The Breeze With Beverage Digest
The Breeze With Beverage Digest
Episode 16: Poppi and Our "Gut Feeling" About Permissible Sodas
Beverage Digest Editor & Publisher Duane Stanford chats with industry expert & The Breeze contributor John Sicher about the future of prebiotic sodas, how health and wellness soft drinks fit into the broader packaged beverage sector, and whether these products present a growth opportunity for soda makers like Coke, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper.
This is the Breeze with Beverage Digest. I'm your host, Dwayne Stanford, the editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. The Breeze is where we bring you into the kinds of industry conversations we have every day at Beverage Digest. We dissect what's happening, connect the dots and ask the most important question what does this mean? With me today, as always, to discuss the business of beverages is John Sitcher. He's a former editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, who has since consulted for companies like Coke and brands like Body Armor. John's in New York. I'm in Atlanta, John. How are you today and, more specifically, how is your gut feeling?
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting, dwayne, that question, as you said those words. How is my gut feeling? The English language is so interesting because the same words can have different meanings depending upon how they're used. So how is my gut feeling? It's fine, thanks, but what is my gut feeling? My gut feeling is, for example, that the Yankees will win the World Series this year and the Braves will not even finish first in their division.
Speaker 1:No, he didn't. All right, we'll see. We'll have to have one of our classic bets over that one, right? Well, let's see how the season progresses first.
Speaker 1:So the reason I ask about gut health, john, is because it's been all the rage in food and beverage in recent years. Lately, probiotic and prebiotic sodas have been capturing the attention of both Gen Z consumers and investors, and much of this interest has been fueled by social media and it's been driven by brands like Poppy and Olipop. Now other startups and established brands are now piling into the category, and Poppy even bought a last-minute Super Bowl ad this year to go after soft drink companies. Now one big question surrounding all of this talk is whether Coke and PepsiCo will take the bait and either acquire or launch a gut soda brand. Coke already has been rumored to be interested, first in Olipop. That never really panned out, and more recently in Poppy, and that rumor was shot down by its CEO. So before, john, we speculate about Coke's and Pepsi's potential role in gut sodas, I'm wondering what are your initial thoughts about this emerging alternative soda segment that is getting the attention of big and small companies alike?
Speaker 2:Let me basically try to provide my view of some context on this. One of the problems that Coke and Pepsi and the industry are facing we've talked about these numbers before is the relentless decline of their biggest category. In the last two decades, carbonated soft drink volume is down 20 percent. That's basically 10 percent per decade, and carbonated soft drink per caps per capita consumption is down about 33%. So to your question what do I think about the gut health soft drinks?
Speaker 2:I think that it's my view that consumers one of the reasons why legacy carbonated soft drinks are declining Dwayne of the reasons why legacy carbonated soft drinks are declining Dwayne is that people view them as a product which is not good for me, and I think that people are looking to make their foods and beverages work harder for them. You know, I did some consulting for a while for an ingredient company and it's very clear that the people in the ingredient business view beverages as a terrific delivery system for health and wellness and functional ingredients. So yes, I think the gut health beverages have a place that they'll grow, but I think it's even bigger than that and we can talk about that in a minute or we can talk about it now if you want, but I think the gut health beverages are the tip of an iceberg which is basically going to be an explosion of functional and health and wellness beverages in the years to come.
Speaker 1:Are you saying within the context of carbonated soft drinks? Because we've already seen an explosion in these kinds of functional beverages across pretty much all categories, so are you seeing a new wave of that or some sort of new evolution, or are we talking specifically CSDs in that comment?
Speaker 2:I think both. I think mainly CSDs, but I think that, look, the North American beverage business is not very healthy. Carbonated soft drinks are in decline. Lrbs are growing, albeit very slowly, and without bottled water my guess is, recently there wouldn't be much growth at all. And bottled water is not an area where Coke and Pepsi and Keurig Dr Pepper are playing in any major way. Today it's pretty much the purview of Private Label and Blue Triton, the former Nestle brands.
Speaker 2:So I think that the big beverage companies need to get into in a very, very aggressive and sustained way beverages like Poppy and Olipop. And what's exciting to me about those beverages is not that they necessarily are gut health beverages, but they're beverages that say to consumers here's a delicious, refreshing beverage for you and, by the way, it's also going to be good for you. It's going to be more than just refreshment and I think that consumers are starting to gravitate toward that and I think they will gravitate toward in the future and I mean I did a little research, dwayne, in advance of this podcast because or subjects that consumers today are interested in looking for, and I think many of those could be basically embedded in beverages. So, yes, I think the gut health products are here to stay. I don't know how big they're going to get, but again, I think they're the tip of the iceberg and we're going to see a lot more of beverages like those with functional and health and wellness claimed benefits coming out in the years to come.
Speaker 1:It's almost as if these days there's a set of consumers who don't want, you know, empty refreshment. You know we used to talk about empty calories, that you're drinking your calories but you're not getting nutritional benefit. Well, it's almost like I don't want empty refreshment either, and there's a section of consumers who believe that. Now I think, if you step back for a minute, if you look at companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper, if they could wave a magic wand and sort of, you know, create some functionality at scale that also refreshes, that'd be highly interesting to them. One of the interesting things about this whole thing, and the rub here, is that you have these massive scaled companies that have these massive brands that that spin off a lot of cash, make a lot of money, have pockets of growth within the broader LRB context.
Speaker 1:But when you start talking about functional beverages and the kinds of beverages that these consumers are gravitating to, like poppy and olipop, those are more costly to produce.
Speaker 1:They typically come at a much higher premium. They typically come at a much higher premium. I mean you're talking about $3 for a can of poppy. You know $2.50 to $3 for a can of poppy versus, you know, $0.80, even at today's prices, you know $0.80 or so $0.70 or $0.80 for a can of Coca-Cola it's very difficult to do a one-for-one swap out, even if you do want sodas. So I think, if we cut right to the chase, the big problem or the big solve for these companies is how do we get into these spaces and either create a really vibrant premium niche business where we keep consumers in our companies and our brands with these kind of companies, or is there a way to somehow keep some of the functionality and scale those up much the way you see Poppy trying to do with their product? I mean, that's really sort of where the game will be played, at least from the big company level.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and I think there's already a precedent for that. It's called energy drinks. Energy drinks are premium priced. Premium priced, they deliver a functional benefit. I think that we have a precedent for people buying premium priced products if they can get a functional benefit for it. I think that the kind of products you're talking about I think energy drinks have educated the consumer Dwayne on buying premium price products if they get, or believe they get, a functional benefit. So I think you're right. I think these brands like Olipop and Poppy are on the cutting edge. I think they're here to stay. We can get into whenever you want what we think Coke and Pepsi will do, but I don't think these products are, you know, are a passing fad. I think these products and products like this are here to stay and are going to be an important part of the future of the beverage business and products like this are here to stay and are going to be an important part of the future of the beverage business.
Speaker 1:I think the energy drink comparison is a really good one. I mean, you do see this category that started out as kind of this niche category with some functionality. It was very similar to soft drinks in terms of it being carbonated and cold fill and, you know, could be put through these big distribution systems. And one of the really interesting things that's happened, you know, pretty recently is this movement of these gut health drinks, these probiotic and prebiotic drinks, prebiotic mainly, moving from this highly functional sort of world of kombucha and drinking vinegars. I mean, poppy started out as a drinking vinegar. When it was on Shark Tank it was called mother, which is, you know, sort of the term that's very familiar to people who drink kombucha. This drink originally was a drinking vinegar type drink that was then consulted to by Rohan Oza, who's famous for vitamin water and famous for working at Coke on the Powerade brand, and they converted it to a soft drink alternative, put it in a can, marketed it like a soft drink with vibrant colors, moved the ingredient panel from something that was just so highly functional and premium and very niche to something that was more widely accessible and you created a platform basically for a soft drink that you could feel good about. That was sort of the premise. You know, and you get these prebiotic benefits. Now, most recently, poppy's been sued over their claims over the prebiotic benefits and it doesn't really seem to matter.
Speaker 1:Consumers still like the brand because I think the magic that they found is that consumers just want to feel good about what they're drinking. They don't want that sort of empty refreshment, but they also like the brand. The brand has done an amazing job of speaking to them on social media and doing the kinds of things that young Gen Z consumers like. It's also a product that can appeal to even older consumers who care about gut health, and gut health is so much in the news and so much in the consumer product goods lexicon now. So I think you've now seen these products you know, led by Poppy and Olipop as well, move into a space that really could do exactly what you're saying and mimic energy drinks.
Speaker 1:Olipop one of the things about Olipop that people don't quite understand is that it's a refrigerated product, whereas Poppy is a shelf-stable product that does not have to be refrigerated and it's also cold-filled so that could be bottled, just like soft drinks or energy drinks. And Olipop, most recently, is changing some of their packaging now to be shelf stable, because they also recognize you broaden the audience when you do that. I mean we've seen this with kombuchas that have translated themselves into cans soft drink marketing. Shelf stable you bring down the functionality. Consumers seem to be okay with that to bring down the functionality because they still feel good about it, and you broaden your audience. And that's where this is going and that's where suddenly you start to imagine how these could fit into the context of these big scaled companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, especially if you think about your great example of energy drinks.
Speaker 2:My wife and I were having dinner with friends about a week ago and, as often happens, the topic turned to beverages and it turns out that none of neither of these folks it's a couple, man and woman have had a soft drink in years and years and years. Not good for me, I don't like them. You know old-fashioned drinks. And then I told them about poppy and olipop and I said you know, these are carbonated soft drinks that basically promote and claim to be good for gut health. Both these folks said oh my gosh, I never heard of that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try that, the point being that it's something new and different. It promises a. It claims a health and wellness functional benefit. I think to your point about empty refreshment, dwayne. It gives people a psychological or mental license to try these products. If they like them and like the taste, I think they'll continue to use them. Again, I do not see these products as a passing fad and, yes, I do think that the Made Big Soft drink company are going to get into these in a probably significant way in the next few years or sooner.
Speaker 1:John, let's take a quick break from the conversation so I can tell the audience about our Beverage Digest newsletter. If you're interested in going deeper on the topics that we discuss on this podcast, I encourage you to subscribe to our digital newsletter and archive, where you will unlock exclusive insights that you won't read anywhere else. Plus, you'll get valuable data snapshots for the industry's most critical categories. See where growth is happening before anyone else. And let me tell you about a couple of other Beverage Digest products. Our fact book gives you a detailed look at annual sales trends, covering all channels. That includes retail fountain, up and down the street, everything. Channels. That includes retail fountain, up and down the street, everything. The data covers all major brands in all major categories, dating back to the 1980s. Now do you want to see detailed territory by territory maps of the coca-cola and pepsico systems? We've got those in our the coke and pepsi systems resource guide. Understand these two critical distribution networks from the ground up. And don't forget Beverage Digest Future Smarts Conference, where top industry leaders discuss and debate the most critical industry topics all in a single day. This is your ticket to network with industry thought leaders and get set for your next critical deal.
Speaker 1:And one last note if you're interested in sponsoring this podcast, we'd love to have you. Just send us an email and we'll get started Now. I do have trouble seeing this. As you know, we talk about some of these volume declines around these big carbonated soft drink brands. I still think it's a bit of a stretch to think it's going to fill the gap. I mean, I see this more as a premium offering that is going to be very challenging to get down to the kind of price points that you might see with these big scaled brands right now. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I think what Coke and Pepsi need to do is they need to say we've got fantastic brands with Coke Diet, coke, coke Zero, pepsi Diet, pepsi Mountain Dew, dr Pepper, etc. We're going to do a great job with these brands. We're going to keep marketing them. Their volume is probably going to decline as long as pricing holds up. We'll get some revenue growth. But now how do we position ourselves over the next decade or two as growth companies? And I think that what we're talking about today will not fill the gap this year, next year, the year after, but in years to come, as younger consumers come into the main buying age groups, buying age groups. I think that these brands, these brands Dwayne, these kinds of products could, in 5, 10, 15 years, become very big. These kinds of products, which I consider modern, more cutting-age products, could help Coke and Pepsi position themselves as growth companies for the future All right.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about some of the risks now. The risks to this theory. Okay, first of all, these products do have some sugar.
Speaker 2:There's a subset of consumers basically say to themselves I'll take the sugar if I'm getting the functional benefit. I think if you use energy drinks as a model, I think consumers, if they believe they're getting a functional benefit, will be happy to overlook those few calories and grams of sugar in these kinds of drinks.
Speaker 1:I think some will. I think, when you're talking about the kind of scale you get with energy drinks, though I wonder, because you know what's growing in energy drinks right now is zero sugar hands down. That's what consumers want. You know the sugar. You need the sugar in some of these kind of gut health drinks to mask some of the other ingredients, some of the flavors. So that's something I think they got to solve.
Speaker 1:For the one thing about energy drinks too, is that caffeine is a tried and true functional ingredient. There's no question about it. There's questions about too much caffeine, but caffeine is tried and true. People trust it, people believe in it. They consume it in many different ways. So that's a huge thing going for that category over time.
Speaker 1:I think one of the questions to see is how these companies deal with the question about prebiotics and probiotics.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's already a lot of negativity about probiotics is sort of like not really the same thing as prebiotics and inferior Prebiotics. There's a lot of you know there's questions about you know to what extent, how many of these do you have to drink before you can actually reap the benefits? You know the companies are having to scale down their messaging about that. So one of the questions I have long term is how do you sort of get around that in such a way that consumers feel very confident that they really are getting the functionality that they're paying for, if they're able to go? You know what? I don't care, I think these brands are cool, they're fun, they taste good, then that could be the answer. But we also know that consumers are very fickle and they move on to the next kind of cool, fun thing on TikTok. That's a real factor these days, so you have to factor that in as well. So you know, I think there's some real solves here if this is going to replicate the model that we've seen for energy drinks, at least where.
Speaker 2:I stand right now.
Speaker 2:Look, I think a couple things. In the first place, energy drinks took a long time to evolve into where they are today. In the early years when I first had Beverage Digest, the soft drink companies hated the word caffeine. They were scared of caffeine. They were scared of caffeine labeling. They were scared of caffeine. They were scared of caffeine labeling. They were scared of being forced by states or the federal government to put amounts of caffeine in the drinks on the ingredient labels. They were scared to death of caffeine.
Speaker 2:And sometime in the late 1990s I think, at a Beverage Digest conference, we had someone from Red Bull speak and energy drinks were almost virtually unknown in the US at that point in time. They were better known in other parts of the world. And, lo and behold, energy drinks basically zoomed in. Monster, rodney and Hilton introduced the Monster brand. Red Bull grew Initially. There were not zero-calorie versions of these drinks. There were later, but the initial spurt of growth were from products that had lots of caffeine and lots of sugar. As you said, the zero-calorie stuff basically continued the growth of this.
Speaker 2:I think that what we're talking about, dwayne, is going to take a long time to evolve, but I think that you know again, I did some research on health and wellness trends and you could imagine a company like Poppy which is now a gut health product. You can imagine that brand standing for it. I'm just going to read off a list of some things that I found on the internet in terms of health and wellness subjects that people are looking for Weight loss, mental health, relaxation, protein, heart health, hydration, sleep, skin care, calcium, eventually CBD and THC, eventually CBD and THC. I think that I could imagine a day when Coke and Pepsi I don't think you're going to see it with the Coke and Pepsi brands where they have a lineup of brands which basically stand for a wide array of, or contain or claim to have a wide array of, health and wellness benefits and I think, if marketed correctly and I think if the trends we're talking about continue, these could be very big brands for these companies 10, 15, 20 years from now.
Speaker 1:Well, let me ask you this. I mean, you've already seen this sort of playing out over the last number of years. You know various attempts to get into these various functional categories, and they kind of come and go. What do you think is the inflection point that makes those suddenly scalable in a way that they don't just come and go?
Speaker 2:Money distribution and staying power. I think that, basically, I think that Red Bull put together this fabulous distribution system and they had a lot of money to market their brand. Monster basically broke in for the ABI, the Bud system and then now it's in the Coke system. I will predict and my mother told me never to make predictions because crystal balls have cataracts but I will predict that Coke and Pepsi and probably Keurig, dr Pepper, within the next year or two, buy or start brands that they can use as health and wellness platforms that contain great tasting products low in sugar and calories, maintain great tasting products low in sugar and calories that they'll introduce these with, maybe with gut health and maybe one other, one other benefit, and over the years to come they will introduce a wide range of health and health and wellness benefits in these products.
Speaker 2:I think that many of the products will be csds. Maybe a few won't be, because I think some people I mean I think, just as Celsius has done a lot of the Celsius products are sparkling summer still because they recognize some people don't want a carbonated drink. So I think that these new product lines which I'm envisioning developing will be maybe, perhaps largely CSDs and can run on bottler lines, some maybe non-carbs, but I think it's very exciting and I think that we've seen in the past. You know big companies are slow adapters, but I think Cokepsi will get into these products. I hope that they will basically stay with them, invest in them, um, get them into their distribution systems and I think that could basically, uh, help these products develop into something very big and sustainable and growing and turn these and turn these beverage companies into long-term growth companies again.
Speaker 1:Okay, coke and Pepsi very skeptical. They're going to buy one of these brands. I could see maybe someone developing their own brand. I mean Pepsi would be the most likely person to do that. I would think KDP. That's interesting. They're trying to build the third distribution system. They're trying to build a system that other brands can plug themselves into, like La Cologne, like Electrolyte, and have a national distribution when they can't, for instance if they can't get into Coke and Pepsi. There's only so much space. That's really interesting. Could they buy one of these brands In terms of?
Speaker 1:I think we should talk a little bit about right now how big these brands are. I mean a brand like Poppy. Now we estimate it's probably about a half a share point of CSD. So you know that's nothing to sneeze at, not huge in scale yet, but pretty interesting. You've got Olipop, which is, you know, somewhere in that realm. That kind of got off to a faster start, but they're a little slower when it comes to being as shelf stable as you need. You know, in the grocery store you can find Olipop on the shelf in singles on the soda aisle at certain places, whereas it's harder to find Olipop because it can only be in cold case until they get more distribution for these shelf stable multi-pack. So we'll, you know, we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 1:But then you've got a number of companies like health aid, kombucha They've created sunset now to get in on this poppy olipop wave. You've got culture pop soda, which is a probiotic soda. They've raised money from Starbucks, uh, founder, uh, howard Schultz. You've got a brand called Mayo. Well, out there, suja life, they just bought Slice and what they want to do with Slice is turn that into a gut soda and relaunch that brand as a gut soda.
Speaker 1:You've got Levo, a recent launch called Levo.
Speaker 1:You've got the former Red Bull and Bang sales exec, sam Wilson and his son Vinny have created no Cap, which is called no Cap Soda Pop, and it means you know no Cap is like slang for no lie, for real.
Speaker 1:You know that kind of thing, so you can kind of see how they're playing now. So there is a lot of these brands, a lot of companies getting into this for sure. But I think a really key thing here if this category, if this segment, moves towards the kind of scale that the big companies would be interested in and that would actually take even more meaningful share within the carbonated soft drink context. I think what you're going to see, though, is these migrate from this really functional premise to much more of a permissible soda premise, and we already see so many companies out there that are launching, you know, what I would call permissible soda brands, where they're basically cleaning up the labels and, you know, taking out artificials and giving people these bubbles that they love, but within this context, where they have this sort of feel-good refreshment, I love your term permissible soda.
Speaker 2:It's a much more eloquent way of saying what I was talking about a few minutes ago, which I was talking about. These products give people the license to basically buy them, drink them and enjoy them because they have a health and wellness benefit. I think, dwayne, you and I should start a company called the Permissible Soda Company. I'm, sure someone's going to be doing that any day, if they haven't already.
Speaker 1:But you know and that's a whole other conversation Some of these brands that are too spot on point, I think don't do that. Have fun, poppy, I think is a great name. Point, I think, don't do that. Have fun Poppy, I think is a great name. But yeah, I mean, I think really the thing to watch here, in my opinion, is not so much gut soda, prebiotic soda, that's an element. I think, it's this taking what they've done with that and taking those learnings and branching out into this permissible soda segment. And that's where we start to get into the kind of things you were talking about different functional benefits, where you don't really lean in so heavily into the actual ingredients and functionality. Necessarily, you do the things that good brands do and that's create a badge identity. The things that Celsius did create badge identity, make people want to hold these things and feel like it's cool, feel like it's permissible refreshment, all those things. And that's where this whole thing is going to migrate and that's the way to watch it, I believe.
Speaker 2:Look to your point about these small companies, remember Coke and Pepsi and, to some extent, kdp. But let's talk about Coke and Pepsi. They are not great innovators. You know, the non-carb craze was started decades ago by Snapple, long before PepsiCo bought it. Gatorade became a very significant beverage product under a bunch of different owners, the last one being the Quaker Oats Company, which PepsiCo bought after Coke didn't. So I think that there are two ways these companies can get into it either by taking a company like Poppy or Olipop or one of the others, dwayne which gets to a certain critical mass in terms of size, and then buying it, or starting their own brand. They've had a lot more success with innovation in buying other brands.
Speaker 2:But look, I was thinking last night before we did the podcast, I was thinking you could imagine Coke saying to themselves and I have no idea whether this could happen or not Coke saying to themselves look, we bought this brand two or three years ago called Body Armor, and we had this idea of running a two-tiered sports drink business against Gatorade. Well, it hasn't worked out so well so far. Body Armor has lost a lot of the size that it had when Coke bought it. I think it's growing a little bit again now.
Speaker 2:But what if you took Body Armor and you said to yourself this brand already stands for healthy hydration and good ingredients and now we're going to expand Body Armor. Body Armor means protect your body into a full-blown line of health and wellness beverages that the consumer basically. That will stand for gut health, weight loss, mental health, relaxation, whatever skin health, and they take the next 10 years and develop this new, but this new reimagined body armor into a line of health and wellness beverages. You know, if I were, if we're a horse race, I bet that they could have some success with that.
Speaker 1:I mean what a great name already for something like that, right I?
Speaker 2:mean it just speaks right to it.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting because yesterday I had a conversation with John Murphy, the CFO of Coca-Cola, you know, after their earnings report and, by the way, he's speaking at our conference in December, looking forward to that. That should be a really interesting conversation. But he we were talking about, you know, body armor and sports drinks and we were also talking about the energy drink category. I was sort of wanting to get his take on the slowdown in energy lately is, you know, is this, you know, just sort of a blip or something longer term? But one of the interesting points he made is that you know, because of some of the blurring that's happening, you even have energy occasions being taken sometimes by sports drinks, for instance, and you know, vice versa.
Speaker 1:And I think sort of the point that he was getting at and you know he wasn't being super pointed about this. But my takeaway and it kind of fits into what you're saying is that there's so much blurring happening now that I think you know people are starting to think of these brands in a broader context for delivering other kind of functionality, and that they feel like consumers are okay with that. And you know it's no longer a case where you just automatically think you're going to dilute the brand by doing that. It's almost as if you think well, we need to make sure that these brands that you know people like are actually fulfilling different occasions and need states and there's just some more openness to that now. So I think that just you know doesn't do anything other than just kind of speak to the kind of thinking now that would lead to you know something that you know, whether they do anything like that with body armor or not. I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2:But I think, look, I think that Olipop and Poppy are going to go down in the history of the beverage business as pathfinders and that they are basically going to basically go down in history as brands that showed, helped show the way, helped show Coke and Pepsi the way to a future of stronger growth. And we're talking a lot about North America now, but if you look at, I believe that the trends we're seeing in North America and Europe are going to eventually be followed in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no doubt. And I think that— I mean there's as many brands in the UK doing this, as we have in the US, that are completely different than the brands we have here. In terms of gut soda, there's a whole slew of gut sodas over there too. Developed markets are all over this trend.
Speaker 2:Right and I think you know, I think—look, I think Coke and Pepsi are great companies. I think it's really hard to figure out a path to new and sustained strong growth when your main business is just not doing so well anymore. And it's risky, it's expensive, but I personally think they'll do it and I think that these health and wellness products basically with products like Poppy and Olipop on the cutting edge are going to lead the beverage business into a new era of sustained growth. And I don't mean to sound like a Pollyanna on this. I mean, you've heard me in these podcasts, dwayne, be very pessimistic about this industry in some ways, but I think what we're talking about now and you know your idea for this podcast presents a very exciting potential future for these companies.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, to your point, john. I mean, poppy really is doing all the right things. They've got this functionality, but they broaden the tent on this. They've made it, you know, cool to hold like a Celsius. They've brought, you know, people who maybe have stopped drinking soft drinks for whatever reason back into the carbonated soft drink landscape. They've even launched a 16-ounce can at like 7-Eleven and Speedway, because what they find is some of these consumers in the C-Store context want more than 12 ounces.
Speaker 1:You know, think about that.
Speaker 1:So you know, what they're seeing is an audience for people going into one of the most important channels, immediate consumption, c-stores, grabbing one of the most profitable packages and they're putting it as 16-ounce because they want more of this liquid at a certain packages, and they're putting it as 16 ounce because they want more of this liquid at a certain time.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the kind of thing that really should perk your ears up, you know, at places like Coke and Pepsi, because that again is the sweet spot of the carbonated soft drink industry and they're moving into it and creating this kind of new opportunity that we've talked about today. So I agree with you, I think this is a space to really watch. It's going to evolve. You're going to see these companies playing in it one way or another and you know it's going to be an area that's, you know, quite fertile for some time. I'll say you know, just as a caveat, we've seen a lot of these sort of exciting, interesting things come and go over the years, but definitely one to watch and it's been awesome talking to you about it, john.
Speaker 1:Wayne, always good to be with you and yeah, I think it's such an important thing to watch for the future. The Breeze is produced by Beverage Digest. Visit our website to learn more about our products and subscribe to our newsletter.