“No sugar” has replaced “diet sugar” for many zero-calorie soft drinks. Canadian Ginger Beer Dry and Schweppes, 7Up, A&W and Sunkist, made by Keurig Dr Pepper, now label their diet drinks as “sugar-free”. (The one exception is the eponymous Dr Pepper brand, which will still be available in “diet-friendly” packaging along with another sugar-free version.)
Reason for the overhaul: The word “diet” has fallen out of fashion — especially for Millennials and Gen Z-ers.
“No generation Z wants to go on a diet these days,” he said, adding that the company will “continue to innovate and support that business.”
But distaste for the word diet doesn’t signal distaste for zero-calorie beverages. The diet soda segment, which includes diet drinks and calorie-free branded beverages, has grown dramatically since it first became mainstream in the 1960s. According to Mintel , a market research firm, by 2020, the retail US diet soda market will reach $11.2 billion.
This segment is still much smaller than the regular carbonated soft drink market, which is $28.2 billion in 2020, but it is growing much faster. Diet soda sales are up about 19.5% year over year, compared with just 8.4% for regular soda in the same period, making it an attractive segment for manufacturers. Freshwater wants to grow.
Evolving a view of dieting as a concept means that soft drink manufacturers must emphasize the diet brand when they go ahead with sugar-free products – even if, as in the case of Combination of brands owned by Keurig Dr Pepper, they are selling identical drinks.
This tactic could help soda makers get more consumers, especially young people, involved. The industry needs those customers if it wants to grow the soft drink market.
The birth of diet cola
Diet drinks first became popular in the 1960s.
“It was first stocked among drugs instead of soft drinks, but the focus soon turned to the number of dieters losing weight across the country,” she wrote. Diet Rite was a huge success, prompting Coca-Cola to introduce the Tab in 1963, and Pepsi to start selling Diet Pepsi a year later.
This segment has grown well in the following years. Looking to expand beyond Tab, Coca-Cola launched Diet Coke in 1982.
At the time, Coca-Cola was facing many of the same challenges as it does today: The company needed to reinvigorate the Coca-Cola brand and thought that adding a Coke-branded dietary option could help. can help.
The company struggled with naming the product. It considered using the moniker “sugar-free” instead of a diet, but “many see it as something that depends on Coca-Cola’s main ingredient,” according to the post. In the end, the company used “diet” because it “is the clearest expression of the brand’s promise.”
But a few decades later, Coca-Cola returned to the idea of a sugar-free product. This time, it wants to appeal to demographics that seem to be avoiding the company’s diet drinks: young consumers and men.
Zero attack the scene
Other companies also want a more neutral way to advertise sugar-free products.
Jim Watson, senior beverage analyst at Rabobank, who told CNN Business that “diet has certainly been seen as a way of being gender-neutral”.
But the emergence of sugar-free drinks isn’t just about gender: It marked a turning point for the overall popularity of diet drinks. Alex Beckett, global food and beverage analyst at Mintel, said the word diet “started out of fashion…with the rise of zero.”
The payment for a drink that is free of calories and sugar is also to address changing health perceptions and highlight the absence of sugar in the drink as a positive attribute.
As Mintel reports from April: “Although the dietary designation may be associated with strict or deprivation regimens, the designation ‘no’ has fewer negative connotations, corresponding to a clearer profile,” according to a Mintel report from April.
The new formula hit US shelves this summer, and since then “we’ve found that 23% of Coke Zero Sugar consumers are now new,” said Alex Ebanks, a company spokesman. , a company spokesman, added that Coca-Cola will continue to invest in the product over the next year and beyond.
Competition heats up
While the big brands focus on their sugar-free products, they face competition from other categories and emerging companies with novel ideas.
One major competitor, according to Mintel’s Beckett, is carbonated water.
“Many people are switching…from fizzy drinks to fizzy drinks,” he said, “because those drinks are typically free of sweeteners, have no calories, and “have a healthier image.”
In addition to sparkling water, competitors are entering the space with refreshing spins of soda water. Example: Soda helps promote gut health.
Olipop, a startup that says it makes “a new soda,” sells old flavors like classic root beer, classic cola and others. The soft drinks, which have about 35-50 calories each, are made with a combination of ingredients like Jerusalem artichoke and tapioca root, which the company says supports digestive health. Poppi, which also sells traditional soda flavors in addition to fruit flavors, makes a similar claim, labeling “for a healthy gut” on the front of light-colored cans.
Danny Stepper, CEO of LA Libations, a beverage company incubator, said: “Consumers are voting with our wallets and sugar is something people are definitely less likely to use in their lives. our life”. “That opens the door to a lot of opportunities and categories,” he said. “Consumers want new things, so that’s opening the door to new ideas.”
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