A Toast To Taste

From coffee to smoothies, beverages are whirling with flavor

By Laura Yee, Senior Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 8/1/2003

Beverage sales benefit from a seasonal approach. In winter, operators heat up offerings with steamy mugs of creative comfort. During hot summer months, operators rev up with cool, limited-time specialty drinks.

From the largest to the smallest top 400 foodservice concept, nonalcoholic coffee-, ice cream- or fruit-based drinks provide vehicles for strengthening brands and bottom lines while encouraging customers to take between-meal refreshment breaks.

The battle for beverage innovation is particularly fierce among coffee and doughnut chains. Dunkin’ Donuts is preparing to add a line of espresso-based drinks this fall. The company continues to install its proprietary espresso machines, enabling stores to make cappuccino as well as hot and cold espresso variations similar to those served at Starbucks and other coffee chains. For summer, cool concoctions also include a caramel-enhanced iced coffee as well as a lemonade version of its Coolatta slush drinks.

Meanwhile, coffee specialists continue to leverage their core products.
Starbucks, its business built on espresso-based beverages (including cold Espresso Frappuccino), is promoting teas on ice and a Mocha Malt Frappuccino that blends coffee, malt and chocolate. Seattle’s Best, the flavored-coffee specialist that Starbucks last month acquired from AFC Enterprises, recently launched six “intensely flavorful” beverages. Called JavaKula drinks, the coffee-based frozen concoctions include chocolate, crème caramel, double-mint chocolate chip and vanilla coffee. Cascade berry and vanilla bean frozen drinks slake noncoffee thirsts.

“We spent months creating, testing and perfecting these beverages in the Seattle and California markets,” says Steve Hayter, a beverage conceptualist for Seattle-based Seattle’s Best. “Our customers asked for an ice-blended beverage option that is light yet hearty enough to be satisfying as well as refreshing and flavorful.”

At Caribou Coffee, new beverages roll out every two months. The chain’s strategy is to brand all drinks so that they are not perceived as generic, says Michael J. Coles, chief executive officer of the Minneapolis-based company. This summer, Caribou Coffee introduced Snowdrifts noncoffee frozen drinks. One version tops blended mint chocolate-chip ice cream with mint chocolate candy and whipped cream, while a second garnishes chocolate sandwich-cookie ice cream with bits of crushed cookies.

The chain also added two new options to its line of seasonal frozen coffee drinks. One swirls toffee (with caramel candy bits) with coffee; the other churns espresso, white cocoa and berry syrup. “We want to give customers the chance to expand what they drink,” Coles says.

Caribou also offers several green and black teas. Coles claims the teas stand out from the competition’s because they are brewed from whole rather than chopped tea leaves.

Fruit-, tea- and ice cream-based beverages are other areas being employed by chains. Increasingly, operators reach for seasonal fruit and real ice cream as ways to convey quality and offer more choices. Panera Bread offers honeydew iced tea (green tea infused with honeydew flavoring, blended with ice and topped with whipped cream).

At Jamba Juice, strawberries provided the focus for blended drinks during the fruit’s abundance from April to June. Flavors included Strawberry Tsunami (strawberries, peaches, lemonade and lime sherbet) and Strawberry Dream’n (strawberries, soy milk and nonfat frozen yogurt).

Orange Julius is working a similar freshness-nutrition angle with its Julius Creations drinks. Made with fruit, fruit juices, nonfat yogurt, sherbet and/or nutritional supplements, 16 choices are available, including Chai Tea Dragon, Pineapple Hard Body and Cocoa Latte Swirl.

Packaging can be a vehicle to energize beverage sales. At 7-Eleven, Slurp & Gulp combines a 32-ounce Big Gulp soft drink and a 22-ounce Slurpee slush drink in one large, two-chamber cup. Customers get two straws.

Fatburger looks to increase sales of milkshakes, made with real ice cream, by selling them in a clear cup with a dome top and offering whipped topping, says Dan Pittman, spokesman for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based chain. With testing under way at two corporate-owned stores, the company eyes a fall rollout for chocolate, strawberry and vanilla shakes.

And if purveyors of hot coffee can add iced drinks, smoothie concepts can move in on the hot-drink category. Smoothie King’s HeaterZ hot smoothies are available in such flavors as cinnamon-oat raisin, banana-nut and coconut.