Edible Cogitations: Summer Wrap-up

a most indulgent banquet!

Edible Cogitations: Monthly Wrap-Up

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Peek into the Future

Hello dearest snaxers —I know you’ve been enjoying your summer—meanwhile I’ve been heads down working on a few exciting projects for our community, from dropping our 2nd product, to hosting the first initially Snackies. Know you’ve missed these and personally just recouping from being under the weather—and know that I’ve missed you too and I’ve prepared an entire banquet of news, curation and insights. Get comfortable while I spoon feed you these takes, actually more like a 5,000 word bonanza—I personally don’t indulge in regurgitating information back to you, we’re not an RSS feed, or birds? Make sure to read thoroughly—we know these tend to get cut inside your email, so open up the entire issue and engorge in these appetizing cogitations.

Mini Essays inside—

• Ghia’s sumac chili and the rise of spicy RTDs

• The rise of the savory drinks —from cheese to soup

• The next RAO’s, Tomato Girl and Sauce Core

• Sporty & Rich cafés and why they are NOT the next GOOP

• “Girl Dinner” is just romanticizing the mundane

• Prime panic does NOTHING to protect children

• NA drink of the summer goes to—Phony Negroni

• Alani Nu’s KIMADE copycat lawsuit will set precedent

• CPG to Retail —emerging brands physical space

• Rebrand cycles keep getting shorter—here’s the latest

• Summer of Collabs —better when we’re together

Spice, Spice Baby!

Last month, Ghia released its long awaited Sumac and Chili RTD, adding to the growing list of spicy seltzers hitting the market. It all started with spicy margaritas in canned cocktails, and on the NA side, flavor profiles from brands like Avec’s Jalapeño Blood Orange and Aura Bora’s Mango Chili added to the movement. In France, we got our first iteration of a hot sauce x seltzer combination thanks to Chilled and Matshi—we even have the first ever spicy rosé RTD, via Heartbeat which was released this month, which should come to no surprise if you remember last year’s jalapeño rosé trend that went viral across platforms. In 2023, searches on Drizly for “spicy drink” yield thousands of options, search for “spicy drink” on Walmart or Amazon and you’ll find a plethora of offerings like spicy cocoa powders, mixers and even spicy V8 (iconic) —of course we can’t deny the influence the large Hispanic growing demographic has had in this monumental shift, michelada anyone?

Why is this so important? Because for the longest time, US palates have very

much skewed towards extremely sweet, so much that there’s even been campaign from brands trying to “retrain your palates” as sugar distorts your sense of taste. The battle against sugar rages on—but a shift in palate preference may signal the first battle won? Nothing happens in a silo—looking back there’s been signs of this shift happening, from the rise of hibiscus in everything from cocktails to beer and “IT ingredient” or how we dubbed it, “hype-biscus” —to mezcal mania and the bitters and soda as the preferred NA drink, to the rise of yuzu and calamansi sparkling waters—a snowball effect that has led to us having liquid drops a la Disco Inferno or coffee hot sauce to heat up our drinks.