Beverage Manufacturing
Itjust takes three easy steps – Positioning, Beverage Development and Bottling
The most important point in beverage manufacturing is beverage positioning. Yes, I know most people spend their time in formulation or development of beverage. That’s a shame because in positioning is the most difficult and crucial point of the whole process.
Why is Beverage Positioning so important for beverage manufacturers?
It shows you who will drink your product and how much they will pay for it. It also shows you how your perfect consumer wants to buy and how they want to be sold. That’s not all. You will also know where to sell your product and what types of distributors to use to get your product there. Imagine having a roadmap that tells you everything you need to know about beverage manufacturing, sales and distribution. That’ ’hat you need to get from your beverage positioning.
If you miss your positioning you will not have a good product even if you have a fantastic package and a great tasting product.
The 3 Steps for Beverage Manufacturing
Positioning
Positioning is the most important part of the process for a beverage manufacturer. It is the guide, the roadmap that you need to take to go from idea to a great product selling on the shelve. To develop your positioning strategy always start with the consumer, not with your product. This is what I call “Marketing Reverse Engineering”. Always start with your consumer and move backwards to backing up all the way down to the beverage.
Here are the steps for marketing reverse engineering:
- Who are your perfect consumers?
- List everything about your consumers
- How much will they pay for the beverage?
- Where do they shop?
- Who distributes to those stores?
- How do you market to those consumers?
- What are their tastes, their likes and dislikes for package and flavor?
- Start with development and production
Beverage Development
Beverage development is an important part of the whole process once the beverage manufacturers have your positioning done. A great beverage has a good package and flavor; but it also has the correct size and profile that identifies with that perfect consumer we talked about before. This is not just what you like or what your friends or colleagues like. This is what your perfect consumer would like.
Even if you think you have a good beverage development strategy always reach out to your perfect consumer and ask them what they think.
The main points of beverage development are:
- Package – Can, bottle, etc.
- Formula – Flavor, color, texture.
- Size – 8 oz, 12, oz, 16 oz, etc.
- Feel – How does the product make you feel
All of the points in the beverage development process are clear except for the last one; feel! I know: how do you account for feel? It’s not an easy thing and it requires both knowledge and experience. Feel is what you have to get right and it all depends on the exercise you did in beverage positioning. If you’re targeting a teenage crowd with your energy drink the Feel is different than if you’re targeting a working class consumer like you would do with an energy shot. You don’t what to alienate your consumer with the wrong feel so pay special attention to this in the process as a beverage manufacturer.
Beverage Bottling
Beverage bottling is the easiest and most automatic part of beverage manufacturing. In beverage bottling you just need to look for a co-packer that is close to you and has line space to cover your order. It can take as little as 20 minutes after they push the button to fill your complete order. Yes, I said 20 minutes!
Well, if you’re bottling water it will take 20 minutes. If you have a formula they have to prepare the batch, bring the bottle or can and then push the button. It still just takes a couple of hours for the whole process.
Now, some of you have more sophisticated formulas or beverage manufacturing process. That means you could require a special line or production equipment. If that’s the case you should probably call me to talk about your project as this article is not large enough to go over all the intricacies of custom beverage manufacturing processes. Maybe you have a special bottle, or special formulation or you have to export to another country; in any case contact me and we’ll go over your needs as beverage manufacturer and talk about my beverage consulting packages.
Make sure you call our consulting hotline at 1 (619) 489 0230 to start your product development project