Barbara Harfmann

Although more than half of consumers have purchased milk, juice and/or carbonated soft drinks in the past 30 days, sales were stagnant during 2014-2015 with top categories struggling to grab consumer attention, according to Chicago-based Mintel’s June 2016 “Beverage Packaging Trends” report.

There’s an idiom that talks about listening to one’s gut as a way to ward off something that doesn’t feel right. After the brain, the gastrointestinal tract, or gut, is the nervous system’s second-biggest network of closely interconnected neurons that greatly impacts overall health and well-being, experts say.

I’m a big fan of movies and eagerly anticipate two events: the Academy Awards and Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) annual 31 Days of Oscar, which took place on Feb. 26, and Feb. 1 through March 3, respectively. This year, several beverage brands took center stage at Hollywood’s biggest night.

When hurricane season arrives, meteorologists and those living along the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts rely on sophisticated data tracking and expert monitoring to stay informed and keep safe. To keep pace with an explosive number of SKUs, the beverage industry avoids the “eye of the storm” by equipping field staff with handheld technology and streamlined direct store delivery (DSD) solutions to capture data, track vehicle locations and improve productivity.

In celebration of their good fortune, the milkman Tevye and the butcher Lazar Wolf famously sing “To life, to life, l’chaim” while drinking shots of schnapps to their “good health and happiness” in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Regardless of whether consumers are drinking beer, wine or spirits when dining out, suggested food pairings and recommendations from influencers, like bartenders and wait staff, can motivate consumers to try something new or trade up to a more premium product.

Clean drinking water is something most Americans take for granted. Yet, there have been many disasters throughout the years — the 2004 Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and, more recently, the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Mich. — which have called the safety of drinking water into question.

As a get-up-and-go beverage, ready-to-drink (RTD) hot, iced and cold-brew coffee continues to fuel consumers in the morning and throughout the day.

In the mid-1990s, when the craft beer movement still was in relative infancy, Stone Brewing co-founders Greg Koch and his homebrewing partner Steve Wagner were busy experimenting with beer recipes and bemoaning the “industrial fizzy yellow stuff.”