• 🔮 Better Booch Looks Towards the ‘Future’
• 🤝 Mattson Buys Hyde Park Group
• 🥥 Once Upon A Coconut Tries To Enliven Category
• ⭐ Constellation Brands Spirits Business Dips
• ⚖️ Pepsi Bottler Lawsuit to Continue
• 🛻 ZOA Keeps on Truckin’

From flavored water, tea drinks, and sodas to beer, wine, and spirits. Döhler offers a wide range of Citrus, Fruity, Botanical, and many other flavors. Enhanced by a comprehensive Taste Modulation portfolio, these solutions create our sensory journey. DÖHLER – WE BRING IDEAS TO LIFE® Learn more

Kombucha has long enjoyed a health halo, but now it has the science and research to back it up, according to Better Booch co-founders Trey and Ashleigh Lockerbie. Rechristened as Future Beverage Group, the L.A.-based brand is using better-health-through-the-microbiome as the unifying principle for its growing stable of beverages, including CHA, LIVE Organic Living Soda and its flagship kombucha line.

🧪 The evolution is being fueled by Future Beverage Group’s new proprietary hero ingredient Native+, defined as a “combination of a prebiotic soluble fiber, nine strains of proven clinically-studied probiotics strains and a clinically-studied post-biotic.” 

• That ingredient aligns with research that emphasizes the added benefits of having a diverse set of strains, and will now be part of every existing and future beverage product from the company.

🗣️ “I think it’s really important right now for people to get really clear on the idea that diversity of strains is actually the key benefit to gut health,” Trey explained. “If you compare our products now to everyone else, I think we’re the ones bringing diversity to the table.”

Insiders can read the full story, including how the company’s new structure is bringing individual roles to product lines like LIVE Organic Living Soda and Better Booch, which is moving from 16 oz. to 12 oz. cans.

Silicon Valley-based product development firm Mattson announced an expansion into the Chicagoland area this morning via its acquisition of culinary-focused consultancy firm Hyde Park Group (HPG). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

• Mattson will acquire HPG’s Chicago location and its existing team will continue to run the Midwestern operations.
• According to Mattson CEO Justin Shimek, the acquisition will complement its end-to-end product services and bring a greater focus on front-end development as well as culinary-first innovation.
• HPG will also now be able to utilize Mattson’s suite of innovation technologies, including its new proprietary generative AI tools.

💬 “We still find it really important to physically get together with our clients – that's where some of the best ideas happen. Being able to actually take what we've done for many years here in the San Francisco Bay area and then have that presence in Chicago… we're just reducing barriers,” Shimek emphasized. 

Once Upon A Coconut (OUAC) has spent its first four years building a portfolio of flavored coconut waters in 11.8 oz. cans and establishing a strong ecommerce and Northeastern retail business. Now, the brand is working to rapidly expand that brick-and-mortar footprint to national status.

🚛 The coconut water maker recently landed in 410 Sprouts Farmers Market stores nationwide; with the help of distribution partner Big Geyser in the New York Area, OUAC is now available in over 6,000 doors.

😋 OUAC has swapped sucralose for cane sugar in its Chocolate variety as part of new retail partnership with Whole Foods and is planning to transition its 1-liter multiserve from plastic to aluminum.

💪🏾 The brand has drawn on recent investments from Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president and CEO Dana White as well as FUBU founder and serial entrepreneur Daymond John to expand its reach.

Check out the full story on BevNET.

Corona beer producer Constellation Brands had good news to report on its beer business, but the wine and spirits department echoed other major spirits companies during its latest earnings report yesterday. 

• The owner of High West distillery and Casa Noble saw quarterly net sales decline 6% across its wines and spirits business as distributors cut back orders for its core premium brands. 
• CEO Bill Newlands said he doesn’t expect challenges for wine and spirits to immediately subside. 
• The decline in the U.S. market was partially offset by 10% net sales growth in the direct-to-consumer channel. 

Newlands said the company would put more time and energy into 11 wine and spirit brands driving 80% of department growth – part of that focus was bringing in 30-year industry vet Sam Glaetzer in as the company’s new executive VP and president of Wine & Spirits last month.

A lawsuit brought against PepsiCo by two Pepsi-Cola franchise bottlers will move ahead after a New York judge on Friday granted only a partial dismissal requested by the food and beverage conglomerate. 

📝 The lawsuit, filed by Admiral Beverage Corp. and Pepsi-Cola Newburgh in February, alleges that after PepsiCo transitioned Gatorade from warehouse to DSD distribution last year – leading the bottlers to spend “tens of millions of dollars” in the process – the company then undercut their position by offering retailers like Walmart and Kroger cheaper deals with its Display Ready Pallet Program.

⛔ The court on Friday dismissed the second cause for action in the complaint, which accused PepsiCo of breaching “the Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing,” but the case will move ahead to determine breach of contract claims.

Ever wanted a flatbed full of energy drinks delivered to your door? Well now’s your chance! The Rock’s ZOA Energy has announced a giveaway sweepstakes to promote the launch of its new Mango Splash flavor, exclusive to 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores.

🦕 Consumers can enter at ZOA’s website for a chance to win a custom ZOA Energy Ford F-150 Raptor, arriving with “a bed full of ZOA Mango Splash” and a 7-Eleven gas gift card.

⚡ The plant-based energy brand debuted in 2021 and has had to fight for growth in a crowded better-for-you energy category. The 7-Eleven sweepstakes comes as ZOA has initiated an array of new marketing campaigns this year, including the “Big Dwayne Energy” ads that further bring its celebrity co-founder to the forefront of the brand.