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Whether it’s traditional staples of roasted turkey, buttered mash & pumpkin pie or more trendy options like fried turkey, cranberry bourbon sauce & jalapeno chili mash, flavor is the key element. A new holiday flavors guide from the flavor experts delivers tasty inspiration for the holiday season. Learn more

This week’s Goldman Sachs’ annual Global Staples Forum featured a slate of some of CPG’s biggest names — including Constellation Brands, Boston Beer Company, Athletic Brewing and others — breaking down their top-level corporate performance and long-term strategies with analysts from the bank. Here’s a quick look at discussions with executives from Vita Coco, Celsius and Zevia. 

Vita Coco: Topline growth of 9-12% is in sight, management insisted, driven by 25,000 new points of distribution and gains in household penetration (roughly 10.8% through March). Importantly, those projections come without further price hikes beyond last year’s actions; the company says it is OK without them, but analysts believe it has a strong enough market position to support more if necessary. Despite a challenging economic environment, Vita Coco has enjoyed a combination of marketing investment, promising innovations in new products (RTD alcohol) and formats (multi-packs), and falling ocean freight costs that is fueling its ambitions to take a bigger piece of c-stores (via canned drinks) and possible M&A. Go deeper: +14% Net Sales Rise in Q1 . 

Celsius: Rampant consumer demand continues to buoy spirits at the Florida-based fitness-centric energy drink brand, and a strong start to its distribution pact with Pepsi means that demand is getting met. Per CEO John Fieldly, Celsius has been gaining category share at its fastest-ever pace (roughly 8% vs 3.7% last year) as Pepsi has pushed it to roughly 95% ACV as of Q1 (94% in all-important c-stores). Retailers have responded by taking on more SKUs to the tune of +4.5% increase in items per location, with a path to up 17 items in sight. Those numbers have been supported by a +6% price increase, but the company is aiming to avoid further hikes through efficiencies while driving “key” summer promotions. Go deeper: Celsius Posts Record Q1 Revenue . 

Zevia: The tone from management was “upbeat and optimistic,” fueled by incremental pricing action (another +5% on top of a portfolio-wide 10% increase) in Q2 and a brand refresh we first previewed at Expo West in March. The new look is expected to propel volume in existing channels and, eventually, c-stores via singles (still <10% of total volume mix) and energy SKUs. That means a distribution pivot is on the cards: “Per mgmt,” analysts wrote, “transitioning to a DSD framework appears nearly certain, noting the transition is a necessity, not a goal.” Go deeper: Zevia Posts Double-Digit Growth in Q4 .

Non-alcoholic beverage sales remained “healthy but decelerated sequentially,” growing 8.8% in the two-week period ending May 6, according to an analysis of NielsenIQ data by Goldman Sachs Equity Research. 

* Volume sales declines worsened, falling -3.3% in the two-weeks, versus -2.6% for the four-weeks. 

* Average pricing remained elevated, but also decelerated slightly, growing 12.1% in the two-weeks compared to +12.7% for the four-week period. 

* CSDs (+11.1%), Energy Drinks (+8.3%) and Sports Drinks (+9%) posted the largest gains during the period, while RTD Tea (+3.6%) and Bottled Water (+4.5%) experienced lower growth rates.

Get the full recap of the latest Nielsen IQ data. 

Get Smart: Read about how artificial sweeteners are helping fuel growth in sports and energy drinks faster than their natural counterparts. 

When it comes to foodservice, The Coca-Cola Company is looking to give consumers even more options through its latest on-premise innovation, Coca-Cola Flex, which debuted at the 2023 National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago on Friday. The countertop-friendly version of its on-premise Freestyle dispensers, Flex takes up the same footprint as a standard 6-valve fountain dispenser and offers over 40 beverage options across six categories and nine Coca-Cola-owned brands. Slated for a Q1 2024 rollout, the machines are targeted towards increasing point-of-sale beverage purchases, as internal research showed 30% of consumers would add a beverage to their foodservice order if their preferred category was available. 

Coke first introduced its Freestyle dispensers in 2009 and the larger models now carry over 165 different beverage options. The company first debuted a countertop sized model, the Coca-Cola Freestyle 7000, in 2014.

Sugar-free syrup brand Skinny Mixes had the New York Times asking the question — 'when does a drink stop being water?' — this week as the #WaterTok trend takes off. Apparently, due to the TikTok-driven demand, flavored beverage syrups are also becoming increasingly hard to find, at least at discount retailer TJ Maxx. If a viral trend has the power to make Skinny Mixes sell out of a certain blue sugar-free syrup eight times in the course of only two months — could it have the power to create a new category of flavored H20? As obesity medicine physician Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford told the NYT, “Water is the base, but water is the base for soda, too.”

Another new RTD brand to look out for: Good Spirits, which is introducing its three-SKU line of spirit-based cocktails in 200ml cans this week. There’s The Golden Hour (27% ABV), described as a “honey-thyme old fashioned”; Lovebird (12% ABV), a passionfruit-grapefruit Paloma; and Bourbon Crisp (13% ABV), a mix of apple cider and bourbon. The line is available for shipping direct to 31 states, and will be entering select liquor stores in the Washington, D.C. area “soon,” per a press release.

Straightaway Cocktails is taking off: after landing Alaska Airlines as its initial partner at the beginning of the year, the Oregon-based RTD cocktail maker is now being carried on Breeze Airways as part of the carrier's rebranded "Breeze Ascent" front seating section. Offerings include Oaky Old Fashioned and Margarita, each in 100mL single-serve cans. What's better? They're complementary. As we reported back in February, the mix of premium products with on-the-go convenience has made airlines are increasingly attractive growth channel for RTD players like Tip Top, OTR and others. 

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