History of Beverages

A Variety Explosion

Over the past few years beverage product variety has exploded. In the not-too-distant past, it was easy enough to segment beverages and beverage companies. A soft drink company made soft drinks. You were a juice company if you produced juice beverages. You were a water company if you bottled water. But what if you do it all? That’s the position America’s leading non-alcoholic refreshment beverage companies find themselves in today.

Beverage Companies Diversify Their Products

After an intensive decade or more of innovation, consolidation and responding to consumer demand, the best-known marketers of liquid refreshment have become, quite simply, beverage companies.

Companies such as The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes’ Americas Beverages are synonymous with carbonated soft drinks, and understandably so. Their flagship brands—Coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper, respectively—were first poured in the 19th century and became some of America’s most beloved refreshments in the 20^th century. They remain living, sparkling icons today.

Today, beverage companies of all shapes and sizes recognize consumers’ desire to diversify their palates. Whereas 50 years ago the soft drink business produced cola and maybe a few flavors, today there are no-calorie, low-calorie and mid-calorie sodas. There are caffeinated and caffeine-free versions. Tropical flavors have joined lemon-lime and root beer. In short, there is a carbonated variety for every taste and palate.

More significantly, there are plenty of choices for the non-carbonated occasion. American Beverage Association members make fruit juices and fruit beverages for drinkers of every age. They produce bottled waters, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, sports drinks, energy drinks, and dairy drinks, all arriving on store shelves via the same distribution networks.

That’s what America’s beverage companies do: they create, produce, bottle, distribute and market beverages to quench America’s thirst.

Milestones in Variety

What seems like a sudden proliferation of beverage choice has been in the works for the better part of five decades. Consumers have been offered a continually widening range of nonalcoholic drinks for some time. The names, the categories and how far back they go may surprise you.

1966: When the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages contemporized its identity to the National Soft Drink Association, there wasn’t much mystery to what its members produced. Carbonated soft drinks were, as ever, the name of the game. But change was definitely in the starting blocks. At the University of Florida, Gatorade was invented, ushering in the era of the sports drink.

1971: A cup of coffee is a cup of coffee is a cup of coffee. But in Seattle , somebody decided a cup of coffee could be something more. The city was introduced to the first Starbucks, which would become synonymous with a cup of coffee after it began expanding everywhere—including to bottled and can iterations—in the 1990s.

1972: Two of them were window-washers. One ran a health food store. Wouldn’t it be nice, they wondered, if somebody made something natural to drink? These were the three founders of Unadulterated Food Products, which turned into Snapple, an array of teas, juices and other Best Stuff on Earth.

1978: Water flowed through pipes and taps and into glasses across America’s kitchens. Who could ask for anything more? Consumers did once they got a taste of Perrier and Evian, the first widely available bottled waters. Through the doors these imports opened burst convenient versions of domestically sourced brands like Poland Spring and other regional favorites.

1980: The only way to get fresh juice was to grab an orange and start squeezing. But vision was in high supply at Odwalla, which began to package fresh juice in the same year that it was asked, “Do You Believe in Miracles?” That question referred to the U.S. hockey team’s upset of the Soviet Union in the Olympics, but a new way of presenting pure juice as a refreshment beverage would present seemingly miraculous benefits of their own.

1982: Low-calorie soft drinks received a high-profile boost when The Coca-Cola Company, for the first time, extended its trademark to a new product. Not just any product, Diet Coke quickly became the nation’s favorite diet soda, giving consumers a new way to enjoy beverages.

1983: Calm came over the beverage industry when Pepsi Free and RC 100 brought caffeine-free options to regular and diet cola. They were joined by caffeine-free versions of Coca-Cola products and provided a template for the menu options drinkers would enjoy going forward.

1989: Juice drinks took on a whole new gravitas when Nantucket Nectars sails to shore. Using high-caliber ingredients and blending fruits, the brand won fans from coast to coast and proved there was a thirst for fruit beverages that put the accent on fruit.

1991: The perceived divide between regular and diet taste drew closer when the reformulated Diet Dr Pepper was launched to enthusiastic response. With the message that it tasted like its popular progenitor, the product proved once and for all that no retailer could stock anything less than a full line of diet beverages.

1992: A total beverage philosophy took hold when Pepsi-Cola looked into the future and saw more to life than soda pop. This was the year Lipton and Ocean Spray began appearing on Pepsi trucks, paving the way for marketers, manufacturers and distributors of carbonated soft drinks to respond to consumer demand for beverages of all sorts.

1995: The first bottle of Aquafina that was sold guaranteed that soft drink franchisors would henceforth be known as beverage marketers. With Pepsi’s bottled water making an immediate splash—and Coca-Cola following with Dasani—the viability of packaged water was validated once and for all.

1996: Wouldn’t it be great if you could drink your health from a bottle? The brains behind SoBe believed the answer was yes, and created the first mass-market functional beverage. Having started a trend, others would come in to unveil drinks with increased efficacy and potential benefits. The possibilities remain ripe.

2001: Old brands learned new tricks when Mountain Dew Code Red became a certified hit. Well-loved soda pops packaged themselves in heretofore unexpected ways, as drinkers took to items like Vanilla Coke with curiosity and delight.

2003: Need proof that beverages are versatile? Try Clamato Energía from Mott’s. It’s a vegetable-based energy drink geared toward the Hispanic-American market that provides Clamato with its core following. The drink was introduced with 30% juice plus taurine, ginseng, guarana and B vitamins. In other words, there’s a lot of beverage in this can.

2004: The low-carb movement got its due with the debut of Tropicana Light ’n Healthy and Minute Maid Light, the first orange juice beverages to effectively cut carbohydrates, calories and sugars while retaining the taste consumers anticipate. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola C2 and Pepsi Edge offered drinkers an enticing weigh station between regular and diet colas. Another vintage name appeared with a new twist as 7 UP Plus came fortified with calcium, vitamin C and real fruit juice. It, too, dramatically reduced calories from its flagship brand.