Where all those weird new drinks are coming from

It's getting pretty wild in the beverage aisle these days — from the rainbow wall of seltzers, to the increasingly strange flavors of Pepsi, to the new "functional" sodas with added fiber or supplements that supposedly offer health benefits. Where are all these new drinks coming from? And why does it seem like the options are multiplying faster than ever? Today on the show, we go behind the scenes at one of the nation’s top-secret beverage laboratories. The food scientists in this lab have quietly helped companies design many of the new drinks on the shelves these days. We taste things we have never tasted before, including a sports hydration … broth? We learn what a strawberry has in common with a block of cheese. And we discover why the business of beverages will never be the same again. Read: - Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD - Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUB - Our weekly Indicator round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicator Follow: - Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuws - TikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrq - YouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3C - Facebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more atplus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Jeff Guo. It was produced by James Sneed and Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, and edited by Jess Jiang. Vito Emanuel is our fact-checker, and Kwesi Lee engineered the show. Alex Goldmark is the executive producer of Planet Money. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Apollo. Apollo provides access to long-duration capital and a broad range of financing capabilities, helping companies drive growth at an efficient cost of capital. Learn more at apollo.com/capital.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  This is Planet Money from NPR.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  When I was growing up in the 90s, there weren't that many choices about what to buy. Most of the time, your options were like two or three giant brands. This was the era of Nike versus Reebok, Nintendo versus Sega, Burger King versus McDonald's. Most of all, there was Coke versus Pepsi. This was the massive economic fault line dividing the beverage aisle, dividing the nation, frankly. You either drank Coke or you drank Pepsi. Whitney Houston, she drank Coke.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Michael Jackson, on the other hand, he was Team Pepsi.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  And I was thinking about the cola wars recently because the business of beverages just could not be more different now. We are way past the days of just Coke or Pepsi. The other day, I had my fellow Planet Money host, Kenny Malone, meet me at the supermarket. We are actually headed to my favorite part of the store. We were going on a thrilling safari through the beverage aisle.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Listen, you can't see Jeff, but he is glowing as we turn left into this aisle.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  This is so exciting. Look, I've never seen this. I go to the store all the time. What is this? Sparkling tea with adaptogens? Amazing.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, adaptogens?

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I have no idea what it is, but it's probably good for you.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  The sheer variety of beverage choices that are now competing for our attention, it's almost incomprehensible. You know what I'm talking about? The rainbow wall of flavored seltzers, the rows of canned latte drinks next to the cans of latte-flavored energy drinks, with or without extra protein. All the new sodas that supposedly help you focus or help you sleep or maybe help you go to the bathroom.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  What do you call these sodas?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  The functional sodas.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Right. Do you call them the poopies?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  I think we're not allowed to say that, but yeah.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  There's a Spider-Man one.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, Spider-Man poppy.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Not to mention all the new flavors that companies are coming out with. There's the new Dubai Chocolate Pepsi, the creamy coconut Dr. Pepper, the Cosnipolitan-flavored Spindrift. The thing is, like, growing up, we didn't have any of this, right?

• 2:40Speaker 03

  I guess not. We only had our sprites, our ginger ale. I guess you're right. Now that you mention it, why are there flavors everywhere all of a sudden?

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why is this happening? Why are there so many? Why does it feel like there's a new one every single week?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Because we buy them. Because you and I are buying them.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Yes, but it all comes from somewhere, right?

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Oh, right, right. Do you know the answer?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I went out to find out.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Are you going to tell me?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I'll tell you. We got to go on a journey first.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jeff Guo. A few months ago, I started looking into why we are seeing so many new kinds of beverages and new beverage flavors. What I found is that the economics of the beverage industry have been turned inside out. So today on the show, we are going inside big beverage. We're headed to a top-secret laboratory to unravel the mysteries of the soda aisle. We're going to see how new flavors get created, how cutting-edge bacteria are changing the game, and we ask the experts, what does Planet Money taste like?

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• 4:54Speaker 02

  To understand why everything is now coming up, acai, dragon fruit, sparkling protein probiotic, yada, yada, yada, I called up a bunch of beverage industry insiders. And one of them shared with me this kind of industry secret. You see, apparently, a lot of the drinks showing up on shelves these days can be traced back to this one company in Kentucky. They're called Flavor Man. And behind the scenes, they're the ones who have been quietly helping all these other companies come up with the new types of beverages and new beverage flavors. Recently, they agreed to let me visit their labs in Louisville. Good morning. Hey. Good to see you. It's good to see you. Welcome to Flavor Man.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  The food scientists at Flavor Man specialize in beverage development. Big brands like Coke and Pepsi usually have their own in-house food scientists, but basically, everyone else outsources the work of designing a drink to companies like Flavor Man. So most of the work here is super, super hush-hush. They are not allowed to talk about it.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  So sometimes we're the dark secret behind some of the very large national brands that you're aware of.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  That's Evan Floyd. He works on the business side here. And when we walked in, he asked us to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I think technically, we're not allowed to sign this because we are going to disclose all the things. Is there a way that we can get past it?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  In the end, we did not sign that NDA, of course, but we did promise to be careful about which brands we talked about. Publicly, Flavor Man is allowed to say they've done work for companies like Ocean Spray and Jones Soda. Privately, they have helped launch tens of thousands of new beverages. As we walked back to the labs, we saw this trophy wall full of examples going back 30 years. Some of them were pretty famous. Some of them were a little bit more niche. This is-- so this is a juice box for cats.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  It's-- you're just like, yeah, of course. It's salmon-flavored.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  I think that that one specifically was designed for aging cats.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Now, the real reason we were here, of course, is to understand why the market for beverages has changed so dramatically over the years. And we wanted to see firsthand how new drinks get designed and launched and how the industry has changed at every step of the process. So our first stop was the flavor lab.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Who let you guys in my lab? What is going on here? Are we making flavors today?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  All right, let's talk.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Tom Gibson is the chief flavorist at Flavor Man. He is responsible for what a new beverage is going to taste like. The way it works is a client, usually a beverage company, comes in and maybe they want to launch a line of drinks and they have ideas for a couple new flavors. Here in this lab, Tom and his team of flavor scientists invent the recipe for those new flavors. He's like the Willy Wonka of sodas. Have you ever led a tour of little children through here and maybe disappeared some of them?

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Never. Never happened.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Now, Tom says, when people talk about flavor, most of the time, they are really talking about aroma, the smell that hits your nose when you bite into that nice, fresh strawberry. In nature, that strawberry smell is actually made up of hundreds of different aroma chemicals. Tom brought us over to a workbench with a set of beakers and pipettes. All around us, the shelves were crowded with like thousands of these little amber bottles.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  We're looking at some different essential oils, some different aroma chemicals that are part of all different kinds of flavors.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  So these are the building blocks.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  This is it. The little bitty pieces that come together to make-- what's your favorite flavor again?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Blue.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  To make blue. All right. You're looking at pieces and parts of blue.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Over the decades, scientists have slowly started to isolate these aroma chemicals. They've noticed that some of them seem to show up over and over again in a lot of different fruits. For example, Tom dipped a test strip into one of the bottles and held it up for me to smell. It's so familiar. It's like on the tip of my tongue. It's not berry. It's like a...

• 9:18Speaker 05

  It's kind of everything, right?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  So it's a key component of berry, but it's used in tutti frutti's. It's used in maybe a background note in a cherry. It's used in all kinds of different things.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  When Tom's building a flavor, he might mix together dozens of these different aroma chemicals. Say you want a cherry flavor. Tom's like, OK, what kind of cherry are we talking about? A fresh cherry, a ripe cherry? Do you want more cherry blossom notes? Or do you want more darker caramel notes? Tom says some of the tastiest fruit flavors often contain unexpected notes. For instance, he opened another bottle for me to smell. Oh, my god, no!

• 9:57Speaker 05

  God, that's not that bad.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  This is so bad.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  That's only, that's level one.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  This is like stinky cheese.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  Isn't that nice, though?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  No, it is not nice.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  What flavor do you think this might go into that would be fantastic?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Tom says this aroma is a key component in dairy. It also shows up in sweat and vomit. But also...

• 10:16Speaker 05

  But you might find it a little bit in like, say, a ripe berry. When you're eating strawberry in the morning, perhaps you're getting a little bit of that.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Oh, and so if that weren't there, then the berry flavor might be...

• 10:27Speaker 05

  Meh.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Might just be flat.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's kind of flat.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Oh, it's like you need a little bit of dissonance.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Now, Tom has been doing this Willy Wonka flavor work for decades. And from his perspective, one of the biggest changes in the industry has to do with the supply of flavors and flavor components. He says, look around. 10, 20 years ago, a lot of the aroma chemicals you see in this lab, they didn't exist on the market.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  So what you're looking at right here, these in our minds are colors. In the old days, this either wasn't found, or it was found and no one manufactured it. It couldn't be, it wasn't available.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  You're saying you have colors now that you didn't have access to before?

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Way, way more colors.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  So here is explanation number one for why we're seeing so many new drinks with new exotic flavors. It is that flavor science itself has been advancing. Every year, scientists are discovering interesting new flavor compounds. New scientific techniques and new kinds of machines have made the process a lot easier. Also, there have been breakthroughs in how we extract flavor compounds from plants. We can now isolate delicate flavors that used to get lost in the process. And by the way, this is really wild. We can now teach bacteria how to help us make some of these flavor compounds. So we don't even need to harvest the fruit itself. All of this is to say that flavorists like Tom now have exponentially more freedom

• 11:55Speaker 02

  to have fun. One of the trends of the last decade has been to make exaggerated flavors, or even to invent completely new fantasy flavors. It seems like what you're doing is like impressionist painting.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  Maybe it's a Jackson Pollock in some cases, right? Maybe that's what a, maybe that's what a dragon fruit is. Just throw it all together and let's see how it comes out.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  And as these new flavor experiments have reached the market, they have been changing the American palate. People realize, we like these exciting flavors. We want more. And so flavor scientists go and try to find weirder flavors to isolate. And flavor suppliers invest more in their exotic flavor supply chains. It's kind of like this delicious cycle. So that is the first explanation for why the beverage aisle has exploded with new choices, which is basically flavor science. Now, when we found out that we were going to get inside the Flavor Man labs, we thought, this is an opportunity we cannot pass up. So before heading to Louisville, we asked the scientists to indulge us in a little side quest.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  We were like, just as an exercise, would you help us create a beverage that captures the essence of Planet Money? You know, one that tastes like insight and delight that sparks curiosity, maybe? Over the past couple of weeks, Tom and his colleagues have been working to figure out what a Planet Money drink might taste like.

• 13:23Speaker 05

  It's the planet, right? So you're thinking of the planet, right? Planet Money? So it's got to be something that's global.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Tom and his team had been tinkering with some very interesting flavors, apparently, that they were eager for us to try. But before we get to that, there is a whole nother step in the process of designing a beverage. This second step involves deciding what type of beverage you're making. Because a beverage is more than just a flavor. Nowadays, beverages need a concept. Like, is it an energy drink? Or a mocktail? Or an electrolyte recovery drink? For this, we headed to see Kristin Wimmer. And so we just came from the flavor lab, which is Tom's domain. And now, this is your domain.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  This is my domain, yep.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Kristin is the chief technical officer at Flavor Man. She is in charge of developing new types of beverages. So whereas Tom's lab had thousands of little brown flavor bottles, Kristin's lab is stacked with Ziploc bags full of various white powders. Is that pure caffeine?

• 14:27Speaker 04

  It is.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  That powder?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  It is.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  How much of this would kill me?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  The limit per day, I believe, is 300 milligrams, so...

• 14:37Speaker 02

  The FDA recommends less than 400 milligrams a day. So you're saying if I dip my pinky into it and lick it, that...

• 14:43Speaker 04

  That would be a serving of caffeine.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  OK, good to know. Here in Kristin's lab, we talked about the second explanation for why there's so many more beverage options now. And it has to do with all the new things that people are putting into beverages these days. Kristin says, in the beginning, most of Flavor Man's clients were trying to make energy drinks. Caffeinated energy drinks with a hot new beverage category in the 90s and 2000s. My favorite, by the way, was crunk, three exclamation points. But since then, you know, there's been the boom in seltzers, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. And now, the hot thing is what the industry calls functional beverages. We want drinks that do something for us. You know, like the sodas that supposedly help you relax, maybe fall asleep, or the ones that say they support your gut health.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  On one of the lab benches, we spotted a big bag of powder that said gum acacia.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  So prebiotics are really popular. Gum acacia is one of the most popular prebiotics for sodas like Ollie Pop.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  These new beverage types have been huge for the industry. They are one of the main reasons overall beverage sales have grown over the past decade. Think about it this way. The human body does not need any of this stuff, for the most part. We could all just be drinking water. But the beverage industry has figured out that if they invent new kinds of drinks, they can invent new reasons for us to not drink water and spend money on their beverages instead. They convinced a lot of people to skip the water fountain at the gym, to reach for a Gatorade. And now, maybe they want to replace the glass of water next to the bed with one of their new sleepy nighttime sodas. This is reason number two for all the new beverage choices.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  This strategy of inventing new beverage types has been incredibly profitable. People are buying more and drinking more, even if there's not that much evidence that these drinks actually have noticeable health benefits. Now, we were curious about the next generation of beverage concepts. So Kristin let us try some of the projects she and her team had been working on that week. There were a bunch of mocktails. Those are really big right now. One of them tasted exactly like an Aperol spritz. Oh, that is delightful. There was a matcha-flavored liqueur, which is weird, but kind of delicious. It's alcoholic?

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And there were also some more questionable drink concepts. We tried a non-alcoholic beer with extra protein in it, which tasted like pennies. And maybe the strangest one of all?

• 17:18Speaker 04

  This one is a really cool one that we just finished. It is a hydration broth, a sports broth, right?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  The drink was yellow, like Gatorade yellow, maybe a little browner. And of course, we had to try it. It's, it's, I don't know how to describe this. It's pineapple-flavored.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, tropical, there's beef broth in it.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  No! I'm drinking beef broth right now?

• 17:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Pineapple-flavored beef?

• 17:53Speaker 04

  It's great that you don't even know. But like, bone broth has like the, the healing connotation. It has nutrients and protein.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  There's, I don't know how else to say this. There's stuff in it? What's that?

• 18:09Speaker 04

  The broth. Yeah, bone broth has some insoluble components.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  This is the bone? This is the bits?

• 18:17Speaker 04

  It's not the bone. It's not the bone. It's just the bits.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Now, in addition to this pineapple, beef, bone broth, protein drink, Kristin and her colleagues had also been working on the Planet Money beverage. Their job was to decide what the Planet Money drink would do.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  So do we want to go on the hydration route or the energy route? The sleep route? I don't know if people use Planet Money as a sleep podcast.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  I would believe it. After the break, what will the Planet Money drink taste like? And how do you even launch a new beverage these days?

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• 20:36Speaker 02

  There is a third and final reason for why there's been an explosion in new types of drinks and new types of drink flavors. And this is a big one. It has to do with a major shift in how new drinks get onto the market. To understand that, we headed upstairs to meet the guy who created Flavor Man.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  You are the Flavor Man.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  I'm the Flavor Man, Dave Defoe. Nice to meet you.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Dave Defoe has been in the beverage game for almost 40 years. He says when he started Flavor Man back in the 90s, the beverage industry looked a lot different.

• 21:08Speaker 06

  In the old days, as I call it, it was dominated by big companies. It was really just Coke and Pepsi for soft drinks.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Dave says back then, it was hard for upstarts to compete with the large, established drink companies. There were pretty high barriers to entry for bottling your own soda. The biggest obstacle?

• 21:27Speaker 06

  Where were you going to manufacture it at? Because all these big companies owned their own plants and they did their own manufacturing. And there were just a few contract manufacturers around the country where you could go as an independent and get your product bottled or canned.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  And these bottling or canning lines, they usually had really high minimum orders. Dave says to get anything started, you usually had to make at least a full truckload. That's like 12,000 cases, more than a quarter million cans of soda.

• 21:55Speaker 06

  So say you're a new brand owner.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 06

  You can't afford to make 12,000 cases of your energy drink.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 06

  You're new. You want to make 1,000 cases and see if you can sell them.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  But then, around the 2010s, a new trend changed that business model.

• 22:12Speaker 06

  All of a sudden, you know, there were all these small breweries popping up all over.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  The microbrewery trend.

• 22:17Speaker 06

  The microbreweries, the brew pubs, all of those things. They were popping up in every city and multiple breweries in every city. They were everywhere.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  This boom in craft beer created thousands of little breweries. Most of them were doing their own bottling or canning. A lot of them had excess capacity, so they were happy to rent out their canning lines for small jobs. And in recent years, as people are drinking less and less alcohol, these craft breweries have even more excess capacity. Dave says there are now plenty of places, not just microbreweries, willing to do a tiny run for a new drink brand.

• 22:55Speaker 06

  The barrier to entry has lowered significantly.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  We asked Dave to walk us through the math nowadays. How much are new drink brands paying to manufacture their new beverages? Start with the ingredients, which usually aren't that expensive. After all, your typical soda, or seltzer, or energy drink is mostly water. Dave says the flavoring and sweeteners and other ingredients might add up to like 20, 30 cents per can. Then there are the cans themselves. Back in the day, a reasonable price might have been 10 cents per can. Now it's more like 20 cents due to inflation and the aluminum tariffs. Finally, there is the actual manufacturing of the drink, where the factory takes your beverage flavor concentrate, mixes it up with carbonated water and other ingredients, and puts it in the can. All of that can cost another 20-ish cents per can.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Dave says a rule of thumb is that they try to aim for a total cost of around 60 cents per can, though there are also R&D and shipping and other costs on top of that. Now, what's fun is that nowadays, there are even some canning lines that are willing to do tiny little test runs. The cost per can goes up, of course, but if you just want a couple thousand cans of your drink, it'll only cost a few thousand dollars. That sounds, that's, that sounds cheap. That sounds, that sounds very easy to do.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  It is, but most people don't know they can do it.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  This is the final reason why so many new drinks are crowding the beverage aisle these days. Because the barriers to entry are lower. It is now easier than ever for anybody to start a beverage brand. And that has made the beverage game way more competitive. Now, it's still pretty hard to succeed in the beverage industry. You need a marketing strategy. It helps to have a celebrity backer. You also need to fight for a slot on the grocery store shelves. But over the past decade, upstart drink brands have managed to take market share away from the Cokes and Pepsis of the world. And in this economy, that is kind of unusual. There are not that many industries where newcomers are finding it easier to challenge the Goliaths.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Another example might be the music industry, where over the past 10, 20 years, the barriers to entry have also fallen. Now, anybody, right, can record an album on their laptop, put it on Spotify. I mean, Planet Money put a song on Spotify. When barriers to entry fall, what consumers get is variety, more choices. Economists like to say having more choices increases consumer welfare, because it makes people happy to have options that are tailored to our own unique tastes. Right now, we are getting a lot of new, interesting artists and new, interesting sodas. Though whether anyone needs any of these new sodas, who knows? Speaking of fun new sodas that nobody asked for,

• 25:46Speaker 02

  it was finally time to try the Planet Money Soda. So, this is it? This is it. This is where you find out what Planet Money tastes like. I was in the Flavor Man tasting room with Tom and Kristen and members of their team. On the table in front of us were a dozen silver cans of the prototype Planet Money beverage. Here we go. Cheers, guys. Cheers. Planet Money.

• 26:13Speaker 06

  What do you think? Refreshing?

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Very refreshing, very light. And it's bright, too. It's like a zingy.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  That's so good. There was definitely a citrusy note to it, but it wasn't orange. It wasn't a familiar citrus. Tom says it was yuzu. Yuzu is a really trendy flavor right now, traditionally used in Japan, a cousin to the orange that is more complex and floral.

• 26:38Speaker 06

  So it explodes in a lot of different directions. You get all different kinds of top notes. It's delicious.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  There were also notes of elderberry, which is really popular in Europe. It's like an earthy blackberry. Tom said, "We wanted to give you flavors that were global and exotic, but also approachable." As for the functional, quote-unquote, "good-for-you" part of the beverage, Katie Clark, the R&D director, told us, "Oh, this isn't just a soda. What you're actually drinking is a yuzu elderberry sparkling coconut water."

• 27:09Speaker 07

  So coconut water is really hot right now. Coconut water is a natural way to bring electrolytes to a beverage. It mostly contains potassium, but there's some sodium and magnesium in there, too.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  So this is like every single thing that's hot right now in the world of beverages?

• 27:24Speaker 07

  A little bit, yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 06

  A couple things.

• 27:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  You gave us the everything bagel.

• 27:29Speaker 07

  In a beverage, yes.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  But then they were like, "We have one more thing we want you to try." Because you told us Planet Money is full of surprises, right? So we have a surprise for you. Monica Horn, one of the senior beverage designers, brought out a second version of the Planet Money drink, this one with an extra-special secret ingredient.

• 27:50Speaker 07

  It might hit you in like 10 seconds after you taste it, so.

• 27:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, just let it.

• 27:55Speaker 06

  We'll talk about it after you taste it.

• 27:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Don't be scared. It's okay.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  "Don't be scared" is maybe the last thing you want to hear when someone hands you an experimental beverage. But apparently, some people really don't like this taste. Anyway, I took a sip. Okay, here we go.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  I could feel everyone staring at me. Lovely flavor.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it tastes great. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 28:23Speaker 07

  Oh, okay. Well, great.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Oh. It was this very strange tingling feeling, like someone had put a tiny little battery in my mouth. Does it spark curiosity? Does it make you think? What have I just done? And this weird tingly feeling, it just kept building. Oh, I'm really getting it now. Yeah. Wait, why does my tongue feel funny? It's great, right? What is this? Do you really want to know? Yes. It's jambu. Jambu? Mm-hmm. Jambu. It is a tropical herb traditionally used to numb the mouth for toothaches. It's kind of like Sichuan peppercorn, if you've ever had that. Kristin says jambu extract isn't super common,

• 29:08Speaker 02

  but it's sometimes used as a background note to make drinks taste more effervescent. Though you wouldn't know, because the way food labeling works in the US, the drinks often just say "natural flavors." Anyway, there you have it. According to the experts at Flavor Man, the beverage that best represents Planet Money that is sophisticated yet approachable with a dose of surprise is a yuzu elderberry sparkling coconut water with a jambu twist. We have a moneymaker on our hands, guys.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  All right, how do we sell this? Let's go.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Let's go. It's Kenny. It's Kenny Malone, co-host of Planet Money, back again in the studio.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  So what do you think?

• 29:51Speaker 03

  That was the journey. I do, I feel like I understand where all the flavors are from. And most importantly, I would like to try the Planet Money flavor.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Oh, I am so sorry. I didn't bring any back for you.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Oh, what now? I'm sorry?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  It's heavy. I couldn't get it to the airport.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  No, no, no. I get it. But what does clearly seem to be true, could we not make a bunch of these? And if we don't want to sell them, that's fine. I'm not exactly ready to become a beverage company. But we could, like, host a thing?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  I think that's a great idea.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Yes?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you and I should do a live event where we invite all the listeners who want to try the soda to come and crack one open with us.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  There's no way we can invite all of the listeners that want to try it, but...

• 30:34Speaker 02

  You're right.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  If you're interested in this, let us know.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Send us an email.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  And we'll see if we can make a batch, a small batch, of Planet Money the flavor. Planet Money the flavor. We got to work on the title, but yes, that's good.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  I like it. Jambu.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Thanks, Kenny.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone. If you could do us a favor and just give a little boop to that follow button on your podcast app. We want to make sure you get all of our announcements about special projects, live show dates, new merch releases, discounts for the NPR shop, stuff you definitely don't want to miss. And it helps the show. It tells the apps that Planet Money is a podcast that other people might want to listen to. So go ahead, scroll up, and just, you know, give it a little boop. Thanks for the follow. This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed and Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, was edited by Jess Jiang. Vito Emanuel was our fact checker, and Kwesi Lee engineered the show. Alex Goldmark is the executive producer of Planet Money.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  A special thanks to Dwayne Stanford of Beverage Digest and Jordan Plappert. And also, a special, special shout out to all of you listeners who emailed us about your experiences with the wild new world of beverages. From Kelsey, who told us how these new seltzers and sodas helped her quit alcohol, to Ryan, who is still puzzling over the Sunshine flavor of La Croix.

• 32:00Speaker 05

  I have no idea what flavor Sunshine is, but it was disgusting.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  I have no idea either, Ryan. Anyway, it was great hearing from all of you. As always, you can reach us at [email protected], send us an email, or even better, a voice memo. I'm Jeff Guo. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 32:35Speaker 00

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• 32:50Speaker 04

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.