So, I’m discussing this new Enviga stuff
with a strapping store owner-type-of-guy
at NACS, talking up its potential to make you
burn a few extra calories and the fact that it
doesn’t taste half-bad, and he looks at me and
says, “Yeah, but here’s the problem: I need five
of ‘em.”
He had a point. He was a big dude. A can or
two of Enviga wasn’t going to do the trick for
him. It won’t do the trick for most of us (except
get us wired on about 300 mg of caffeine), in
fact. But we want it to, desperately. No matter
how strong any functional product claims to
be, it’s belief that is the strongest function of all
– the belief that holding a product will make us
happier, thinner, more sophisticated, more intelligent,
less nervous.
Which speaks well for Enviga and its ilk.
Because even if Enviga works the way it’s supposed
to, in the long run, what does the fact that
you’ve burned about 60 calories really mean? I
recently purchased a bag of chocolate-covered
cherries at Peet’s Coffee. Two of them are a little
more than 60 calories. As of this sentence, I’ve
eaten nine of them. (Rest assured, they were all
delicious.) That’s a lof of Envigas. But it’s what
their functionality represents to the drinker that
will make the sale.
That doesn’t mean that Enviga itself is going
to be the first breakout mainstream functional
product that has an effect beyond waking you
up or making you less thirsty. But we think that
Coke’s seeming willingness to cannonball into
the pool of functional beverages indicates a major
shift in the way beverage marketers understand
consumer desire.
Consumers will give wide latitude to beverage
marketers in terms of the claims they make
about products. Right now, even the most unlikely
claims (You know what they are…) are
supportable financially not just because they
might taste good, but because they soothe our
aspirations.
Well, most of our aspirations, anyway. To
me, most of the really good effects are going to
be tough to pull off. For example, aside from
the increased alertness that comes from full-on
caffeination, no one has actually come up with
a smart drink. And I’ve always wanted products
that would give me superpowers -- my wish for
“telepathy tea” has been unheeded by even the
quirkiest natural foods providers, who seem
more interested in turning hemp seeds into milk
– or, at least, could make me taller.)
But we believe that, down the road, as products
are sorted not just by flavor, but also by potential
physiological effect, the ones that actually
work will eventually become important success
stories. Look at energy drinks and, to a lesser extent,
sports drinks: at the most basic level, they
work. They wake you up, they hydrate you better.
They’re also, in that vein, among the biggest
recent success stories in the beverage industry.
So Enviga, and the products that are sure to
follow it, is a glimpse of one possible future for
the beverage industry, and it’s the chief component
of our cover story on trends that will be
of interest in the year to come. We’ve also got a
glimpse of Fancy Foods West, a show of increasing
importance, and some suggestions for stocking
a contemporary New Age cooler, along with
the usual columns and other departments.
In addition, we’d love to hear from you in the
coming year. For example, if our Trends story
doesn’t go far enough, we’d be happy to discuss
it over another of our favorite functional beverages,
one which we’re convinced make us much
smarter, indeed: the Martini.