Coca-Cola will release a hard seltzer under its Topo Chico brand this year.
Coca-Cola is going to include alcoholic beverages into its home market for the first time since it sold its Wine Spectrum business in 1983. Under its Topo Chico brand, which the beverage giant purchased Topo Chico in 2017 for $220 million, Coke will launch Topo Chico Hard Seltzer. The alcoholic beverage will first hit select Latin American cities and then launch in the United States in 2021.
According to IWSR. , both sparkling water and hard seltzer are fast-growing categories for the beverage industry. In 2019, hard seltzer’s volume more than tripled, helping reverse the trend of declining global alcohol consumption. Coke said it would share more details about Topo Chico Hard Seltzer closer to the launch. According to a Nielsen report, just 10 hard-seltzer brands were on the US market in 2018, a number that rose to 26 brands by early 2019; “more than 65 brands are now fighting for consumers’ attention and purchase,” Nielsen says.
Business Insider added that Coca-Cola isn’t the only major beverage company to announce a hard-seltzer beverage, as Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch are both launching their own drinks this year.
“Within the hugely successful and growing hard seltzer segment, new and ‘old’ brands alike can succeed even if their market share is relatively small or declining, because the total pool of sales of hard seltzer within US retail is growing at such a high rate,” Danelle Kosmal, VP of Beverage Alcohol at Nielsen, told CNN Business. “As such, with new launch after new launch, manufacturers may lose market share but continue growing their sales,” she added.
