To Kids' Health!
By John J. Pierce

Eating Right Kids is a new venture from Safeway in vitamin-enhanced water beverages for children.

Private label beverages focus increasingly on wellness as well as energy, for children and adults alike.

First came sports drinks. Then came energy drinks. Now it may be the turn of functional drinks. One sure sign of the times: vitamin-enhanced water beverages for children under the Eating Right Kids brand, launched last summer by Safeway, Pleasanton, CA.

Eating Right Kids is a joint venture between Safeway and Hollywood’s Warner Bros., similar to one a few years ago between Kroger, Cincinnati, OH, and Disney. Looney Tunes cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote and Daffy Duck appear on packaging. In the case of the fruit punch and orange-flavored water drinks, Daffy is the star–and he has plenty to quack about.

Besides offering 100% of the daily ration of Vitamin C, the drinks supply 20% of the Niacin, B6, B12 and pantotheic acid kids need, plus 10% of Vitamins A and E and calcium. Antioxidants are flagged as something the drinks do have–and high-fructose corn syrup as something they don’t. The drinks are sold in four-packs of 12 oz bottles at $2.99. The Eating Right Kids line also includes fruit juices, nutrition bars, and other snack and meal items.

As part of the deal with Safeway, Warner Bros. said it would banish Daffy and his friends from less-healthy food packaging, except certain ice cream products or birthday cakes. “We’ve cleared the market of anything that might be considered unhealthy,” declared Brad Globe, president of Warner Bros. Worldwide Consumer Products. “Our Looney Tunes characters are our crown jewels. We said, ‘Hey, we need to figure out how we can be part of some kind of solution and use our characters in a positive way that will improve the issues related to childhood obesity.’”

Safeway had already introduced a 20-oz vitamin water line for adults, positioned against brands like Glaceau. Varieties include Dragon Fruit, Fruit Punch, Lemonade, Orange Twist and Pomegranate-Black Cherry. Because the chain is licensing the Eating Right brand to other retailers–first to sign up was Big Y, Springfield, MA; others since include HyVee, West Des Moines, IA; and Price Chopper, Schen-ectady, NY–the vitamin waters may soon get greater exposure.

Ventures like Safeway’s may well change the entire face of the private label beverage category. Topco Associates, Skokie, IL, has come out with a Tropical Citrus-Guarana nutrient beverage. Wawa, Wawa, PA, offers three such vitamin water beverages at its convenience stores: Tropical Citrus Energy, Acai Blueberry Pomegranate Immunity, and Dragonfruit Power.

In a related example, Target, Minneapolis, MN, is targeting adults with a line of fortified water beverages under the Archer Farms brand. The line, priced at only 75 cents a 16.9 oz bottle, includes:

• Strawberry-orange Heart Fortified: “Rich in antioxidant vitamins, with plant sterold and EGCG from green tea extract, will hydrate and replenish your body, helping you to keep your heart healthy.”
• Lavender berry Relax Fortified: “Rich in antioxidant vitamins C & E, will hydrate and replenish you, enhancing your body’s ability to loosen up and unwind.”
• Pear lychee Beauty Fortified: “Rich in antioxidant vitamins C & E, with the added benefit of EGCG from green tea extract, will hydrate and replenish your body, enhancing the way you look and feel.”

Green tea seems to be an “in” thing these days at Target. A line of sugar-free energy drinks, also under the Archer Farms brand, is “green tea infused.” Flavors are raspberry, tangerine and grapefruit, with 12 oz cans retailing for $1.79. Target’s juice-infused energy drinks, in the same size and at the same price (versus $1.89 for Red Bull) are pomegranate-blueberry and tropical.

Energy vs. Sports

Private label energy drinks have overtaken private label sports drinks within the last year or so. For the 52 weeks ended 3/22/2009, according to Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Chicago, IL, store brand energy drink sales were up 12.6% to $9.9 million.

Store brand sports drink sales for the same period sank 12% to $8.3 million, and examples these days are harder to find: Wegmans, Roche-ster, NY, with its MVP line, is one of the few retailers to stay the course. Private label share for energy drinks was only 1.1%, but for sports drinks it was less than half that at 0.5%. IRI doesn’t seem to have any listing for the kind of functional drinks Safeway and Target are marketing.

The growth in store brand energy drinks in mainstream channels may be more impressive than it seems at first glance, because most of the private label action has been at convenience store outlets that aren’t necessarily tracked by IRI–chains like QuikTrip, Tulsa, OK; Sheetz, Altoona, PA; and the regional Circle K operations of Alimentation Couche Tard, Montreal, PQ. It may be significant that among major retailers, only Target uses its primary store brand on energy drinks. Supervalu, Eden Prairie, MN, offers the only major supermarket line, Max Velocity, through its Albertsons system. Latest addition there, Max Velocity Uncaged, drew a positive review from blogger Taurine Rules:

Max Velocity Uncaged clocks in at a pretty heavy 240 calories, 62 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein according to the nutritional label. The other ingredients in Max Velocity Uncaged are pretty standard and don’t deviate too much from other drinks in the Max Velocity lineup. The list of those ingredients is: high fructose corn syrup, taurine, glucuronolactone, caffeine, gum acacia, inositol, ester gum, and B Vitamins. The boost on Max Velocity Uncaged was the best of any of the Max Velocity drinks I have tasted. It felt like flying with a crazy stunt-pilot, except I felt like both the in-control pilot and a terrified victim at the same time.

On the other hand, the same blogger didn’t think much of Super Rooster Booster, the latest addition to the QuikTrip lineup. But he was gave a thumbs-up to the Archer Farms line, finding the flavor of sugar-free tangerine, for example, “pretty damn impressive” and not diluted by the green tea infusion.