McCommon said. “Even though the market is saturated, we still think there’s room for growth in the category.” McCommon hopes that the package design for Minoku, which features sunset-like imagery and a rainbow of tropical colors, offers a critical, striking point of differentiation from competing brands, particularly on a store shelf. “Everything that we saw, pretty much, was going all-natural,” McCommon said. “So all the colors were very light and used a lot of blues and greens and white. And so we wanted to have more of an impact and go for something really bright that would make people feel good and feel like Minoku was a 5-10 minute escape from the everyday work week and everyday life.” But what the company is truly relying on is the same impulse that has inspired so many brands to join this category, and has caused bigger companies to try to reach out to consumers through lemonade. “What we’ve experienced [is that] there isn’t a whole lot of brand loyalty at this point with coconut water,” she said. “It’s quite different from what we see in the carbonated soft drinks market. That’s been very helpful for us. We do have any opening where we can get people to try
the product. I think moreso than all of the brands that are out there, the bigger challenge for us has been getting people to try coconut water in general [as opposed to] trying our brand over another brand.” McCommon described the launch of Minoku as being “fairly successful” so far, noting that since the beginning of this year, the company is beginning to move significant volume of the product, with the bulk of its sales coming in California, far from the company’s base of distribution in the Southeast. Certainly, it’s still early for Minoku, but, for Double Cola, the end goal is less about the coconut water standing on its own. Rather, the company is aiming to evolve beyond its CSD offerings to become a platform for a broad array of beverages. “We are small enough that we have room to grow our brand,” McCommon said. “It wasn’t that we were thinking, ‘Oh no, we’re starting to lose volume because of health trends.’ It was more along the lines that we want to become a full-service beverage company offering a wide range of products to consumers, retailers and distributors.” If coconut water is a requirement for full-service, then expect those waves to keep on coming.
APRIL/MAY 2014 BEVNET MAGAZINE 25