Hoping to take a bigger bite out of Europe's $8 billion single-serve coffee market, Mondelez, the No. 2 coffee maker, will start producing coffee pods compatible with its rival Nestle's Nespresso machine.

This isn't the first time that rival brands have tried to collect some profit off of Nespresso's single-serve brewer, which requires special, premium-priced pods. Nestle has filed patent-infringement suits against several companies for producing the copycat pods, but hasn’t had much success in stopping distribution. In fact, in some markets, Nespresso-branded pods have lost 10 to 20 percent of market share due to more competitively priced alternatives, Bloomberg reports.

The issue lies within Nespresso's distribution model, which still relies on a direct-to-consumer format, leaving grocery store shelves vacant for competitors' offerings. While the system has seen sustained success in Europe, Nespresso is looking to expand further into the US, where single-serve competition is even more intense.Continue reading...

New York is reviving its assualt on sugary beverages with a new installment of its "Pouring On The Pounds" campaign. This time, the TV and print ads are going after sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit-flavored beverages and teas that could be hiding a lot of added sugar. 

“Sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit-flavored drinks sometimes sound like they’re good for us, but they are contributing to the obesity epidemic just as much as sugary soft-drinks,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, in a statement. The efforts by the city have been quiet since Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on large sugary drinks was struck down by New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling who declared it "arbitrary and capricious."Continue reading...

The recent Asian tour by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz highlighted an expansion initiative that may prove the company's most challenging ever: peddling coffee in lands dominated for centuries by drinking tea.

Still, Schultz gamely made stops in Japan and Thailand, where in addition to China and India and other places, Starbucks is bringing its unique brand of experiential drinking, sustainability and community involvement in the hopes of creating some of the same kind of brand magic that it has achieved in the United States and elsewhere. At the same time, it is pursuing LEED environmental certification for many of its stores there.

Actually, Starbucks already has nearly 1,000 stores in Japan, its first international market outside of North America. Schultz stopped by to celebrate the opening of the new Starbucks Meguro store in Tokyo, whose design and experience has been inspired by the traditional Japanese "Ichi-go ichi-e" service spirit (literal translation, according to Starbucks: one time, one meeting). The store features what the company called in a release "locally relevant, simple design solutions" including cues from traditional tea houses, parts of a green garden and local contemporary art.Continue reading...

It didn't work for JCPenney. But will a new strategy on pricing work for PepsiCo?

PepsiCo is adjusting its pricing strategy for its beverage brands in some sections of the United States in an effort to wean consumers off the habit of buying soda only when it's on sale, Reuters reports. Pepsi's "Hybrid Everyday Value" strategy involves narrowing the gap between soda prices on holidays and regular days by cutting discounts on holidays. With Memorial Day approaching, there's no better time for PepsiCo teo see if this new approach migh work.

Under the new plan, the price for a 12-pack of 12-ounce cans of Pepsi would settle somewhere between $2.50, which is how low it can get now with holiday discounting, and $5.99, which is about as high as the current "everyday" price gets.Continue reading...

Nespresso may have invented the single-serve capsule coffee machine in 1986, but obviously it's gotten plenlty of company in that arena since then. While the Nestle-owned brand sees lots of growth potential around the world, executives have selected two particular targets for—the United States and China—that won't yield new sales as easily as Nespresso got them in building its original business in Europe.

Two aspects of its business make Nespresso stand out from other competitors such as Green Mountain, the US-based purveyor of K-Cups that has been allying with Starbucks lately. First, Nespresso's business model is direct-to-consumer, not making its pods available on grocery-store shelves, and second, Nespresso leadership actually sees huge remaining growth opportunities in Europe despite the continent's struggle with recession.

"The potential is big" in the UK, Italy, Germany and Russia, where household penetration by Nespresso machines is only about one-fifth of that in coffee-slaking France, Nespresso CEO Jean-Marc Duvoisin told the Wall Street Journal.Continue reading...

It turns out that Americans haven't given up on soup afterall. Proof is in this week's quarterly snapshot by Campbell Soup, whose CEO deemed the company's US soup trade stabilized after a sales increase of 14 percent. From innovations in products such as Go Soup and a new CMO to new programs using digital marketing, this success bears the hallmarks of a number of recent turnaround efforts by the brand.

In fact, the increase was the fourth straight quarterly gain and the segment's largest increase in nearly five years. "We are confident that we can now drop the world 'stabilize' from our strategy," Campbell CEO Denise Morrison told analysts in a conference call, according to the Wall Street Journal. Morrison actually raised the company's outlook for the year.

Campbell's soup business had been down for two straight years. Morrison set to work as its new CEO last year to come up with more new products and to make some of the brand's existing soups taste better, while still trimming overall advertising. In this week's report, she said that each part of the soup business—condensed, ready-to-eat, and broths—notched double-digit sales gains during the period. Colder weather than a year ago also helped.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola broadened its pledges to provide more calorie information to consumers and to stop advertising to children around the world, but the media was quick to scour the fine print of the company's promises as the beverage leader tries to win over consumers. 

CEO Muhtar Kent announced on Wednesday, the brand's 127th anniversary, that the company was taking a four-pronged approach to battling obesity, an issue that it has acknowledged lately in many ways but at the same time has attempted to deflect blame from its iconic sugary sodas.

As part of an initiative it's calling Coming Together, Coca-Cola wants to communicate that it's part of the solution, not the problem. The beverage giant and its local partners will label all packages with calorie details on the front, expand the availability of low- and no-calorie beverages in every market, support more physical activity programs, and stop advertising to children under 12.Continue reading...

It just got more difficult to find a cup of coffee (and many other beverages) without Starbucks' imprint on it. The company vastly expanded its arrangement with an extension of its agreement with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, tripling the number of branded items made for Keurig single-serve coffee machines.

Starbucks saved analysts and journalists the trouble of evaluating the deal by calling it a "global single-serve coffee industry game changer" and a "win-win-win agreement for both companies and for premium coffee consumers around the world" in its press release.

Specifically, Starbucks will add new single-serve cup cartridges for Keurig machines under the Seattle's Best Coffee, Torrefazione Italia coffee, Teavana Teas and Starbucks Cocoa brands in addition to Starbucks branded coffees. Sales of Starbucks coffee K-Cup packs rose more than 75 percent in March compared with the prior year.Continue reading...