Showing posts with label hot beverages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hot beverages. Show all posts

Sunday, 5 October 2014

Trending Foods examines the latest news, market trends, surveys and stats that are helping shape the food industry. 

Bottled Water, Tea Driving Global Beverage Growth
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Drink up, there’s good news for the beverage industry. New data from Zenith International reveals bottled water and tea are driving growth in the global beverage market, contributing a whopping 55 percent to the market growth over the past five years.

According to Zenith’s globaldrinks.com online database, tea is by far the largest of the 24 drinks categories in the 72 country database and saw consumption growth of 62 billion liters between 2008 and 2013. Bottled water, the second-largest market by volume, increased sales by an even higher 83 billion liters over the five years. Milk gained the third-biggest volume growth of 20 billion liters, followed by coffee on 16 billion liters.

Five other categories all achieved growth of between 10 billion and 12 billion liters—still drinks with a low fruit content, carbonated soft drinks, beer, fruit drinks with a fruit content between 5 percent and 25 percent and iced tea. Spirits were the last of the top 10 volume growth categories, which is a very strong performance, given their far higher value.

“When you look in more detail at how the category rankings have altered in the last five years, two changes jump out," said Zenith Chairman Richard Hall. “The first is that carbonates have slipped behind milk, which has now risen to third place. The second is that coffee has overtaken beer. The other observation to highlight is a huge increase in the variety of choice available to consumers today, with many more flavors and blends as well as packs and sweeteners, outlets and delivery options."

This latest data supports previous market data supporting growth in the water category. In November 2013, data from the NPD Group found water represents nearly half of all beverages consumed by adults, making it their top beverage pick. Kids, however, drink significantly less, replaced by milk, soft drinks and fruit beverages.

According to the “Bottled Water in the U.S." report from Packaged Facts, as consumers continue to reject carbonated soft drinks and embrace bottled water, many beverage industry analysts and marketers are convinced that the category will soon become the dominant non-alcoholic beverage. Healthy living and the obesity epidemic have been driving factors in making bottled water the zero-calorie/ultra-low calorie beverage of choice for millions of consumers.
Marketers are launching new bottled water products with bold colors, exotic flavoring and fashion-forward packaging. They are also bringing to market a wider range of water enhancers, a category that didn’t exist until 2011 when Kraft Foods launched its MiO brand of water enhancers.

Sunday, 14 September 2014

FOOD TRENDS 2014: The Buzz About Coffee: Starbucks Plans and the Coffee Genome

The Buzz About Coffee: Starbucks Plans and the Coffee Genome
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In two seemingly unrelated coffee-centric announcements this week, Starbucks will be introducing a new uber-gourmet concept, and a huge collection of scientists generated a “high-quality" draft genome of the species Coffea canephora, more commonly known as Robusta coffee.

In a press release dated Sept. 5, 2014, Starbucks revealed  the “launch of a one-of-a-kind, interactive Starbucks Reserve™ Roastery and Tasting Room dedicated to roasting, coffee education and increased availability of their fast-growing, highly successful small-lot Starbucks Reserve® coffees.  This consolidation of small-batch roasting will allow the company to expand their Starbucks Reserve® coffee line to 1,500 locations globally, as well as open at least 100 stores designed to highlight these rare coffees exclusively."

This will take advantage of the growing trend of specialty, c raft and custom products in foods and should appeal to those who no longer consider carrying a standard Starbucks coffee a sufficient status symbol and take advantage of the push for more-custom food and beverage products. The company is trading on the success of its Starbucks Reserve brand, an “exceptional collection of unique, small-batch arabica coffees."

Said Howard Schultz, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Starbucks, Seattle:  “Everything we have created and learned about coffee has led us to this moment. The Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting room is a multi-sensory experience that will transform the future of specialty coffee. We plan to take this super-premium experience to cities around the world, elevating the Starbucks experience not only through these stores but across our entire business."

Transitioning from the art of coffee marketing to the science of the coffee bean: The first coffee gene has been mapped, that of the plant that produces robusta coffee. Including the genes that code for enzymes involved in the plant’s caffeine production (“The coffee genome provides insight into the convergent evolution of caffeine biosynthesis," Science 5 September 2014:  1181-1184.) Other genes found include those related to plant defense, and to alkaloid and flavonoid enzymes involved in secondary compound synthesis.

Gene mapping can enable a number of genetic agricultural techniques (not limited to GMO, genetically engineered plants). So, this might lead to a number of interesting coffee variations—anything from a bean that grows without caffeine and eliminates the extraction processes currently used to improvements in the robusta’s flavor to making a plant that thrives despite climate change. And while anything developed might not be artisan enough for Starbuck’s Roastery, perhaps they might be interested in a bean that create its own Pumpkin Spice Latte flavor.
    -Lynn A. Kuntz