The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

SOFT drink manufacturers have reported soft sales numbers despite the recent hot weather.

Karla Wells, marketing manager for Coca Cola, told Tribune Business that sales at the company, while better than last year, are in “no way close to 2019.”

“We still have some ways to go, but things are encouraging,” she said.

“Obviously our economy is still recovering from COVID-19, so until we see a return to normalcy between a coupling of visitors and people returning to dining who have been scared away by the possibility of the Delta variant, we won’t see a return to good sales.

“Along with the curfew, people are dining for shorter periods of time so all of that is going to have a trickle-down affect on sales. So we are still to 2019, but hopefully things continue to get better.”

Joshua Miller, owner/operator of Limeade, said: “We’re trying to get by the 2019 numbers. COVID-19 really did some damage to a lot of restaurants and stuff like that as a lot of them either would have closed down or things haven’t fully rebounded.

Not only restaurant sales are a part of Limeade’s model, but also schools as Mr Miller said: “We are waiting for the schools to reopen. We want people to get back to school and back to work. Hopefully we can see a sales bump in September of 30 percent, but I don’t think officials are sure as yet if school will return to in person learning. So I have to wait and see.”

Christian Knowles, senior manager at Aquapure, who also produce the Tampico Juices, was more upbeat.

“We have seen an uptick in our Tampico Juices sales, which has been doing pretty well over the summer,” said Mr Knowles.

“We put a lot of news out there about our product being less sugar than all of our competitors and I think that’s starting to catch on even though that, in some places, depending on who you who you ask or who has an opinion, they think Tampico is the poster-child for sugary drinks and it’s just not the case.

“Our formulation that we’ve had for some time now has less sugar than all of our other competitors and we’re actually going through another formulation that we’re probably going to start in the Fall, or maybe early next year, that has even less sugar.

“But we still maintain Tampico is a 100 percent dose of vitamin C and we’ve given that information out to the public and we believe that’s what’s helped us grow the business a little bit in these last few months.”

Comparing sales with 2019 the Tampico brand is doing “pretty good and stable” in terms of unit sales.