Ready-to-Drink Beverages: Culinary Trend Tracking Series

Report Overview

A new age of innovation has descended upon the ready-to-drink beverage industry. After decades of activity that mostly centered upon new packaging or catchy marketing phrases, focus has now moved onto redesigning the actual beverages themselves—the creation of drinks that can target specific health conditions, provide more natural energy, replace entire meals, and do a lot more.

Driving much of this innovation have been younger Millennial-aged entrepreneurs and their consumer counterparts who are willing to spend more for better quality refreshment.

Ready-to-Drink Beverages: Culinary Trend Tracking Series is an especially good resource for those entrepreneurs or companies looking to come up with the next big beverage idea. Dozens of cutting edge innovations are featured, each of which could help spark tomorrow’s hit new product.
For instance, did you know that a cow now exists that produces milk that is easier to digest?  Or that drinks that help a consumer manage his diabetes are on the market?  Or that extended-release caffeine could revolutionize the future energy drink industry? Or that there are at least ten different kinds of functional waters that are currently on the market today?
These are just some of the cutting-edge innovations that people will be talking about, and that are highlighted in this report.

Scope of Report

Ready-to-Drink Beverages: Culinary Trend Tracking Series uncovers such cutting edge innovation across the entire ready-to-drink liquid refreshment industry, including meal replacements; juices; dairy and dairy alternatives; soda; coffee; tea; energy & sports drinks; enhanced bottled waters and specialty health beverages.

Report Methodology

The information in this report was obtained through both primary and secondary research.  Retail sales figures credited to IRI (Chicago, IL) are based on IRI aggregated multi-outlet (MULO) sales tracking, which represents sales through U.S. supermarkets, drugstores including Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid), mass merchandisers (Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart and Shopko), warehouse clubs (Sam’s Club and BJ’s, but not Costco), dollar stores (excluding Dollar Tree) and military commissaries. 

Primary research included interviews and discussions with various industry experts, review of ingredient company websites, beverage product websites, visits to bricks and mortar stores, including both conventional and natural and organic retailers and review of select food and beverage products in the retail marketplace.  A wide range of secondary sources was also leveraged including industry reports, videos embedded in websites, presentations obtained from seminars, workshops and conferences, trade publications, business newspapers and magazines, and press releases.  

Who Will Benefit From This Report

• Beverage Manufacturers and Marketers
• Foodservice Operators
• Ingredient Companies
• Private Label Marketing and Product Development Firms
• Advertising Agencies
• Investment Banks