Beverage Brands Think They’ve Found Fall’s Next Big Flavor. It’s Not Pumpkin Spice
After a year dominated by Shirley Temple sodas and lemonade launches, brands are shifting their attention to apple.
Move over Martinelli’s. Grocery store shelves and cafe fridges will be packed with a lot more sparkling lookalikes this fall. That’s because apple has taken the crown as the new “it” flavor of the ready-to-drink season.
Over the past couple of months, a growing number of upstart beverage brands have zeroed in on the pome. Companies have invested in crisp formulations and rolled out fresh green, yellow, and red cans, mirroring the Granny Smith, Gala, and Honeycrisp varieties starting to pop up fresh in the produce section. Gorgie, the wellness-focused energy drink brand founded by serial entrepreneur Michelle Cordeiro Grant, rolled out a new candy apple flavor in July. The Boca Raton, Florida-based company, which has expanded its retail reach to more than 40,000 points of distribution, described the new SKU as “a playful take on a classic favorite” that is “bursting with crisp green apple flavor and a sweet, nostalgic finish.”
This month, more apple additions have followed
This month, more apple additions have followed. FLRT, Monster’s sparkling energy drink brand, which is marketed to female consumers and debuted in March, chose green apple as its first flavor expansion. Wildwonder, a prebiotic-packed sparkling herbal tea brand, added its own Chinese-heritage-inspired twist to the trend. The South San Francisco-based company, which has grown by 890 percent over the past three years, introduced an apple yuzu flavor.
For founder and CEO Rosa Li, investing in this new SKU came down to two key considerations. “We look at what’s trending in the market, and we also look at what’s missing in our portfolio,” says Li, whose company just landed at No. 396 on the Inc. 5000, its third straight year on the list.
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This apple-packed autumn is just the latest entrant on this year’s flavor calendar. The consumer packaged goods sector started off with a Shirley Temple boom. In January, Olipop and Poppi, the leaders of the modern soda aisle, both rolled out canned versions of the classic mocktail in quick succession, joining Bloom Pop and Stiller’s Soda, which already had their own versions of the lemon-lime, grenadine, and cherry recipe on shelves. Then summer ushered in a wave of new lemonades as brands overindexed on the nostalgic citrus treat. Now, apples are poised to take over the shoulder season.
The trend is not an entirely surprising one
The trend is not an entirely surprising one. Apples remain one of the most popular fresh fruits in the United States. More than three-quarters of households bought bushels last year, according to the International Fresh Produce Association, an industry trade group. The only fruit to surpass that slice of the market were berries and bananas.
Plus, fall marks peak harvest season for the fruit, which have long been synonymous with back to school. Major coffee chains, such as Starbucks and Dunkin’, have featured apple-inspired flavors as part of their fall menus alongside the perennial powerhouse, pumpkin spice, for years now. Now, the RTD market has started to follow suit, packaging the pome fruit into canned teas and energy drinks.
Source: www.inc.com
