Keeping Up With the Jones Soda
Thursday January 19, 9:23 am ET
By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
As hard as Inside Value pick Coke (NYSE: KO - News) and Pepsi (NYSE: PEP - News) may try, most soft drinks don't have much of a personality. They can take their jabs at one another, landing hot celebrities as spokes-sippers, but at the end of the day it's really just about taste and loyalty. Maybe that's why I've taken a shine to Jones Soda (Nasdaq: JSDA - News) as the alternative beverage party crasher.
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Just as Hansen Naturals (Nasdaq: HANS - News) has scored with its Monster energy drink and Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX - News) rocked the world with its bottled Frappuccino, it's pretty intriguing when an upstart enters a vanilla niche -- like the soda market -- dripping with personality.
No, Jones Soda will never be the next Coke or Pepsi. It doesn't have to. It has quickly become a staple as a premium bottled beverage, landing itself on grocery store shelves as well as your local Starbucks, Target (NYSE: TGT - News), and Panera Bread (Nasdaq: PNRA - News) location.
Over the weekend, the company spoke at the ICR Xchange Conference. During the session, Jones Soda announced that Starbucks was going to start stocking a third flavor as it adds the company's cream soda to the root beer and diet black cherry offerings already being sold at the java giant. It also continues to grow its canned soda line that was introduced in Target a year ago, a move that Jones Soda likes to equate with Heineken still commanding a premium as it went from a bottled brew to a canned product.
The company's claims to eclectic fame have been its outlandish flavors and distinctive labels that showcase user-submitted photographs. The sodas can get pretty bizarre, including seasonal rollouts like turkey & gravy carbonated pop for Thanksgiving and candy corn soda for Halloween. Next month it's introducing special Valentine's Day gift sets that come with a pair of bottled sodas as well as lip balm, a music CD sampler, and romantic vouchers.
The labels have also been a big winner, with hundreds of thousands of user submissions in the past. Folks can also order up sodas with their own personalized labels, a patented process for Jones Soda.
Jones Soda is an intriguing company -- it's growing quickly in an otherwise stagnant industry, a leading characteristic of the big winners in the Motley Fool Rule Breakers newsletter service. Jones is profitable, but I would love to see the bottom line growing a little quicker. The edgy soft drink specialist has potential, and it's all bottled up.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz actually enjoyed the Jones Soda candy corn, pumpkin, and caramel apple sodas last year. He is part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. He also owns shares in Jones Soda. You can read the Fool's disclosure policy here.
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