For some, soccer makes the world go round. For Danish brewer Carlsberg, soccer makes their accountants go around the bend. 

The 165-year-old brewer, the world’s fourth biggest, is making a major investment by sponsoring football’s UEFA Euro 2012 European Championships this summer and that financial commitment to woo sports fans has hurt Carlsberg’s first-quarter numbers. Also hurting its numbers in the quarter: a sales slump in Russia, where Carlsberg owns 40% of the beer market. 

"Our bottom line fell as a result of two factors: one being stock building in Russia in the fourth quarter, which led to significant destocking in the first quarter; the other was an increase in marketing efforts in Russia and connected to the European Championship," said CEO Joergen Buhl Rasmussen, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The stock buildup of beer in Russia occurred before Jan. 1 when a duty increase went into effect there. The company still expects to hit all of its targets this year, the Journal notes, but now will have to make up for the first quarter, which found the company having a net loss of 76 million Danish kroner ($13.3 million). Sales and distribution expenses went up 347 million kroner as well to 4.35 billion kroner on the quarter.

When chemist Richard Ritchie concocted the original recipe for Pepsi back in 1931, the company was then known as Loft Candy Company. In time, Pepsi split off from Loft and Ritchie went along with them. His heirs are saying, though, that the beverage giant never took ownership of the recipe.

Reuters reports that Ritchie’s heirs filed suit on Friday for the legal right to share his documents “with historians, collectors and film producers.” Ritchie's daughter, Joan Ritchie Silleck; his son, Robert Ritchie; and the estate of Ritchie's late son, Richard, said in their suit they want to "tell their father's extraordinary life story without interference or the threat of litigation" from Pepsi.Continue reading...

Nestle appears to be right on trend with Nespresso, a single-cup espresso machine that is breaking out with its first U.S. television advertising breaking today. It'll have competition from a new single-cup espresso machine from Starbucks in the fall, under the Verismo brand, and from others.

But according to Larry Levin of SymphonyIRI, there's likely to be plenty of room for Nestle, Starbucks and more as the single-coffee-cup market continues to explode in America. Nine coffee and tea innovations, including six manufacturers of single-cup pods for Keurig and other machines, were among the most successful packaged-goods brands of last year as identified by Symphony IRI in its recently released 2011 New Product Pacesetters.Continue reading...

Tropicana's low-cal Trop50 brand has been on a roll lately, and the company is trying to extend this hot sub-brand by invading another segment of the beverage market instead of sticking with juices.

Trop50 Juice with Tea is a fruit-juice and tea mix with "50% less sugar and calories" than regular juice, combining fruit juices with white and green teas, in three flavors. Additionally, Tropicana is introducing a new variety of "regular" Trop50, Red Orange, which provides a full day's supply of vitamin C, and a dose of potassium to boot.

PepsiCo is supporting Trop50 with new TV spots that extend its "Girlfriends" TV campaign starring Jane Krakowski that debuted in Canada.Continue reading...

PepsiCo today reported first quarter 2012 earnings of net revenue growth of 4% and reaffirmed its 2012 targets.

"Our first quarter results reflect the strength of our brands which allowed us to implement significant pricing actions," stated PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi. "Effective pricing and packaging initiatives drove 5 percent constant currency net revenue growth, allowing us to substantially offset approximately $300 million in commodity cost inflation."

In the video below, PepsiCo's CFO Hugh Johnston elaborates on the earnings and reaffirms targets for 2012. He also shares how PepsiCo is making progress in implementing it strategy and building momentum through brand-building, innovation, execution and productivity initiatives.Continue reading...

If you want to see Coca-Cola on TV, all you have to do is turn on any episode of American Idol and you’ll see the iconic logo jumping up at you from every corner of the screen. But now the beverage brand is teaming up with a different television program for a whole different reason. 

This time, it’s not to get the Coke name out to the public but to get the public to bring the Coke name in. 

The hope is that by joining forces with the American version of Antiques Roadshow on PBS, Coke will be able to find three iconic paintings for advertising by Norman Rockwell that feature the product and are worth a cool $1.5 million, according to the Boston Globe.

The WGBH Boston-produced series has a “most wanted” feature, which focuses on things that are being sought, either by police or anyone else. “Roadshow” is publicizing the brand's hunt for the three Rockwell illustrations that were made in the 1930s for Coke calendars and billboards. A company spokesman, Ted Ryan, and Coke’s archivist, Phil Mooney, have been searching for the pieces for years.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola is creating "tumult" with the launch of Tumult, an adult fermented non-alcoholic drink to be served with food (great with sushi!) or as an alco-alternative before the food is served, newly redesigned by Taxi Studio, whose creative director, Spencer Buck, explains: 

We wanted to open it up to a wider audience, and by doing so, make it more accessible and light-hearted. The positioning statements are circling round the fact it brightens up and colours social moments, perhaps as a drink to be enjoyed before dinner as an aperitif.

The design is accompanied by a “sensorial cloud,” according to Casey Sampson, Taxi’s senior designer. “As it’s a fermented non-alcoholic drink it’s basically alive, so we tried to bring that to life with the swirls and swooshes. It’s got a lot of movement to it. We wanted to bring a bit more joy to the packaging and make it less austere. There’s a sense of permanence to give it a more iconic status.”Continue reading...

All sorts of people don't like Red Bull. Carbonated soft-drink fans (and many others) hate its awful taste. Nutritionists believe it's akin to poison. And there are a whole lot of people over 18 years old who just — well, don't like it.

But the energy-drink king probably has no bigger enemy than provincial authorities in Maharashtra, a state in India, who claim to have confiscated 1.6 million cans of the drink because it has too much caffeine, a level of between 250 parts per million and 300 parts per million. Apparently there is some confusion about how much caffeine caffeinated drinks sold in India can provide.

India's federal law provides for no more than 145ppm in carbonated beverages such as energy drinks — but also exempts energy drinks per se because, for some reason, they are classified as food items rather than carbonated beverages.Continue reading...