• 🎮 T-Pain Gets Back to Beverage
• 💰 GURU Makes Progress To Profitability
• 🫖 Bigelow Tea New Factory Breaks Ground
• 📣 People: Industry Vet Gives Twrl a Whirl
• 📰 CPG, Retail CEOs See Shorter Tenures
• 🧃 Weed, Juice & A Snack Empire

Consumers want more from energy drinks—hydration, focus, mood enhancement and muscle support. Manufacturers are responding with functional ingredients like ashwagandha, BCAAs, and natural caffeine to meet the growing demand for healthier options. Learn more

It has been two years since The Coca-Cola Company announced it would discontinue Honest Tea. The rapid response by co-founder Seth Goldman to develop and launch a replacement in Just Ice Tea still stands out as one of the more impressive moves in the beverage space in recent years – if only for the speed and precision in taking the new brand from idea to market.

Now, as Just approaches its second anniversary, Goldman is still looking to his old brand as a benchmark for his new venture’s performance – which isn’t a bad thing when he can confidently claim that Just has done in two years what took Honest Tea a decade.

“We will basically be as large as Honest Tea was when it did its first deal with Coca-Cola, just from a dollar volume perspective,” Goldman told BevNET in a call last week.

For a long time, ready-to-drink tea has suffered from a sleepy growth curve as the top-end entrenched players like AriZona, Coke’s Gold Peak and PepsiCo’s Pure Leaf who held a combined 50% volume share of the set in retail. But more recent entrants such as Ryl, St. James, Halfday and Seven Teas are working to bring some insurgent energy to the set.

With Honest Tea’s path to market as a blueprint, Just Ice Tea is quickly establishing dominance in the natural channel, and it’s eying a bigger push in conventional over the next year. 

Data provided by the company showed its natural channel business up 54.7% to over $8.2 million in the 24-week period ending August 11, with a 13.7% share – second only to yerba mate maker Guayaki. In conventional, the brand was up 104.5%, albeit with a much smaller 0.4% share.

Circana, meanwhile, showed Just Ice Tea’s sales up 272.4% to over $6.5 million in U.S. MULO and c-store retail sales for the 52-weeks ending July 14, 2024, with only Liquid Death (up a face-melting 335.1%) outpacing its growth among the top tracked brands.

For his second run in tea, Goldman is pleased with the results so far. Although there’s times where he said he’d like Just Ice Tea to form its own identity, he’s still more than happy to connect it back to Honest – especially as buyers urge the brand to play up its “From the creators of Honest Tea” proposition at point of sale.

“I still go to stores and see Just Iced Tea on Honest Tea glide racks, which is a funny thing to see,” he said. “But, you know, as long as the consumers are finding it.”

T-Pain is coming back to the beverage business – this time as a chief executive. The Grammy winning artist announced today that his new beverage venture, Thrown, LLC, has been acquired by publicly traded Farmhouse Inc. with plans to launch an energy shot this fall.

⚡ Thrown will do business as Nappy Boy Dranks, with T-Pain positioned as CEO of the company. The brand intends to launch with a 2 oz. energy shot containing a proprietary “T-Mix Blend” and may also extend into other categories in the future.

💰 As part of the deal, Farmhouse, which was founded as a technology company with a focus on cannabis and IP, will need to secure $10 million in financing with 80% to be allocated for Thrown’s working capital. 

🔊 "Nappy Boy Dranks is all about bringing good energy to everyone—whether you're a gamer,  creator, or hustling every day. I want people to feel good, play good, and stay focused. I’m excited  to share this with the world," said T-Pain in a statement.

With its Zero Sugar line coming to the U.S. this year, Canadian energy drink brand GURU touted its work to return to profitability in its Q3 2024 earnings report today.

• GURU reported an 18.3% drop in net losses for the first nine months of 2024 to $6.8 million, compared with $8.3 million in the same period last year.
• Net revenue rose 6.9% to $23.1 million in the first nine months of the year, while gross profit improved 11.6%.

🆕 GURU is launching its Zero Sugar line in the U.S. on Amazon and in Life Time Fitness accounts later this year. The launch comes as the company touts a 37% increase in Canadian Amazon sales and 45% growth for its American Amazon business.

GRAASI is shelf-stable and hits the top beverage sales categories of functional, certified organic, plant-based, and gluten free. Graasi is a great, healthy alternative for hydration and recovery for everyone from weekend warriors to professional athletes to soccer moms and their families. Learn more

Family-owned Bigelow Tea is seeking to up its output with a new 256,000 sq. ft. facility in Louisville, Ky. The nearly 80-year-old tea maker broke ground this week on the state-of-the-art manufacturing plant which it said will be a key hub for packaging, storage and distribution.

🤑 The site is being prepared for construction and the $70 million project is slated to begin  early next year.

🍵 Bigelow has operated out of a different Louisville facility for the past 30 years. Its move to the new site provides another 75,000 sq. ft. for future growth on the 70-ace plot of land.

🫖 Gordon Hagedorn has joined Twrl Milk Tea as general manager. Hagedorn’s more than two decades of industry experience has included senior sales roles at Weetabix, Amy’s Kitchen and The Good Bean.

🌱 Kevin Boylan, co-founder of Powerplant Ventures and Veggie Grill, has joined Unovis Asset Management as a partner.

🔼 Advocacy group U.S. Hemp Roundtable has added two cannabis beverage segment leaders as officers. Art Massolo, VP of business development at Cycling Frog, was named EVP, and Aaron Nosbisch, founder of BRĒZ, was appointed VP of ecommerce.

Both Starbucks and Nestle saw rather abrupt departures of their chief executives in recent weeks and according to a new report from Reuters, those timelines may be on trend.

✂️ The report notes that chief executives in the U.S. retail and packaged goods sectors have, on average, 7 months shorter tenures in their positions compared to executives in autos, finance, tech and manufacturing industries in 2024. The data gathered from research firm Equilar show.

🗓️ CPG and retail CEOs typically hold their roles for 7.7 years while finance executives average 10 years in their posts and tech industry chiefs average 9 years. 

⏱️ An advisor with Barclays suggested there is a new lack of patience among boards in a post-pandemic economy where many would rather remove and replace rather than try to find a way to make a CEO’s management styles work. 

This week, the podcast team tests their pumpkin spiced knowledge in a friendly CPG Week quiz (spoiler: most brands have had an autumn-inspired flavor). The group goes on to discuss the implications of California’s new restrictions of hemp-derived cannabinoids. Later, they breakdown a recent merger in the juice industry. The conversation convenes around more M&A chatter, with the team taking a look at Our Home’s recent acquisitions and assessing how it is positioning itself as a major player in snacking.

Listen to the episode now.

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