CBD brand Trip is to extend outside of the category by launching a new range of functional soft drinks called Mindful Blend.
The new products – which contain mushrooms and adaptogens lion’s mane, magnesium, ashwagandha and L-theanine – will land on Trip’s DTC platform today (24 April), before rolling into retailers including Sainsburys, Waitrose, Co-op, Holland & Barrett, Whole Foods and Ocado from 6 May (rsp: £2/250ml).
The Mindful Blend range consists of two new flavours – Cucumber Mint and Blood Orange Rosemary – alongside Elderflower Mint and Raspberry Orange Blossom, two of the best-selling flavours from Trip’s core CBD drinks offer.
Each 250ml serving of Mindful Blend contained 100mg of lion’s mane – an adaptogenic mushroom – to “aid mental clarity”, 120mg of magnesium to “help find calm and balance”, and 100mg of ashwagandha to help “regulate triggers and return the body to homeostasis”, Trip said.
The blend took 18 months to develop and would bring “three emerging and viral ingredients into the mainstream”, it added.
Trip said functional continued to drive overall soft drinks category growth, with functional drinks adding four times as much value growth to the category than non-functional [Circana 12 we 9 September 2023].
This, and consumer demand for innovation with trending ingredients, had prompted Trip to expand its offer beyond CBD, founder Olivia Ferdi said.
“We’ve introduced tens of millions of men and women around the country and beyond to the benefits of creating a moment of calm in a uniquely delicious and authentically functional beverage,” she said. “We’ve been able to tap into listening to our community’s requests for innovation with these ingredients – alongside our own experience of using them – to create this first of its kind to market blend.”
The launch comes with food safety regulation around CBD in the UK continuing to lag growing consumer interest in the category.
Presently, CBD products on sale in the UK must be linked to a novel foods application submitted to the FSA prior to 26 May 2022. New products containing CBD cannot be brought to market, and the FSA has not yet moved any products on the public list to full authorisation.
It also updated its guidance in October 2023, drastically cutting its recommended acceptable daily intake of CBD from 70mg to 10mg – less than a single can of Trip’s drinks.
However, adding Mindful Blend was “not related” to the ongoing uncertainty around CBD regulation, Trip co-founder Daniel Khoury claimed.
“We are launching this range in national retailers in four different countries and it’s going to be one of the biggest beverage launches in the last few years,” he said. “We’re super excited and it’s not related to the FSA.”
Trip MD James Edmunds added: “All of our innovation is really focused on meeting the needs of consumers. We take inspiration from meeting the needs of people who have asked us for [innovation for] years and following trends and scientific research. And that’s where we’ve been focusing for the development of this range for the last 18 months.”
Trip’s sales have not been hampered by the FSA’s new reduced daily intake guidance for CBD. The brand was the fastest growing soft drink (with sales of over £500k) by value in January 2024 [Circana].
“We’re still really fast growing, but that fast growth is now translated into genuine scale,” Edmunds said. “We’re now distributed in 14 of the top 15 beverage retailers in the UK and we’re in 30,000 stores. We’re genuinely mainstream.”
Trip would support the launch of its Mindful Blend range with a “multimillion-pound” marketing campaign from next month, including its first-ever appearance on TV, Edmunds said.
“Going on TV is a really big step for us to drive awareness of the brand, the amazing ingredients and the category of calm,” he added.
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