Let them drink birch! 3 reasons why we shouldn't

The new "sweet spot" for soft drinks today

After many years' marketing/innovating brands for global food & drink companies (including Coca-Cola and Unilever), I opted to launch a beverage #startup in order to respond quicker/better to evolving health & wellness trends.

After reviewing numerous consumer, retailer & market research data and chatting with folks up and down the country on what they were looking for in a healthier drink while testing prototypes, it is clear that consumers are looking for 3 things these days from their beverage choice, namely (i) less of the "bad stuff", (ii) more innate, natural functionality, and (iii) something that can be "daily habit forming". Being able to deliver on all 3 consumer "wants" is in my view the "sweet spot" for a soft drink today. The essence of this "sweet spot" is shown here:

A retailer response that would make Marie Antoinette proud

Getting to this "sweet spot" drove the development of a new soft drink brand, Tg, which has a RTD range that is low in sugar & calories, affordably priced, and relying on a traditional "plant" source to create a tasty, refreshing and naturally functional beverage. That Tg has since won a Global Packaging Design Award, was a finalist at the World Beverage Innovation Awards, and earned the "thumbs up" from Action on Sugar, tea aficionados, healthy lifestyle proponents, and lots of consumers should have been enough to get Tg on shelf. [2017 update: Tg is now Vegan & Sugarwise certified, won the 2017 Best Small Company Innovation in Sugar Reduction Award, is a 2017 Innovative 'Better for You' Product of the Year Award finalist, and won a Cafe Quality Food Award.]

However, this has not been easy! Some of the retailer feedback has been understandable ("oooh, RTD tea in England, we tried that before but it didn't work") as most of the drinks they were given to sell in the past were little more than tea flavoured sugary drinks! Some of the retailer feedback was predictable ("oh no! I have been asked to focus on closing availability gaps for high sugar drinks like Coke and Tropicana") although it certainly does not mesh with recent public pledges to help solve the obesity crisis. However, I was particularly taken aback when I was told by more than one retailer that they had plans to... 

...... "let them drink birch!"

[Upon learning that the peasants had no bread (a working class staple in 1840's France), Queen Marie Antoinette was reported to have said "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" or "Let them eat cake"! Since brioche was a luxury bread at the time, the quote was seen as a reflection of the princess's disregard for peasants.]

Retailer angst and "health fads" drive shelf stocking selections

Retailers have become understandably nervous given the almost daily dose of unhealthy news about a category that accounts for £14+ billion in sales and a major contributor to store turnover each year. The sheer amount of bad news - and sometimes conflicting content - have no doubt rattled retailers.

In the search for soft drink alternatives that can help shore up sales figures, retailers seem to have become especially focused on listing high priced drinks - many with unfamiliar "health credentials" - hence the appearance of products like birch water and "beauty" drinks on shelves in both speciality and mainstream stores during 2015.

What's wrong with birch water and "beauty" drinks?

I certainly support making the soft drink shelves more varied and agree that drinks containing ingredients with long-believed benefits from elsewhere are increasingly welcomed particularly by millennials. However, products like birch water and "beauty" drinks should not be the focus for retailers in fixing the shelves in 2015+. Here are 3 reasons why:

1. Expensive drinks do not encourage the majority of folks to change behaviour for the better! The average price for birch water and beauty drinks is about £2.90, more than double that for an equivalent bottle of Coca-Cola (and in the case of beauty drinks, the sugar payload is similar to Coca-Cola). The vast majority of consumers are simply not willing nor able to pay so much for a "healthier" soft drink especially on a regular basis. One survey I saw recently says only a fifth of us would be wiling to spend up to 5% more (i.e. 5p for every pound spent) on healthy food. More importantly, why should folks spend alot more? I agree wholeheartedly with Fiona Dawson, President of Food, Drinks & Multisales at Mars and an ex-colleague, when she says "I get very frustrated where healthy options are seen as premium or niche....how do we make healthy, tasty food affordable for everyone?" Careful supply chain management like what we did for Tg Green Teas can help to deliver more affordable soft drink alternatives! 
2. Consumers want less "hocus pocus", not more. Millennials have been telling us over and over again (see here) that they will reject brands that talk disingenuously about ingredients. Would this include ingredients like "clinically proven macro molecules" and non-digestible "liquid collagen" contained in many mass market beauty drinks? Although new to us here in Britain, birch water has long been used by Russians and Finns as a "detox" drink. However, it's not clear if you would derive any less benefit from drinking say plain water and birch water's much touted manganese content (0.31mg per bottle or 15% daily NRV) is a rather pricey way to obtain this essential mineral. [Incidentally, one cup of green tea contains up to 5 times that amount of manganese].
3. Retailers should be stocking more "daily habit forming" drinks. Despite environmental groups pleading with us for years to reduce our plastic bag use, UK shops continued to hand out 8.5 billion of them annually. This all changed following the introduction of the 5p plastic bag tax AND inexpensive reusable bags, firstly in Wales in 2011 (usage now down by 70%), then in Scotland in 2014 (usage down 80%) and more recently in England. Getting us to switch to healthier drinks requires us to change another of our deep seated habits and behaviours. Whilst I appreciate the efforts of the unstoppable Jamie Oliver and others to lobby for a sugar tax, it will - if implemented without sufficient soft drink alternatives on shelf that consumers want - disproportionately hurt folks who most need to change behaviour. Retailers need to "bite the bullet" now and put more natural, low sugar and affordable soft drink alternatives on shelf to help us choose healthier drinks every day.

RTD "iced" tea an untapped solution 

There is a huge category begging to be built if only retailers would pay attention to what folks really want. Natural, healthy, affordable, familiar, sustainable and versatile, RTD "iced" tea is the world's fastest growing soft drinks category after water. Retailers need only to ask younger folks around them about their tea habits, in particular green tea and herbal infusions both hot and cold. Tea drinking is becoming ubiquitous to this generation. It is cool to drink tea and it's probably a habit that will stay with them for a long time, certainly longer than the time it takes for birch water and beauty drink fads to fade from our tastebuds!

Its helpful of course that there is a handful of new healthier & tasty RTD teas ready to refresh millennials - and their mums and dads too. Folks here may not know that it was, after all, a Briton, Richard Blechynden, who many say introduced iced tea to the world back in 1904. Won’t it be nice if we could say finally “iced teas are comin’ home”? 



Love the post? Hate the post? Have other ideas? Please leave a comment below. For more information about Tg Green Teas, please visit www.drinktg.com. If you would like to discuss this or a related topic, please contact me on snadur@ID2L.com (Ideas 2 Launch Ltd) or connect with me here on Linkedin. I am based in London but globally mobile.