It has been an incredibly busy, productive and exciting journey the past several weeks here at Beverage Industry magazine. I’d like to say congratulations to Editor Jessica Jacobsen on her new baby girl, Cailin Arlene O’Connell, who was born on April 10. We are very happy for Jessica, but do look forward to her return later this month. I would also like to introduce our new Associate Editor Amanda Del Buono and Managing Editor Barbara Harfmann.
Beverage Industry has upgraded to a new, responsive design website just last month. Our new website is now compatible with your desktop, tablet or mobile device. All of the content from the website now is available at the touch of a button. The site’s content resizes and reorganizes content in real-time to better fit your screen and optimize your experience. Be sure to take a look at the new website at www.bevindustry.com.
Additionally, just last month, Beverage Industry magazine, partnering with Beverage Marketing Corporation, completed a most successful 22nd annual Beverage Forum: The Only Global All-Beverage Executive Conference. This was the first year that Beverage Industry collaborated with BMC for this event, which was brought to Chicago, moving the event from New York for the first time in 20 years.
The 2015 Beverage Forum themed “Charting the Next Beverage Frontier,” looked at the current beverage marketplace and discussed upcoming trends and challenges beverage makers will need to consider for future success.
We would like to thank all the attendees and sponsors who played an instrumental role in making the event the great success it was. This year, we assembled an incredible roster of speakers from some of the world’s most innovative and successful beverage companies.
Keynote speakers this year included representatives from Crown Imports, LLC., The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Americas Beverages, among many others. A number of thought-provoking panels were featured as well, with topics including the perspectives on the future of distributions, beverages of the future, and marketing trends among several other topics.
Of course, The Beverage Forum wouldn’t be complete without honoring 2014 achievements of beverage companies both large and small. This year’s Large Company of the Year ($1 billion-plus in annual revenue) went to Niagara Bottling, and the Small Company of the Year (less than $1 billion in annual revenue) went to Talking Rain. Additionally, Larry Young, president and chief executive officer of Dr Pepper Snapple Group, was presented with the 2015 Beverage Forum Lifetime Achievement Award.
