Glass Helps Put “Pop” In Artisanal Soda Craze

It’s been characterized as the soft drink equivalent of the early 1990s craft beer craze. In recent years, high-end and often regionally produced natural artisanal sodas have been making their presence known in restaurants and specialty grocery stores across the country.

Now, the beverages are poised to inundate major grocery chains with brands like Boylan’s vintage soda, Cheerwine and Jones Soda showing up on the shelves of suburban supermarkets. The trend is so big that in 2010 Beverage World added artisanal sodas to its HIT list, which highlights up-and-coming developments in the marketplace.

Like craft beers, artisanal sodas are usually packaged in glass, which reinforces the image of a high-quality, high-end, natural product. “Glass is a natural fit for our brand, which contains real cane sugar,” says Tom Barbitta, Cheerwine’s Vice President of Marketing. “Glass sends a strong signal to consumers that this will be different. It’s a collection of signals that support the brand being in this package.”

Cheerwine is a long established soda brand in the southeastern U.S. that has found renewed consumer interest because of its artisanal qualities. And, like its newer cousins, Cheerwine continues to use glass bottles for its products. Similar to microbrews, artisanals are often produced locally or regionally and tend to be more expensive than the mass-produced competition because they are “hand crafted.”

Barbitta notes that over the years consumers have lapsed into “self-rationing” when it comes to the soda market sector. However, he believes that glass serves as an entry point for Cheerwine, piquing consumer interest enough to compel them to try the brand.

“Soda has traditionally been ‘the glorious category,’” adds Barbitta, who believes that glass helps communicate that glorious image.

Beyond image, many artisanal soda makers use glass because they believe it better maintains the quality of the product. This is especially important with carbonated beverages, where the impermeability of glass creates an airtight seal that will not permit seepage over time, unlike some other packaging options.

“Glass tastes better. Period. And the perception of the consumer, most importantly, is that glass bottles taste better,” says Sean Henry, Chief Executive “Soda Jerk” for Soda Vie, a Kansas City-based artisanal soda maker that offers its product in returnable blue glass bottles. “Glass recycles well, and our products don’t even get recycled, they get ‘reused’ which is inherently more environmentally sound.”

Henry says that the blue glass bottles they use are a major draw for Soda Vie’s consumers. They offer a special return program where part of the cost of the soda is counted as a deposit. This encourages customers to make repeat visits to the company’s retail outlets, which ends up generating more sales.

“In the beginning we had a 25 to 30 percent return rate," adds Henry. “After a while longer, the return rate was up to about 45 percent.”

While thousands of bottles still go unreturned, Henry believes they have a positive environmental impact. This is because the glass bottles are of high quality and have reusable rubber stoppers. As a result, they tend to be used for other purposes once in people’s homes and places of work.

The artisanal industry’s dedication to glass has been recognized in recent years by the GIP’s Clear Choice Awards. In 2010, Route 66 Soda won in the Carbonated Beverage Category for a packaging produced by Vitro; Cheerwine won in the Non-Alcoholic Beverage Category in 2009 for packaging also produced by Vitro; and Hank’s Gourmet Beverages won the Carbonated Beverage Category in 2007 for a packaging produced by Veralia (formerly Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.). More