Functional beverages are booming: and gut health superstar Olipop has been at the front of the wave. Founded by Ben Goodwin in 2018, the brand’s mission is to reshape the US soda addiction with a healthier alternative.
The brand was featured in Time100’s Most Influential Companies 2024: and it’s now found in one in five households across the US.
It’s the best-selling single-serve soda, outselling even Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
But what’s the key to continuing its growth trajectory? Flavour innovation.
Flavour wins with US functional consumers
Americans put taste and flavour quality above all else when choosing a functional beverage.
According to EY’s Consumer Beverage Survey, 61% of consumers identified this as the most important consideration when choosing a functional drink: surpassing price (53%) and even sugar content (23%) and natural credentials (22%).
And flavour innovations help encourage new consumers into the arena: bringing excitement and novelty to beverage shelves.
They also pull more pricing power: 58% of EY’s survey respondents said that superior taste would motivate them to pay more for a beverage (more than the brand at 37% of the fundamental health and wellness benefits at 38%).
But it’s not just the stats: it’s simply what makes sense, says Seth Crass, senior director of quality, R&D and regulatory at Olipop, who’s speaking at Future FoodTech in San Francisco this week.
“Given a choice, as a consumer – as a human – if you have two equally functional products and one tastes better, you’re going to go for that one.”
Inside the lab
Crass defines Olipop’s fundamental taste profile as “nostalgic and refreshing”.
It’s refreshing in more ways than one: “it’s refreshing when you drink it, and it’s refreshing in that it’s something new and innovative in the category,” says Crass.
Focusing around nostalgia has been key to help consumers make the connection between the traditional soda moments – from baseball games to birthdays – but with a high-fibre, low-sugar, gut-friendly twist.
Olismart: The botanicals, fibres and prebiotics in Olipop
Olismart is Olipop's functional beverage blend: with ingredients chosen for their biome-supporting benefits.
It includes cassava root (contributes prebiotic fibre); chicory root (a source of prebiotic fibre, inulin and flavinoids); jerusalem artichoke (fibre, inulin, potassium, iron and antioxidants); nopal cactus (fibre, antioxidants and carotenoids); calendula flower (lutein, beta-carotene and flavonoids); kudzu root (prebiotic starch); marshmallow root (a source of plant mucilage), acacia fibre and guar fibre (soluble dietary fibres.
“Where we’re really heading now is focusing flavour-wise on new innovation: tapping into flavour notes that are driving consumer interest,” says Crass.
“So there’s a great example with Orange Cream and Shirley Temple: we’re bringing what’s in folks’ hearts and minds straight to them so they can enjoy these flavours. And we’re looking at the new and novel flavours that are out there that we can engage in: seasonality, limited-time offers. So there’s a lot we can do with flavour that we haven’t explored yet.”
The Shirley Temple is Olipop’s latest launch: a drink that combines ‘smooth flavour with bright lemon and lime, finished with cherry juice for that nostalgic grenadine-like flavour’. The drink is made with 11% juice and contains 6g fibre.
Olipop’s R&D team can bring products to market in as little as six months, although others take longer. Some flavours take many months of trial and error to get the end result just right.
“Olipop is a very fun, nostalgic, creative, energetic brand,” said Crass. “And our lab is no different. We have a lot of fun formulating, we don’t necessarily stand on ceremony. A lot of my role is about being able to capture all that creativity and fun - and reproduce that at scale. And there’s a lot of experimentation... I can’t think of another soda out there that uses quince juice at the moment.
“But at the same time, we want to have the benefits of scale. We want to be able to put cans in people’s hands so they can experience the product and have the benefits of the digestive health benefits.”
