There is a point at which something stops looking like a side note and starts taking up a more stable place in the conversation around drinking. For alcohol-free beverages, that point is not fully here yet. But a few recent signals suggest their legitimacy is growing in very different settings: among younger consumers in Germany, […]
For a long time, part of the non-alcoholic beverage world built its identity through subtraction: no alcohol, no sugar, no lactose, no whatever the traditional version contained. Today, in some segments, a different approach seems to be emerging: not just avoiding something, but offering a recognisable form of added value, whether through taste, function or […]
Pickle juice and jalapeños in a diet cola. Olive oil and salt. Ube ice cream. These are some of the combinations that have been circulating across German social feeds in recent months, drawing views and comments. But once the conversation moves from the screen to the glass, the response looks far more cautious. A representative […]
For a long time, hydrating and energising were treated as separate acts. Water on one side, functional drinks on the other. Two products, two moments, two ways of thinking about consumption. Recent launches suggest that this split is becoming less rigid, especially as brands start designing drinks around occasions rather than around traditional category lines. […]
If you look at the shopping basket, the picture across Europe’s six largest grocery markets is fairly clear: spending on alcoholic drinks is easing, while non-alcoholic beverages continue to gain ground. That is the reading from Circana data for France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom, and it points to more than […]
There is a question becoming increasingly relevant in the beverage world: how do you occupy alcohol’s social space without alcohol? The answer does not seem to lie in a single format, but in a set of strategies that some brands are testing to enter the same occasions with a different identity. One of the clearest […]
Some drinks stop being just drinks when they begin to work as signals. An object to give as a gift, to collect, to take to the stadium or to connect with a charitable gesture can say more than the liquid inside it. In three recent cases, very different in market and audience, the non-alcoholic beverage […]
There comes a point when a category stops being defined only by what it lacks and starts to speak for itself. In the non-alcoholic beverage world, that shift does not apply to the whole sector at once, but a few recent cases suggest where some segments may be heading. The most familiar example is bottled […]
There is a way of building a beverage brand’s presence that does not rely on motorway billboards or celebrity endorsements. It is quieter, but in the right setting it can be remarkably effective: choosing to be part of a community, not just visible to one. Salvus Mineralbrunnen, a German mineral water and soft drinks producer […]
The premium non-alcoholic segment is showing some interesting signals, even if the picture does not yet amount to a full-scale shift. What these cases do suggest is a more subtle change: brand identity, packaging and corporate structure are becoming increasingly important, not just the launch of a new product. The question, then, is not only […]