Water had the biggest volume gain, at 2.7%, among liquid refreshment beverages in 2024, according to Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, speaking about non-alcohol sales at CSP’s Cold Vault Forum last week in Lombard, Illinois.
This Beverage Digest data includes convenience stores, grocery, drug and other channels. Energy drinks, second at 1.6%, were the only other category in the positive in 2024, he said. Carbonated soft drinks (CSDs), juice, ready-to-drink tea, sports drinks and ready-to-drink coffee all were in the negative.
However, value is a different story. Carbonated soft drinks in 2024 had a value of $101.9 billion, up 4.8% that year.
This was followed by water at $37.1 billion, up 2.9%; juice at $30.4 billion, up 1%; energy at $23.4 billion, up 4.6%, ready-to-drink tea at $20.2 billion, up 2.3%; sports at $15.3 billion, up 0.7%; and ready-to-drink coffee at $4.9 billion, down 4.2%.
Water also has been steadily gaining on carbonated soft drinks and energy over the last 25 years, Stanford said. In 1996, water sold about 1 billion 192-ounce cases versus 10 billion for CSD and energy combined. Beverage Digest sometimes groups CSD and energy for analytical purposes, saying CSD and energy are both generally carbonated and often manufactured similarly. In 2024, water and CSD/energy were nearly even around 8 billion, with CSD/energy having a slight edge.
The top 10 CSD brands by volume, in a list Beverage Digest just released and which includes dispensed, are:
- Coke, with a 19.2 share
- Dr Pepper, 8.7 share
- Sprite, 8 share
- Pepsi-Cola, 8 share
- Diet Coke, 7.8 share
- Mountain Dew, 6.1 share
- Coke Zero, 4.2 share
- Diet Pepsi, 3.3 share
- Fanta, 2.9 share
- Canada Dry Ginger Ale, 2.3 share
“The news this year was that Sprite moved into the No. 3 position,” Stanford said. “Last year, Dr Pepper moved into the No. 2 slot, which was a really big deal for that brand.”
“These are the regular, full-calorie versions of these products,” he added. “On a trademark basis, Pepsi-Cola would still be No. 2 when you put Pepsi Zero and all of that together.”
Looking at volume share at the end of 2024 just at convenience stores, and volume sales performance, the numbers are:
- CSD: 29.8 volume share; down 5.2% from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024
- Water: 27.2, down 3.9%
- Energy: 17.7, down 1.1%
- Sports: 11, down 3.7%
- Juice: 5.7, down 4.8%
- Tea: 5.5, down 6.1%
- Coffee: 1, down 11.6%
- Total, down 4.1%
Functional
Switching to functional beverages, Stanford talked about the importance of gaining share.
“A lot of entrepreneurs will start out, Poppi is a great example, with a very passionate belief in the functional beverage platform, and they can actually build a market with that, build an interesting business,” he said. “But at some point, you've got to figure out how to broaden yourself enough to gain that scale—and you ‘ve got to pull in some of those consumers by broadening your platform and broadening what you’re saying about whatever it is you’re passionate about.”
As examples, in sports drinks, he cited BodyArmor.
“I’m going to give you a better-for-you sports drink,” he said. “This is not your father’s or mother’s sports drink. I’m going to give you a cleaner label, put coconut water in there and electrolytes.” BodyArmor was able to gain meaningful market share and eventually moved up to the No. 3 sports drink in the country—and was bought out by Coke, he said.
He also mentioned Electrolit, which was a popular product in Mexico, “sort of a Pedialyte for athletes,” he said, which had “this whole notion they created of rapid hydration.”
The company took this platform and broadened it beyond the Hispanic community to the more “mainline consumers, and they were able to reach people who wanted hangover cures and all the things you drink sports drinks for, and they really broadened that out and gained share and grabbed people’s attention so much so they eventually created competitors,” including Gatorade’s Gatorlyte and Coca-Cola’s BodyArmor Flash I.V., he said.
“Rapid hydration is the fastest-growing segment within sports drinks now,” he said. “Then comes Prime Hydration, which disrupted the disruptors. They took the market by storm. They launched about three years ago, and within a little more than a year they grabbed an eight share of the market and they did heavily on the backs of social media influencers.”
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