• 📵 Jack’s Social Media Battle Drags On
• 🔍 NYT: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo’s Shocking Sugar Supply Chain
• 🥥 Jones’ Cocco Clash with Refresco
• 🧊 Just Chillin’: Arizona Iced Tea Launches Ice Pops

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It’s strange to imagine amidst its ubiquity, but at one point Starbucks was considered to be at the bleeding edge of specialty coffee in the U.S., a position that it successfully leveraged to become the top-selling ready-to-drink brand in the category by some distance. 

In the decades since, the next wave(s) of specialty coffee roasters advanced education and innovation to new heights, and, driven on by young consumers specifically, helped make cold coffee the sales behemoth it is today. For a generation of kids trained to fork over at least $5 for a cold brew on tap, shouldn’t a high-quality, barista-crafted RTD that accurately captures the cafe experience represent great value, even with a premium price? 

That thesis was quietly being tested at Expo West earlier this month, starting with Verve Coffee Roasters. The Santa Cruz-based company has climbed to the heights of the industry -- culminating in winning “2024 Roaster of the Year (Macro)” from industry bible Roast Magazine -- without the benefit of a massive RTD business, a position that lends credibility to enter a familiar category but also leeway to try a different approach, i.e. opting for “Flash Brew,” a hot-brew process which retains the complexities and aromas of the bean, over the more common cold brew, for its oat milk lattes. 

Verve Flash Brew debuted with dairy-free, single-origin versions in 2019, but it's the oatmilk lattes, introduced last summer, received a handful of subtle but impactful upgrades at this year’s show. First, the 3-SKU line is now shelf-stable, a request the brand heard from many of its wholesale accounts, explained Verve’s head of RTD, Baker Carroll. After one of its major oat milk ingredient partners closed, the company also shifted gears and reformulated to use “natural binders” rather than gums or oils, and added a touch of honey for sweetness.

The cans have also been gently tweaked: a callout for “No Refined Sugars” has replaced “Flash Brewed for Freshness” at the top rim of the can, and a new badge on the side calls out “Sweetened with Honey” and “No Gums or Oils.”

There’s a new flavor, too: Sea Salt Mocha, which replaces the previous Chocolate. All 7.5 oz. cans retail for around $4.19 each.

The full roster is going into “most key partners,” including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Gap HQ and as a to-go option in Verve’s own cafes (its coffees are also served at CapitalOne Cafe locations).

Taken in itself, Verve’s revamp should be welcome news for coffee lovers, but it’s also part of a pattern we saw across Expo West where cold coffee’s popularity inside specialty cafes is having a tangible effect on CPG; see Chobani’s strong commitment on La Colombe to specialty coffee experts like Equator and Groundwork backing regenerative organic agriculture in their RTDs. Another thought: it might also be a way for “purist” coffee roasters to reclaim a share of the conversation within the category after seeing function-forward RTD brands like Pop & Bottle, Super Coffee, Taika and OWYN muscle their way in. 

Replicating the “premium cafe experience” has been a familiar refrain for some time, but now there may be more will -- and more ways -- to realize that ambition.

Jack Owoc, the ex-CEO of Bang Energy maker Vital Pharmaceuticals (VPX), is still wrestling for his social media accounts. In a Florida federal court on Thursday, Owoc argued that a bankruptcy judge wrongly took away ownership of three social media accounts for the brand, saying his persona played a key role in marketing Bang’s products.

⏪ VPX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2022 and in March 2023, the company terminated employment for Owoc and his wife, Meg Liz Owoc. The company subsequently sued the Owocs after they refused to hand over the CEO's social media accounts. 

🧑‍⚖️ On Thursday, Owocs appealed a bankruptcy judge’s July ruling that granted the debtors sole possession of the three accounts – spanning Twitter (now X), Instagram and TikTok – created in Owoc’s name when he was still CEO. 

💭 “Owoc is a market maker, meaning he and his wife successfully conceptualized, created and cross-marketed Vital’s flagship product, Bang Energy Drink, along with the Jack Owoc persona,” said Terry Gray of Martinez Cid-Law, in a court document, likening the ex-CEO to other celebs like Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey. 

👀 Blast Asset Acquisition – a subsidiary of Monster Energy that acquired Vital’s estate – claims the CEO accounts are not in Owoc’s name, but rather in the name of “Bang CEO” and were used to market Vital’s products. Additionally, Owoc didn’t maintain exclusive control of the accounts, previously stating he gave passwords to employees. 

The field level operations of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s sugar supply chains in the Indian state of Maharashtra are rife with human and child labor abuses, a recent New York Times investigation found. 

⚕️ Women working to harvest sugarcane in the region are often recommended, if not forced, into having unnecessary hysterectomies, married off as children and subject to inhumane, unsafe and unsanitary working conditions.  

💰 The payroll system has created an enduring cycle of labor abuse: workers are paid in advance of the season and for any day or sugar quota missed, they must pay back their contract holders. Most workers report it's impossible to ever clear their debts.  

🏭 Coca-Cola buys sugar from Maharashtra, where it is also building a new factory. One of the largest PepsiCo franchisees also sources from the state and recently opened its third bottling plant nearby.  

🔍 PepsiCo said it did not know about the abuses until the investigation; Coke has been aware of some of the abuses since 2019 when a government investigation found that nearly 20% of women working in Beed, one district within the state, had undergone hysterectomies. 

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It appears that Jones Soda has a bone to pick with Refresco Beverages US as the Seattle-based craft soda brand filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer this month alleging Refresco botched a batch of the company’s Lemoncocco drinks.

🧑🏽‍⚖️ Jones claims that Refresco “detected live and dead yeast cultures in a March 2023 run of Lemoncocco” drinks made at the beverage solutions company’s Arizona facility, according to Law360. The run produced around 360,000 cans of the drink.

😵 Refresco allegedly blamed an “off-taste” in the drinks on the ingredients supplied by Jones. Jones says their ingredients passed mold and yeast tests ahead of time – backed up by a third party tester – and put the blame on Refresco’s facility.

💲 Jones’ complaint seeks damages and legal costs, but did not put a dollar value on its preferred compensation. It’s unclear how the soiled batch may have affected Lemoncocco’s presence in the market.

Though summer may still be a few months away, Arizona Iced Tea is already looking to help consumers cool down with the launch of new Ice Pops in three of the brand’s most popular flavors – Much Mango, Fruit Punch and Watermelon.

🥭 The dairy-free, naturally flavored pops contain 50 calories each and are now rolling out to retailers nationwide with a SRP of $4.99 per 4-count box.