profile of a soda (collagen, of course, has been a massively popular ingredient in food & beverage the past two years); and Xoca, a sparkling cacao drink. The media and beverage analysts have been talking about the decline of soda, or carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) for 20 years. And CSDs are still here, and not going anywhere. In fact, they are evolving smartly. But beverages like the ones I mentioned are helping consumers see soda differently, and that is what is so important: redefining what soda is or can be will help consumers adopt better drinking habits, over time.

The bulletproof coffee

I can’t use a proper “initial caps” brand name with this for a single reason: Bulletproof 360's founder and the Bulletproof brand (a client) did such a brilliant job of marketing this concept that they achieved what most brands dream of, in record time: a bulletproof coffee today has become genericized with high performance, nutrition-focused coffee containing oil and or butter. And it’s available, sans Bulletproof branding, on many coffee shop menus. It’s a recipe people recreate, in their own homes.

What Kleenex became for tissue, what Xerox became for photocopying, Bulletproof became for this style of coffee drink.

The price of this ubiquity and familiarity: consumer disassociation with a particular brand, exacerbated by the rise in the personalization of food experiences and the social media friendly aspects of a DIY culture. The biggest takeaways from the success of bulletproof coffee: that all fat isn’t bad for you. That good fat may be a reliable and safe source of energy. And that coffee, which we already personalize in so many ways, is a mainstay in our food and drink rituals.

Coconut water

I’m irrevocably associated with coconut water, as I helped start the trend in 2004. No other beverage has done more to elevate something we considered an “ethnic product,” into the mainstream consciousness. And no other product is a greater testimony to the concept of natural-functional beverage. Coconut water is an overlap trend from the prior decade. It started in the US in 2004 and picked up steam from 2011–2015.

The takeaway from coconut water’s success is this: appreciate that a food and beverage source that has always been there, but was perhaps under-appreciated, may have extraordinary worth when packaged and marketed properly.

There are other fruits, vegetables, ingredients and recipes that fit this bill. Their popularity and success as packaged food or beverage will depend on how good the entrepreneurs and marketers behind them, are, in the new decade.

The trends I didn't comment on (and why)

I’ve worked with two other big categories that made waves this past decade: sugar free and no- or low-calorie sparkling waters (like UGLY Drinks, a client) and energy drinks. Both have been covered exhaustively by colleagues in the media and I instead chose to focus on other trends I found more relevant for a decade in review and focused on “natural”. Both sparkling and energy drinks will no doubt be influencing trends at the start of the new decade and I look forward to sharing my insights on both categories. I also think it’s too early to weigh the impact of CBD drinks “on the past 10 years” since they only truly entered the beverage market in final 18 months of this past decade, but the new LIFEAID CBD drink shows strong promise, straddling functional beverage and traditional soda, with the taste profile and refreshment of a “natural” Sprite.

The original version of this article, by Arthur Gallego, appears on LinkedIn.