Somewhat serendipitously, I opted to read the May 16 edition of The New Yorker featuring an in-depth profile on PepsiCo’s food and beverage innovation plans while traveling to last month’s IFT Annual Meeting & Food Expo in New Orleans. The “Snacks for a Fat Planet” article by John Seabrook details PepsiCo’s plans for innovation across its portfolio of products with insight from senior PepsiCo executives, including Jonathan McIntyre, senior vice president of R&D global beverages, who was featured in Beverage Industry’s April cover story.

Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo’s Trop50 line of reduced-calorie juices re-launched in new clear, curvy bottles featuring pressure-sensitive labels from Mason, Ohio-based Spear USA. The new curves of the bottle are accented by a curvaceous new label from Spear USA that follows the contour of the bottle. The label features bold colors to complement the natural tones of the fruit juice, Spear USA says. The repackaged juice is available in 59-ounce bottles as well as single-serve 12-ounce bottles. 

The juice and juice drinks market saw new products that combined flavors and explored sweetener profiles. Minimal growth took place in both the shelf-stable bottled juice and juice drinks category as well as refrigerated juice and juice drinks, an upside compared to last year’s slight decrease for bottled juices and relatively flat sales for refrigerated offerings.

Maine Root, Portland, Maine, has evolved a lot since the day 11 years ago when Founder Matthew Seiler decided to brew his own organic soda. Seiler was restoring boats on the waterfront in Portland, Maine, in the summer of 2000 when a high school friend opened up Flat Bread Pizza Co., an organic pizza company, just a few wharfs down from where Seiler was working. Seiler was hired by his friend to build the clay oven and stayed on to wait tables. But Seiler realized that the organic restaurant didn’t have the beverages to match, so that’s when he went home and mixed up his own batches of root beer.