Snaxshot #53: Après Sport
Snaxshot is a newsletter on upcoming food and beverage trends that offers a curation of brands and aesthetics written by Andrea Hernández.
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Millennials are this era’s yuppies, it’s true we are bringing back Wall Street, cocaine-induced opulence back —not only with our nostalgic 80s inspired, aesthetically pleasing food and beverages, but also with our ecomm carts filled with athleisure and vintage sunscreen (hi Vacation!) —we’re also upgrading leisure-esque, country club sports like pickleball, tennis and golf. One other thing we’re upgrading —recreation RTD drinks, what I want to dub, après sport. How might one go about describing, après sport you ask? Less functionality focused than Gatorade, but more hydration focused than beer (which has continued to be a drink of choice for the likes of golfers) —upcoming Chestnut Sports Club (launching soon) is a perfect example of a new leisure light lager aimed for golf. Is après sport part of the functional unwinding movement? Not quite, this is less about adaptogenic sports drinks a la Barcode, but also not quite part of the water wars, considering this is focused more around a leisure-esque water, not just plain H2O.
Further, leiure-like sports, not to be confused with sports practiced as a profession, used to be tied a lot to alcohol, can we talk about Seagram’s chokehold on this intersection? Nothing like a dry gin spritz après pickleball, amirite? Ads as far back as the early 1900s also depict Coca-Cola as a drink of choice post golf, vintage ads reading “play refreshed” and “zip back to the fun” depicting the youth suckling on sugar to sweeten up that sports high. Though we take a lot of inspiration from prior generations, beyond “aesthetics” we are not really trying to revive Coca-Cola as a drink of choice aprés polo matches, millennials have led the shift of seltzer actually outpacing sugar beverages, enough to get CC to actually purchase Topo-Chico and launch their own flavorless bubbly. And though you may not find us chugging plain Liquid Death wearing outfits that resemble alo meets country club (see Manola) —we are looking to quench that thirst and replenish ourselves, while still indulging in the social aspects of leisure sport.