LAS VEGAS -- If you’re like me and have just returned to your office following the NACS Show, you’re overflowing with ideas for improving packaged-beverage sales and are ready to take on the world.
The next step, of course, is organizing your ideas and putting together a plan. With that in mind, I share my collected beverage insights from this year’s big trade show.
- Early on, a show attendee asked me if I thought a new bottled water on the market, one of many at the show crowing about its electrolytes content, would be a success. Short answer: maybe. Totally depends on the company’s marketing plan and whether water with electrolytes resonates with consumers.
- The story above soon echoed back at me during one of the workshops when speaker Adam Brumberg, deputy director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, noted that consumers “are easily manipulated by labels and what we expect things to do and taste like.”
- Brumberg also described a “healthy cooler plan-o-gram” test underway in the military’s Marine Marts. The test positions low-calorie beverages at the top of the cold vault and full-calorie at the bottom (see photo below), with functional messaging displayed throughout the store. Although early in the test, the results so far show bottled-water sales improving with full-calorie-drink sales remaining “about the same.”
- In running its stores through a consumer-feedback test recommended in the latest Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council report, Vintners Distributors/Loop convenience stores found an interesting split between consumers who stop for fuel and the beverages they purchase. Consumers who said the main reason for visiting the c-store was to fuel up the car were slightly more likely to purchase a fountain or frozen-dispensed beverage (37.8%) than a nonalcohol packaged beverage (35.6%).
- Look for an ever-increasing flow of hard sodas from brewers big and small. On the trade-show floor, MillerCoors offered samples of its Henry’s Hard Sodas, and Boston Beer touted its Traveler and Coney Island brands. One of the big draws at the Pabst Brewing booth was an opportunity to meet Tim Kovac, the creator of Not Your Father’s Root Beer, the fastest-growing beer brand this past summer. Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch reportedly has a hard soda about ready to launch.
- Many new products on the show floor cited enhanced ingredients and effectiveness, from advanced hydration to energy bursts and muscle building. The challenge quickly became telling the benefits apart.
- Bottled water was represented in ways one typically sees with newer subcategories: lots of new SKUs and lots of new marketing efforts. Nestle Waters North America summed it up best: The bottled-water category still has a lot of growth potential.
- While raspberry and tangerine resonated as the new-product flavors of the show, one that surprised me: cucumber. It was featured in new products from beverage makers as varied as Voss and Rockstar.
Steve Holtz,who writes the Fluid Thoughts blog, is the online news director and beverage editor for Winsight Media. He has been covering the convenience-store industry and the beverage category for more than a decade. Contact him at sholtz@winsightmedia.com.
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