Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
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LEADING THE WAY These are just some of the specialty producers who are driving innovation in the healthy beverage category. Ayala's Herbal Waters. Pediatrician Ayala Laufer-Cahana took to her garden to find a solution to what was troubling her: seeing how many Americans were struggling with obesity and how many of her patients were habitual drinkers of sugar-filled soda. Laufer-Cahana began creating blends of water with a mixture of culinary herbs. "The easiest thing to change is what we drink," she says. "These drinks are still water flavored with nothing but organic herbs, and they rely for balance and interest and afternotes only on what is truly in the herbs." The original line, Ayala Herbal Waters, features six varieties, including lemon verbena geranium and lavender mint. In 2011, Ayala's introduced a line of sparkling waters flavored with herbs, and in the summer of 2013 a line of iced herbal teas with flavors including peppermint melissa spearmint and nutmeg cacao cardamom. herbalwater.com Honest Tea. Seth Goldman and his former Yale School of Management professor Barry Nalebuff began tinkering with brewing tea in the late 1990s after commiserating over the lack of less-sweet, but still flavorful, drinks. The two founded Honest Tea in 1998 with its line of bottled organic, fair trade teas in black, oolong, green, mint and white. In 2011, Coca-Cola bought the company, after initially purchasing a 40 percent stake in 2008. Honest Tea's founders entered into the investment partnership, after running into increasing roadblocks signing new distributors for its Honest Tea, Honest Ade and Honest Kids lines that carried competitor water and tea lines with greater distribution. Today, the business continues under Goldman's leadership in its small Bethesda, Md., office with regular checkins and visits to Coke's Atlanta headquarters. After the sale, Honest Tea went from being stocked in 15,000 stores to more than 100,000. The company currently has 72 beverage SKUs, comprising its flagship product line; Honest Fizz naturally sweetened, zero-calorie soda; Honest Ade, lower-calorie and -sugar sports drinks; Honest Kids, a fruit juice–sweetened line for kids and Honest Splash juice drinks. honesttea.com Kombucha Wonder Drink. Founder Steven Lee has spent a career in the tea business, co-founding Stash Tea and Tazo. After Tazo was sold to Starbucks, Lee spent time traveling in Russia. There, he met a friend's elderly mother who was brewing kombucha in her apartment and talked of its healing effects. She gave him a portion of the fungus pancake used to brew this fermented tea drink, which Lee brought back to Seattle. He began brewing small batches of kombucha at home and eventually consulted with microbrewery experts and a microbiologist to create better versions. Lee founded Kombucha Wonder Drink in 2001, and today the company produces eight flavors of pasteurized kombucha and four in single-serve cans, with a fifth launching in the spring. The producer also sells three raw kombucha drinks distributed primarily in the Pacific Northwest. A book Lee co-authored, The Kombucha Revolution: 75 Recipes for Homemade Brews, Fixers, Elixirs and Mixers, is expected to be released this June. wonderdrink.com category spotlight or Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. The yeasts break down the sugar and combine with the tea to create antioxidants, minerals and vitamins. Kombucha can be traced back to 220 B.C. in Northern China, and within the past five years, the market for this tart drink has exploded with new entrants. In 2010, the federal government discovered some drinks were continuing to ferment in the bottle and had higher alcohol levels than claimed. Several producers withdrew their lines or reformulated their teas to prevent additional fermentation. Today, the demand for kombucha shows no signs of decreasing. Kombucha Wonder Drink brand offers flavors like Asian pear and ginger, hibiscus ginger grapefruit, Niagara grape and coconut lime, which help make kombucha's natural vinegar-like taste palatable to a wider audience. According to the latest number from SPINS, in the conventional all-outlet channel, kombucha beverages rang up $40 million in sales, a 58.2 percent increase over the previous year; in the natural channel, the drink garnered $50.4 million in sales, a 24.5 percent increase. Some producers believe the 2010 troubles generated greater awareness of the drink, aided by television personality Dr. Oz highlighting kombucha in 2012 as a soda alternative that would, he claimed, increase metabolism. "Consumers are still learning about kombucha. Many think it has to do with mushrooms," says Paul Sposato, sales and marketing manager for Kombucha Wonder Drink. "Once they taste it, they will buy itÑso we do a lot of sampling." The appeal of eating locally produced foods is also impacting sales of this beverage. Many retailers carry the national brands, as well as a locally produced raw kombucha. Reid's Fine Foods, Charlotte, N.C., carries local Lenny Boy Tea Kombucha; Bi-Rite Markets in San Francisco carry Sonoma County's Revive Kombucha; Jungle Jim's carries Columbus-based Luna Kombucha, which is also sold at many area bars, mar(continued on p. 138) 80 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com