CHICAGO -- As the trend of beverage crossovers continues, premium iced tea is now getting the enhanced-beverage treatment and is likely to hit the ready-to-drink (RTD) world in the next year.
Chicago's Argo Tea introduced five new varieties in its retail shops, called Detox, Empower, Energize, Relax and Renew, each one formulated with natural caffeine, naturally decaffeined or other enhanced ingredients to give the consumer an enhanced beverage experience, according to founder and CEO Arsen Avakian.
"We see an opportunity to carve out a piece of the energy-drink market," Avakian told CSP Daily News. "Why drink something from a can and full of chemicals when you can have something natural?"
The in-house rollout comes as Argo introduces three new additions to its Garden Direct line—Sencha, First Flush Darjeeling and Armenian Mint. Avakian said three of the enhanced teas will join Argo's RTD products in its iconic glass bottles sometime in 2017.
"The way our process works is we introduce new flavors in our retail shops and the most popular ones are put through the RTD process," he said. "It's our own test lab. So we could see one or all three of these functional teas come to store shelves depending on how customers react to them."
Argo also will reintroduce its Teappuccino line of milk-based tea drinks in new packaging in 2017.
Other beverage categories that have crossed over into the RTD world in recent years include carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) and energy drinks, beer and CSDs, and energy drinks and coffee drinks, among others.
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