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Dive Briefing:
- Jones Soda enters the functional beverage category with Pop Jones, an all-natural prebiotic beverage. It comes in five flavors: Cucumber Watermelon, Pineapple Ginger, Orange & Cream, Strawberry Passion Fruit, and Mixed Berry & Kiwi, and contains 30 calories per 12-ounce can. Pop Jones, which launches next month, is shelf stable.
- Pop Jones is sweetened with real fruit juice, pure cane sugar, and natural stevia leaf extract. Jones estimates it has half the added sugar of some functional brands and one-twentieth of the sugar of standard soda, while also providing “a generous amount of fiber and immune support.”
- As people try to reduce their sugar intake and increase their consumption of healthy products and items with functional ingredients, the popular so-called healthy sodas have flourished. Overall, the functional beverage market is expected to reach $62 billion by 2027, up from $50 billion in 2022.
Dive Insight:
As upstarts like Poppi and Olipop became household staples overnight as healthy soft drinks, established beverage companies followed suit with functional drinks to attract consumers looking for healthy alternatives to soft drinks.
Kombucha maker Health-Ade announced in February that it was launching a prebiotic soda called SunSip. Juice and functional beverage maker Suja Life plans to relaunch its Slice soda brand next year with a better-for-your-guts line. Now, Jones, which has made a name for itself with unique flavors like Blue Bubblegum, Pineapple Cream, and Strawberry Lime that Big Soda can’t touch, is the latest to enter the functional space.
“Functional beverages with cleaner ingredients and lower sugar content have created a new, modern soda category that meets consumers’ growing demand for better-tasting, healthier food and beverage choices,” Jones Soda CEO David Knight said in a statement. “With nearly 30 years of flavor innovation and broad brand recognition, Pop Jones is poised to be a major player in the space that is redefining soda.”
John’s small size and late entry into the game compared to other established brands likely mean it will be difficult to capture significant market share, despite the company’s optimism. Still, as consumers look for more in their food and drink products and move away from sugar, John’s has little choice but to launch a functional soda or watch consumers abandon its brand in favor of brands that already have a functional flavor.
Jones has aggressively moved its brands into other trendy categories, launching caffeinated beverages, hard craft sodas that combine the flavors of pure cane sugar soda and hard cider, and sugar-free colas. It has also entered the cannabis market under the Mary Jones brand in some markets.
