Jack Daniel’s is extending its line of Country Cocktails with Hard Tea.
The new product, Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails Hard Tea, makes its inaugural debut with four flavors: original, peach, raspberry and blackberry.
Hard tea, as a category within the category of ready-to-drink cocktails, is a big and growing market. According to NIQ, RTD consumption has grown more than 104 percent within the past two years.
“The high growth of the RTD category is obvious and becomes more attractive when you see how much hard tea is responsible for that growth, with one key player owning the majority of the segment,” says Keith Cunningham, vice president of partnerships at Pabst. “While it is clear many other competitors are moving into this space, no one else is able to bring the number one spirit trademark in the world to back up their credentials like we can with Jack Daniel’s.”
Cunningham says their own research also revealed that a lot of Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails fans were also big purchasers of non-alcoholic tea. “This further encouraged our ambition for quick adoption of this new drinking style experience,” he says.
The new product is available in 13 states: California, Texas, Idaho, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
“We looked for areas that had a high index of tea drinkers of both the hard and non-alcoholic varieties, areas where JDCC was performing well, and finally, areas where we had good relationships with our wholesale/retail partners who could help us with speed to shelf,” he says, explaining how the initial states were selected for the launch.
“Our strategy was simple in its approach to getting Jack Daniel’s Hard Tea to the areas where consumers are demanding it, and we have the route-to-market to get it there fast and efficiently,” he adds.
The goal, he says, is to get Jack Daniel’s Hard Tea in shelves of stores across the country. “However, we know we need to earn that expansion,” Cunningham says. “We’d love to get off to a fast start. For now though, we are prioritizing getting off to a hot start in our current states before getting ahead of ourselves with a national expansion.”
Unlike many brands, they’re not prioritizing Gen Z., which might come as a surprise to some folks. “We see an opportunity to target both millennial and Gen X shoppers,” he says. “Those are the consumer groups who are driving the majority of purchase in this space and who we believe relate the best to the Jack Daniel’s brand.”
Cunningham says the flavors speak for themselves. “Our research shows our products perform better than competition, especially with our target demographic,” he says. “Beyond that, we have the power of the Jack Daniel’s brand which is so valuable and respected.”
Cunningham says the brand has an aggressive sampling plan to convert consumers, and they’re also partnering with with Luke Combs’ Tailgate Tour. “We have strong faith in the incredibly delicious experience consumers will have once they try each flavor,” Cunningham says.