• ✨ BevNET Live Happening Now
• 🎉 Six Finalists Advance in New Beverage Finals
  
• 📊 Memorial Holiday Brings Some Price Relief
• 🌶️ Spirit of Gallo Partners With Hot Ones
• 📺 Albertsons To Take Wonder Out of TV Ads

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BevNET Live Summer 2024 kicked off in New York City on Wednesday with a wide range of discussions and insights shared by top players and key individuals in the beverage business, including tactical discussions on navigating emerging challenges as a first-time entrepreneur and how to embrace novel marketing opportunities as well as insight into the current climate for investment and much more.

Tough Calls: Lemon Perfect founder and CEO Yanni Hufnagel came to the beverage business without ever having played the game, but a background in coaching college basketball helped prepare him to make tough calls at key moments that have allowed the business to keep going, he said during day one of BevNET Live.

Hufnagel shared how he grew the company from a nascent idea to a team of over 90 employees and a business that has brought in over $90 million in funding. There was even a time, only two years in, that Hufnagel had seriously considered hiring a CEO to take over, and shared the story of why he ultimately backed out of the agreement due to one comment from early investors: “We bet on you.”

That bet has brought plenty of more risk. Lemon Perfect has since pivoted from a refrigerated product to a shelf-stable iteration, reformulated to remove a controversial alt-sugar and supersized its bottle hoping to better execute in a key channel. 

Building the NA Category: As the non-alcoholic beverage category has matured, the role of independent brands and specialty retailers has become increasingly important to educate new consumers who range from the “sober serious, to the sober curious, with a hundred points in between,” joked Chris Marshall, founder of Sans Bar, during a panel discussion at BevNET Live.

Marshall was joined by Emily Heintz, founder and chief curator at NA wine and spirits brand Sèchey, and Nick Bodkins, CEO and founder of Boisson. While Heintz spoke about how Sèchey’s recent collaboration with Target has served as a spark plug to the overall category’s growth, Bodkins shared updates on the NA bottle shop’s future after it filed for bankruptcy protection in April. 

“I am not apologetic about the things that we started to do; I am really upset at myself for not being able to pivot faster. But I think there is a second wave of how NA shows up in retail and it’s going to be written by people like Emily [Heintz] and by us as well to help retailers understand this category,” Bodkins said. 

Check out the full recap for a full understanding of what else went down during the first day of BevNET Live.

BevNET Live Summer 2024 continues for a second day today in New York City. If you weren’t able to make the trek to the Big Apple – tune into the free livestream to hear from our full lineup of thought leaders, trailblazers, and the next generation of brand founders. 

They will share strategic insights and stories aimed at helping beverage industry professionals thrive. You won’t want to miss it. 

Tune in here.

Six startup beverage brands emerged from a field of 12 contestants to secure a spot in today’s final round of New Beverage Showdown 27 at BevNET Live Summer 2024.

👀 Today’s final features Kace fruit tea, OK Energy, Explorer Cold Brew, Flyers zero-proof THC cocktails, Holy! Water ketone beverages and Pretty Tasty ready-to-drink collagen tea.

▶️ Tune into BevNET.com to watch the final round of the competition live, starting with part one at 11 a.m. ET and part two at 1:15 p.m. ET. The New Beverage Showdown 27 winner will be announced at 3 p.m. ET at the closing of BevNET’s annual summer conference.

Check out the full semifinals recap on BevNET.

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A positive Memorial Day performance means summer beverage season is off to a fast start per the latest NielsenIQ data report courtesy of Goldman Sachs Equity Research, as total non-alcoholic beverage sales (+2%) and volume (+1%) both accelerated on the back of softer pricing during the two-week period ended June 1. 

🥤 In CSDs, pricing continued to taper off in the two-week period at +3.6% (+4.4% for the four weeks) and volume crept up 0.9%; category sales grew slightly to 4.6% (+4.5% for the 12-week window). 

• Fresh off taking the number-two spot in the category, Keurig Dr Pepper posted healthy sales (+4.5%, in line with 52-week numbers) and volume (+2.1%) gains. Overall pricing in CSDs decelerated from 5.2% in the 12 weeks to 3.6% in the two weeks. 

⚡ Energy drinks have tapered off somewhat, dipping 0.3% in the two-week period after a slight gain (+0.1%) in the four-week window. 

• Excluding Bang, Monster Energy saw sales contract -3.3% (+3.5% for the 52 weeks) and volume continue to fall (-3.2% in the two-weeks, -2.9% in the four-weeks) against flat pricing growth. Celsius sales slowed a bit — from 47.4% in the 12-weeks to 32% in the two weeks, with volume +40% – while Alani Nu (+58.3% sales) and GHOST (+5.5% sales and +5.8% volume in the two-weeks) were notable performers.  

😐 The report is unlikely to dispel concerns around PRIME’s struggles: sales for the brand’s hydration line fell 27.9% in the two weeks (-29% for the four weeks), while energy drinks declined 65.1% and volume slipped 61.8%. 

BevNET Insiders can get the complete recap with the latest data from across categories later today.

Spirit of Gallo’s New Amsterdam Vodka launched Heat Check yesterday, a collaboration with the hit YouTube show “Hot Ones” that features celebrities eating spicy chicken wings while trying to answer interview questions through their sweat. 

🍸 The new hot pepper-flavored, limited-edition vodka is now available nationwide for a SRP of $10.99. 

🤝 This isn’t Gallo’s first collaboration with successful media platforms; the company also released a limited ready-to-drink cocktail with Betches in 2022 and credits its early partnership with Barstool Sports as a driver for High Noon’s popularity. 

📱 Heat Check content will run on the “Hot Ones”/First We Feast platforms, as the presenting sponsor of a “Hot Ones” episode this summer and pairing the spirit with host Sean Evans' hot questions and hotter wings. We can’t imagine spicy vodka is a good palate cleanser, but maybe the interviews will get even more wild.

The retail media arm of grocery giant Albertsons, Albertsons Media Collective, introduced a new platform dubbed Collective TV that aims to simplify the process and pathway to television advertising. 

🔄 The platform is intended to help brands execute and optimize omnichannel campaigns with “build-it-yourself capabilities” that can flex between streaming platforms, digital and linear TV.

🔊 “Advertisers need a smarter, more effective way to execute CTV and video campaigns. With Collective TV, we’re removing the silos between publishers, demand-side platforms, and identity solutions by offering an outcome-driven TV solution that is flexible, scalable and measurable,” said Kristi Argyilan, SVP of retail media for Albertsons Media Collective.