• 🤖 Owoc Charts ‘Ai’-Driven Future
• 🔀 Jones Soda's Disappointing Q3 
• 📉 Reed’s Posts Sales, Profit Declines
• 🥛 Lifeway's Strong Net Sales Growth
• 🏪 7-Eleven Execs Get In On Buyout Bid
• 🚀 Online Grocery Sales Skyrocket 28%
• 🌀 Storm Damage and Shutdowns

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In the weeks leading up to Election Day, maybe it’s fair to say that consumers were feeling, let’s say, hesitant? That’s kind of the vibe we’re getting from the latest set of NielsenIQ sales numbers (courtesy of Goldman Sachs Equity Research), which saw total non-alcoholic beverage sales growth slow slightly on the back of falling volumes and despite accelerating pricing growth. 

Total non-alcoholic beverage in the two-week period ending Nov. 2: 

• Sales growth: +5.1% (+5.6%/+3.8% for 4-weeks/12-weeks) 
• Volume growth: +2.2% (+3.6%/+2.6%)
• Pricing growth: +2.9% (+1.9%/+1.2%)

Here are a few highlights from deep in the weeds:

Things are looking stable in energy drinks, where sales, volume and pricing growth were all broadly in line sequentially. In the two-week period, Monster pushed volume growth back to positive while also moving pricing ahead 2.6% (compared to 1.7% in the four-week period); elsewhere, Celsius continued a downward trend in sequential sales growth, rising 4.6% (+5.3%/+5.9% for the 4-week/12-week periods) with volume up 7.4% (+10.9% in the 12-weeks).

Alani Nu continues to pick up speed, with sales up 43% in the 2-week period (+40.6%/+54.8% in the 4-weeks/12-weeks); volume growth hit 41.4% (+39.7%/+58.2%) against mostly flat pricing at 1.1% in the two weeks.

Sparkling water seems to have found a... spark? Dollar sales have stabilized (+10.4%/+10.9% for the 2-week/4-week), as have volume (+7.2%/+7.2%) and pricing (+3%/+3.4%). That’s reflected in individual brands’ performances as well: all reported a slight sales slowdown, though Coca-Cola (+28.8%/+31.5%), Spindrift (+28.1%/+32.6%) and Waterloo (+25.4%/+26.6%) remain high above the rest.

Could a changing of the guard be coming in sports drinks? It feels that way when tracking the opposing trajectories of PRIME and Electrolit. The former is reeling: sales (-49.8%/-50.4% in the 2-weeks/4-weeks) and volume (-43.7%/-44.7%) remain mired in a severe slump despite a double-digit drop in pricing growth. The latter – which announced plans this week to open a manufacturing center in Texas – is stable at 35.8% sales growth in the two-weeks (+35.9% in the four-weeks), though volume dipped slightly against a 2.2% increase in pricing growth.

Go Deeper: Electrolit Taking Production to Texas in 2026

Jack Owoc is ready for AI, but not the kind that writes emails or creates images for you… rather his comeback to the beverage industry via Ai Energy. 

🥁 The new line takes the controversial Bang founder back to the bleeding edge of performance energy, but this time natural caffeine is out (it’s “anything but natural,” he claims) and it's all about delivering performance via four critical neurotransmitters. Oh, and it can help your drumming ambitions too. Here’s a few highlights from our interview:

🔬 The research: Owoc says the launch of Ai Energy allows him to “leverage over a decade of non-AI research” which allowed him to write a ~400 page “blueprint on maximizing human health and performance” (that manuscript has since been confiscated, he added). 

🤝 The relationships: Bang may have had some issues, but “there is nobody on planet Earth that distributors trust more than me,” says Owoc. Ai Energy is launching via fitness channel distributors Europa Sports and Muscle Foods, but the CEO claims more, yet-unnamed “powerful DSD powerhouses” are on their way.

👔 The leader: Owoc praised his past achievements with Bang and Redline, but didn’t offer much perspective on his own culpability for their eventual end. He did, however, allude to a change in leadership style this time around.

Read the full interview on BevNET to hear directly from Owoc himself.

Jones Soda appears to be in the midst of a setback as it transforms from a craft soda brand to a full-suite beverage company. 

In its third-quarter earnings call yesterday, Paul Norman – currently serving as board chairman as well as interim CEO and CFO – expressed disappointment about the company’s trajectory as it weathered the departure of CEO David Knight and interim CFO Joe Culp in the last month. Let’s look at the results:

• Net revenue was $4.2 million in Q3, compared to $4.5 million in the prior-year period.
• Gross margin fell to 21.2%, versus 32.9% in Q3 2023. 
• Net loss ticked up as well to $2.6 million, an increase over $900,000 in the year-ago period.

💬 Norman told investors on the call (absent of a question-and-answer period) that he was restructuring Jones’ innovation pipeline and prioritizing its hemp-derived THC products and “modern soda” products while “pushing out” mixers, powders and waters.

Read the full report on BevNET.

Strong order demand from retail partners was not enough to offset ginger beer brand Reed’s profit declines in Q3, caused by production limitations and short shipments, the company said during its latest earnings report. Here are some key numbers: 

• Net sales growth was in the single-digits, coming in at $6.8 million compared to $11.9 million in the prior year period.
• Gross profit was $1.2 million versus $4 million in Q3 2023. 
• SG&A expenses were $3.1 million compared to $2.3 million in the prior year period. 
• The company did improve its liquidity position with CEO Norman Snyder announcing Reed’s has secured a one-year revolving credit facility with an aggregate principal amount of $10 million with Whitebox.
• Additionally, majority stockholder D&D purchased all secured notes held by funds managed by Whitebox. 

💭  “Our majority stockholder’s acquisition of the outstanding note obligations, paired with additional funding from a trusted, long-term partner, is a strong vote of confidence in our business and its potential,” said Snyder in a prepared statement.

Stay tuned for the full recap later today. 

After turning down a buyout offer from Danone earlier this month, Lifeway Foods posted its 20th consecutive quarter of net sales gains, up 12.7% to $46.1 million in Q3. 

📈 The sales growth was driven by volume growth among its branded drinkable kefir segment in addition to growth across its cheese category as consumer interest in its soft cheese products, such as Farmer Cheese, has risen.  

🏭 According to CEO Julie Smolyansky, the company is continuing to deprioritize private label manufacturing in order to “protect Lifeway’s category dominance and visibility, streamline operations and further improve margins.”

Stay tuned for the full earnings call recap later today. 

Parent company to retail giant 7-Eleven, Seven & i Holdings Co., has received another non-binding buyout bid, this time from VP and representative director of 7&i Junro Ito, in partnership with another affiliate of the company. 

💰 The offer came in at a nearly $11 billion premium compared to the $47 billion proposal from  Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. last month. According to Bloomberg, the offer is somewhere in the ballpark of $58 billion. 

Online Grocery sales in October spiked 28% year-over-year to $10.5 billion, according to the latest Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey. What’s more? All three order fulfillment methods – delivery, pick-up, and ship-to-home – posted gains. 

🚚 Delivery experienced another “turbo-charged” month, per the report, with sales up 46% to $4.8 billion and a monthly active user (MAU) base growing faster than pick-up or ship-to-home, at a rate of 16%. 

🛒 The overall MAU eGrocery base grew by 1.6%, equating to 54% of U.S. households completing at least one shopping trip online during the month. However, the total pool of households that have ever shopped online increased by just 0.6%. What does this mean? Most of the month’s MAU growth resulted from reactivating lapsed users. 

🗣️ What they said: “Delivery is riding its next growth curve, fueled not simply by subscriptions or membership offers, but by promotional pitches that incent the customer to commit for a year. While firms occasionally revert to their standard ‘free trial’ offers, the surge of new discount tactics seem to have a broader appeal.” - David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click

The CPG Week team talks about the impact of Hurricane Helene on North Carolina food and beverage businesses and dives into a slate of small brand shutdowns. The hosts dig into the circumstances that ended operations at No Evil, Bowery Farms and Marco Sweets & Spices. While numerous challenges continue to shake the industry, help is offered in the form of a guide on exiting gracefully. 

Listen to the full episode.

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