Pepsi Sneaks into Whole Foods
Eager to latch onto the 20% annual growth enjoyed by Whole Foods, Pepsi is creating new sub-brands
exclusively for the largest natural foods retailer. These brands make no reference to Pepsi and won’t be backed by the mass marketing you are familiar with from the $35 billion giant.
Instead, Pepsi hopes to gain a bit of “street cred” by quietly taking over shelf space and letting consumers discover the brands. The latest addition to the sub-brand family is Fuelosophy, an energy drink that comes in four enticing flavors. Even the web site is basic, making it look as though this is a small company, not a well-funded division of a large corporation.
Full story from AdAge.
November 11th, 2006 at 2:33 am
Pepsi “used” to be in all Wild Oats… in the early days… but so many people bitched… Wild Oats took it away… I don’t know about Whole Foods… There seems to be confusion between “nutritional” energy drinks and “organic” ingredients… Looks like we’re going to have to go back to reading the fine print on the label all over again… shop in your small, indie heath food stores as much as possible… Imagine, Pepsico could orchestrate an unfriendly buy-out of Gaiam, who owns Whole Foods (and Real Goods) overnight, destroying the entire organic food distribution industry… THINK ABOUT IT!!!