Spindrift Beverage Co sparks passion with flavors and feedback

🍷 GEN Z TURNED THE WINE AISLE INTO A SEARCH BAR — NOW WHAT? Last month I watched a 24-year-old stand in front of a wine shelf for ten straight minutes. She wasn't reading labels. She was on her phone, cross-referencing three creators before she'd risk $18 on a bottle. That moment is the entire category shift in a single frame. 📉 The old funnel is gone. Per Reuters, only 54% of Americans say they drink alcohol — a record low for the second consecutive year. And Reuters found 17% of Americans reached for a nonalcoholic beer, wine, or spirit instead of a drink this past year. 🔍 The new funnel starts on a phone. Linkedin reports 92% of Gen Z uses social media to discover new beverages, with TikTok leading at 58%. Your tasting notes don't matter if the research happens before the store visit. 🥫 And wine isn't just competing with wine anymore. Linkedin found spirit-based RTDs now represent roughly 26% of spirits volume — ahead of vodka or whiskey. The shelf is a beverage stack: RTDs, non-alc, THC, functional. Wine is one contender in a crowded ring. 💡 THE PIVOT • Build creator-led funnels that answer the research question before it's asked • Segment by occasion, not by age bracket — Tuesday non-alc and Saturday splurge are the same customer • Treat skepticism as a feature: show sourcing, pricing logic, and the "why" • Map TikTok discovery to retail and DTC, and measure the whole journey Gen Z didn't kill wine. They just made it earn the sale. 🚀 👇 What is your brand doing to win the research phase — before anyone reaches the shelf? #WineMarketing #GenZ #BeverageIndustry #SocialCommerce #CreatorEconomy

Taco Bell took Tajín – chilli, lime, salt – and built an entire limited menu around it. Tajín Taco. Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Pineapple Strawberry Freeze. And no, they didn’t invent some revolutionary new flavour. That’s exactly why it works. People were already putting Tajín on fruit, snacks, drinks and cocktails. So Taco Bell didn’t need 14 marketers in a room asking: “How do we create the next food trend?” They didn’t. They took a flavour people already knew, a behaviour they already had, and a cultural code that needed almost no explanation. Then they tested it. Saw the demand. Scaled it. Because “we think this could go viral” is still not market research. Then came Peso Pluma, limited merch and the campaign around it. Suddenly, a menu launch became something closer to a cultural moment. And that’s where many brand collaborations get it wrong: Two logos next to each other are not a strategy. A strong collaboration works when one brand brings the product – and the other brings taste, culture, behaviour and an audience that already wants it. Sometimes the smartest trend strategy is not creating one. It’s noticing what people are already putting on their mango.

One of the hardest things about building a food business isn't creating a great meal. It's creating that same experience every single time. At Tiffin Theory, that's something we're learning every day. The real challenge is serving a meal that feels just as fresh on a Monday as it does on a Friday, for the first order as well as the hundredth. The same freshness. The same taste. The same portion. The same attention to detail. Behind every meal is a long list of small things that have to go right - from sourcing the ingredients and preparing them at the right time to cooking, tasting, packing, and getting the order out of the kitchen. And the work doesn't become easier just because we've done it before. If anything, the expectation becomes higher. That's the kind of consistency we're trying to build at Tiffin Theory - not just meals that people enjoy, but a level of reliability people can count on. And this is where we'd love to take that promise beyond individual meals. Whether you're a team of 25, 50 or 100, planning a team lunch, an office celebration, a workshop, or an event, we want to be the food partner you can simply rely on. Because when you're responsible for feeding a team, "good enough" isn't really good enough. The food should arrive on time, taste great, feel thoughtfully prepared, and most importantly, give you one less thing to worry about. That's the standard we're working towards - one meal, one team, and one order at a time. #TiffinTheory #CorporateCatering #WorkplaceWellbeing #CustomerExperience #FounderJourney

That's the Carbone Fine Food story and it's one of the best brand building case studies in the food industry right now. Inc. Magazine just published a deep dive on Hospitality Hangout guest, Eric Skae, the man who helped Rao's Specialty Foods, Inc. scale before The Campbell's Company bought it for over $2 billion, took Carbone Fine Food from zero to $101.3 million in revenue in just a few years. And the strategy? Wildly unconventional for a center-of-store product. A tomato candle collaboration with (MALIN+GOETZ). An April Fools' campaign for a fake Spicy Vodka Almond Creamer with Califia Farms that earned $4.8 million in media value without selling a single jar. A brand philosophy built on the idea that Mario Carbone's line "dinner is the show" applies to every marketing activation they do. Here's the hospitality lesson buried in this story: the brands that treat their product as a lifestyle and their marketing as entertainment are the ones building the guest relationships that actually last. Go Check out the Hospitality Hangout episode with Eric to hear more. 👇 What food brand do you think has done the best job turning restaurant loyalty into retail success? Branded Hospitality #CarboneFineFood #FoodAndBeverage #CPG #BrandBuilding #Hospitality #RestaurantIndustry #Marketing

That's the Carbone Fine Food story and it's one of the best brand building case studies in the food industry right now. Inc. Magazine just published a deep dive on Hospitality Hangout guest, Eric Skae, the man who helped Rao's Specialty Foods, Inc. scale before The Campbell's Company bought it for over $2 billion, took Carbone Fine Food from zero to $101.3 million in revenue in just a few years. And the strategy? Wildly unconventional for a center-of-store product. A tomato candle collaboration with (MALIN+GOETZ). An April Fools' campaign for a fake Spicy Vodka Almond Creamer with Califia Farms that earned $4.8 million in media value without selling a single jar. A brand philosophy built on the idea that Mario Carbone's line "dinner is the show" applies to every marketing activation they do. Here's the hospitality lesson buried in this story: the brands that treat their product as a lifestyle and their marketing as entertainment are the ones building the guest relationships that actually last. Go Check out the Hospitality Hangout episode with Eric to hear more. 👇 What food brand do you think has done the best job turning restaurant loyalty into retail success? Branded Hospitality #CarboneFineFood #FoodAndBeverage #CPG #BrandBuilding #Hospitality #RestaurantIndustry #Marketing

Beverage makers spend a lot of time thinking about their product. How to improve it. How to make it better. How to get more people to try it. Meanwhile, the customer is thinking about something completely different. What should I bring to the cottage? What should I serve at dinner? What should I pick up for the BBQ? What will feel good at the end of a long week? Your product becomes part of those moments. The businesses that connect best with people understand that they are not simply selling a beverage. They are finding a place in the customer’s life. That is why one of the most valuable questions a beverage company can ask is: “Where does our product fit into our customers’ lives?” The answer can change how you position it, talk about it and market it. #BeverageDesign #PackagingDesign #RTD #BreweryBranding #BeverageIndustry #BrandIdentity #RTDmarketing #BeverageAlcohol #NewProductDevelopment #AlcoholIndustry #BrandStrategy #beveragebrands #founders #CPG 

Jones Soda Co. and Rap Snacks Inc. have partnered to launch three limited-edition craft soda flavours, combining beverage expertise with hip hop culture through collectible cans and artist-inspired branding. #CraftSodaLine #foodandbeverage #JonesSoda #limitededitioncollections #RAPSnacks

What really matters to Kiwis at dinner time? We took a look, and what we found shaped an entire brand activation. As part of the Multiplied Group, we were brought in to surface the genuine consumer truth behind Real Life Restaurant by Angel Bay, giving Multiplied and Twenty4 something real to build from. We surveyed 1,005 New Zealanders and photographed a bunch of real Kiwi fridges and freezers to tell their own story. What came back was honest and revealing. Only 1 in 4 Kiwis plan their dinners consistently. Six in ten cook unplanned most weeks. And the people who do plan? They cave to takeaway more than the ones who don't bother planning at all. When people describe a great home dinner, taste and family togetherness account for nearly half of all responses. Nobody is keeping score on the cooking. What makes dinner great is simpler than that. The fridges told their own story. We recruited 40 Kiwi households to take part in a photographic study of their fridge and pantry. Then used the weird and wonderful things that we found to inspire the food. International condiments on every door shelf. Sistema containers of whatever was left over. Miso paste sitting next to the tomato sauce. The average Kiwi fridge is quietly global, resourceful, and full of potential. None of this stayed in a report. Multiplied used it to shape the idea. Twenty4 used it to craft the experience, from the menu to the mismatched crockery to the layout of every room. Research, creative and brand experience, all working from the same truth. Swipe to see what we found. Proud to have worked alongside: Angel Bay Australia, ANZCO Foods, Multiplied, Twenty4, Payper™ PR, Thompson Spencer, OMD New Zealand

Ever wondered how gourmet ice cream, frozen meals, or fresh snacks reach your front door completely frozen—even in the middle of summer? 🍦📦 Meet eGourmet Solutions Inc. They are the cold-chain fulfillment powerhouses helping food, beverage, and health brands ship temperature-sensitive products across the country in just 1–3 days. In this quick clip, Co-Founder & COO Ariane Mary Kemper shares the story behind eGourmet, and what it takes to scale a brand without missing a beat. 👇 Watch the video below for the full scoop!

Proud (and a little giddy) to share this: PourPlays is officially live on PR Newswire. 🍷🎮 We built PourPlays on a simple bet: wine education doesn't need another lecture — it needs a better invitation. The wine industry has an access problem disguised as a knowledge problem. Consumption is declining, nearly 40% of volume is now moving on discount, and the usual playbook — tastings, subscriptions, promotions — isn't holding a new generation's attention. Discounting a bottle doesn't build a relationship with it. So we built a platform where wine discovery, learning, gameplay, and rewards live in one place — for people who learn through doing, not memorizing. We're launching with PairPlays, our debut food-and-wine pairing game. Players catch falling foods, wines, grapes, and regions to build pairing knowledge in real time — leveling up from Casual Drinker to Master along the way. It's pairing education that doesn't feel like homework. This is Play. Learn. Win. — a loop where drinkers gain real knowledge and real rewards, and wine partners earn attention from people who are actually engaged, not just scrolling past them. Grateful beyond words to everyone who tested ideas, challenged assumptions, and helped get us here. This is just the beginning. 🔗 Read the announcement and play PairPlays: https://lnkd.in/g7ejBy-x #PourPlays #PairPlays #WineEducation #WineTech #Gamification #FoodAndWine #StartupLife #WineIndustry