Beverage makers use natural beverage flavoring, artificial beverage flavoring, or a combination of both to make flavored drinks. This designation is determined based on how they source the flavor for beverages. Natural flavors are sourced from natural materials, whereas artificial flavors are made in a laboratory. Natural drink flavoring is more popular in the United States. However, overseas beverage makers use more artificial beverage flavoring.

Increasing the variety of flavors that you offer to your customers is one way of increasing sales and profits. A good example of this is the Coca Cola company. In recent years they have added many different flavors of beverage syrup to their original formula cola to spur sales. Those flavors that consumers liked remain on the shelf long term. Other flavors are quickly discontinued.

Depending on the nature of your business, and the products that you sell, you can increase the variety of flavors that you offer in many ways. When deciding which flavored drinks to sell, consider the following:

1. Past sales performance of flavored drinks to your customers.

2. Whether your customers prefer variety or traditional fare.

3. Customer preferences for natural and artificial flavoring.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Add variety through coffee flavorings

The most popular way of adding variety to coffee flavors is by purchasing an assortment of flavored coffee beans. However, you can also increase the flavor variety offered by using coffee flavor additives and by offering an assortment of flavored cream for your customers to add to their coffee.

I recommend: TalknCoffee offers a nice variety of coffee flavor additives called Flavor Shot. Use their product to flavor one pot of coffee at a time. The Coffee Bean Queen sells flavored coffee beans in many varieties from chocolate raspberry to bourbon.

Increase fountain drink variety with flavored syrup for beverages

Purchasing an assortment of flavored syrup for beverages allows you to add more variety to your fountain drink menu, as well as other products such as Snow Cones, Slushies and Smoothies. Banana, Pink Bubble Gum, Peach and Pina Colada are just some of the wonderful flavors available to try.

I recommend: The Prairie Moon Company sells a wonderful variety of flavored beverage syrups. Florida Natural Flavors specializes in natural flavored syrups for beverages.

Stock your shelves with more flavored drinks

If bottled beverages are the focus of your business, you can still offer quite a flavor variety to your customers. Pay attention to sales performance when deciding which flavors to purchase. For example, if your customers didn't buy Pepsi with lime when you stocked it on the shelf, chances are good they are not interested in Coke with lime either.

I recommend: Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi provide an assortment of soda flavors for you to sell. WholesaleYellow.com can help you to find wholesale juice distributors in your area.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  When purchasing a new beverage flavor for the first time, buy a small quantity to see if it sells well before making a large purchase. It is important to remember that with some flavors, customers buy it once to try it, but then may never purchase it again. Therefore a high initial sale of a product does not guarantee high long term sales.