A new way to drink latte, from clean caffeine to functional ingredients | New XIU brand

"New XIU Brands" is a special column launched by Foodaily to target new consumption and new business upgrades and to find opportunities in subdivided categories. We will take a global look at the market, dedicate ourselves to insight and discover innovative companies and brands that drive new food and beverage categories forward, and deeply explore and share the success stories behind them. Let's take a look at how these small and beautiful brands position themselves in such a rapidly changing consumer market, and how they have achieved leapfrog growth and continue to surprise consumers.

By Yancy Yang

Source: Foodaily Daily Food Network (ID: foodaily)

As one of the three major beverages in the world, coffee has always held many opportunities, especially in the Western world, where almost everyone drinks coffee every day. Consumers want to live healthier and have more plant ingredients in their daily diet. From the initial protein drinks to the increasingly popular plant-based coffee, Pop & Bottle provides consumers with a new drinking mode of latte.

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From clean caffeine to functional ingredients

Pop&Bottle’s plant-based coffee difference

Pop & Bottle is headquartered in San Francisco and mainly produces plant-based ready-to-drink lattes. It uses all-natural organic ingredients such as almonds, red dates, turmeric and cocoa, and is completely free of dairy products, carrageenan, preservatives and added sugar, but the taste and texture are as smooth as cream.

Pop & Bottle proudly describes its coffee as “clean caffeine,” and has successfully created all-day consumption scenarios for its product:

• In the morning, consumers can choose classic cold brew coffee with 130 mg of caffeine to start the day;
• In the afternoon, you can choose a sweet matcha moment to relieve stress;
• At night, enjoy decaffeinated turmeric coffee for a restful night’s sleep.

Image source: Pop&Bottle

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Pop&Bottle’s traditional beginnings and healthy expansion

Pop&Bottle was founded by two women, Blair Fletcher and Jash Mehta, who initially created a unique and healthy beverage in their kitchen using almond milk, dates and organic coffee.

Founders Blair Fletcher and Jash Mehta Image source: New York Buss

Pop & Bottle began in a very organic and traditional way through chance, when Mehta and Blair couldn’t find the coffee they wanted in stores and started brewing it in their kitchen.

The process sounds simple, but it actually took many experiments. Some raw materials did not produce coffee that was as good as expected, such as cashews and coconuts, which were not as good as almonds. After many taste tests and feedback from family and friends, Mehta and Fletcher finally selected six flavors: classic cold brew, matcha green tea, mocha cold brew, cocoa beans, vanilla cold brew and golden turmeric, of which vanilla cold brew is a new flavor launched this year.

Pop & Bottle has raised a total of $2.2 million in two rounds of funding so far. Backers include San Francisco-based CircleUp, consumer goods and packaging-focused Anjula Acharia, health club The Well co-founder Sarrah Hallock, and Grammy-nominated songwriter Savan Kotecha.

The company’s online and offline growth clearly demonstrates its strong momentum in the niche market. Pop&Bottle’s Instagram followers have increased from 5,500 two years ago to nearly 40,000 now. In just two years, Pop&Bottle has expanded rapidly in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and New York City subway stations.

But founder Mehta believes that Pop&Bottle is still a small startup team. Initially, there were only her and Blair. Now the team is slowly expanding. Although there are already six employees, there is still a long way to go.

Image source: Pop&Bottle@facebook

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Seize the three major trends and occupy a position in the niche market in advance

Pop&Bottle has taken advantage of three major trends in the market to successfully occupy its position:

• The pace of life is accelerating, and the fast-paced consumer group is growing. They hope to be able to taste high-quality coffee anytime and anywhere;
• More and more people are looking to reduce or eliminate dairy from their diets without sacrificing taste;
• New brands or products are working hard to understand consumers' changing lifestyles and product demands, and are committed to creating humanized products.

Image source: Pop&Bottle

In the North American market, the market value of ready-to-drink coffee alone is as high as US$2.5 billion, dominated by large, established companies such as Starbucks. However, their products are not so healthy, high in calories, and contain a lot of added sugar. For example, the very popular bottled Frappuccino 13.7 fl oz on the market has 260 calories and contains 45g of sugar.

On the other hand, the global plant-based food and beverage market is growing rapidly, and the category is now worth more than $3 billion in North America alone.

Although vegetarian or vegan consumers account for a small proportion of the market, the market potential of the products they favor cannot be underestimated. Vegetarians or vegans try to avoid dairy products in their daily diet, but the product that is most difficult to avoid dairy products is daily coffee.

In addition, the ready-to-drink coffee market has also been a growing area in the beverage category. More and more consumers want to eat healthier and add more plant-based nutrients to their diets. The core customers of plant-based products have expanded from vegetarians to mass consumers.

Image source: Pop&Bottle

Without compromising on taste, Pop & Bottle provides a nutritious and portable functional product - ready-to-drink plant-based coffee, which not only meets the consumption needs of vegetarian and vegan consumers, but also the general public is also an important audience.

Consumers always want to taste more flavored drinks, and Pop & Bottle has been listening carefully and working hard to meet these needs. Some time ago, the team has been working to innovate the existing vanilla almond flavor and create a new product Vanilla Cold Brew containing functional ingredients and clean caffeine. The vanilla drink was launched in January 2019.

Compiled and edited by Foodaily Daily Food Network (ID: foodaily)

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