Jessica Jacobsen

Following up on last year’s new standards for school meals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled its new “Smart Snacks in School” nutrition standards that will affect food and beverages sold in vending machines and a la carte.

In Walt Disney’s 1966 animated classic “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree,” Pooh finds some creative ways to get his hands on his favorite treat: honey. Lucky for beverage manufacturers, dressing up like a little black rain cloud is not a strategy they need to employ when sourcing a sweetener for their products.

Some of the best parts of being a member of the media are the experiences you have and knowledge you take with you. During my local media time, I had the chance to experience new, exciting things and gain a deeper understanding of the community I grew up in.

In the eight years that Susan Neely has worked for the American Beverage Association (ABA), the president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based association has seen manufacturers truly embrace the concept of innovation.

With many consumers lacking the tools or know-how to reproduce some of their favorite on-premise cocktails, beverage manufacturers have found a way to deliver that same enjoyment to consumers in their own homes.

Although the plastic bottle market in the United States serves a number of different industries and manufacturers, the beverage business continues to play a large role.

Similar to how gamers try to navigate through the complex and intricate challenges of some of today’s latest video games, research and development (R&D) specialists for the beverage marketplace are navigating through their own sets of challenges as they develop more complex formulations.

In the ballad “The Sweetest Thing,” the pop rock band U2 sang about how love is the sweetest thing, but when it comes to the beverage market, the sweetest thing also is the biggest thing. Across 13 ingredient categories, sweeteners accounted for 85 percent of the 46.4 million tons of ingredients used in beverages in 2011, according to an April 2013 report by Chicago-based Euromonitor International titled “Beverage Ingredients: Trends and Influences.”

I recently returned home from my first of seven weddings this year. Although the travel might not be the most exciting part of the upcoming nuptials, hearing the individual couples explain what their new union means to them is always enjoyable. But partnerships aren’t only important in marriage. In actuality, consumer packaged goods companies are constantly forming their own partnerships in order to strengthen their brands and deliver to consumers.

Similar to how fast food restaurants added dollar or value menus in order to entice consumers, the value proposition for discount retailers has helped dollar retail chains gain market share against traditional retail formats.