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Snapple might be gearing up for a long-awaited comeback by taking a page out of its 90s playbook. On February 18, Snapples parent company, Keurig Dr Pepper, announced that the beloved tea brand is unveiling a refreshed visual identity designed to return the Snapple brand to icon-status. The new look, which will roll out beginning this March, includes new graphics, a logo inspired by the brands 90s look, and an updated bottle design that hearkens back to its original glass packaging. At the same time, Keurig Dr Pepper told Fast Company that its reinvesting in marketing efforts for Snapple, including through an ongoing campaign focused on the drink’s hometown of New York City. For Snapple, the new look and marketing boost represent a return to form thats been a long time coming. After Snapples heyday in the 90scharacterized by its scrappy roots, funky packaging, and wacky ad strategythe brand has struggled to hold onto cultural relevance amidst a catastrophic sale, ownership changes, and several ill-advised rebrands. Now, its looking to tap back into the playful energy that once made it the beverage of choice for 90s kids. Current packaging (left) and 2026 refresh (right) [Image: Keurig Dr Pepper] Snapple’s rollercoaster of a brand history Snapple was founded in 1972 in Long Island, New York, by three friends. Their initial idea was for a company called Unadulterated Food Products, which would capitalize on a new wave of interest in better-for-you foods by selling fruit juices to health stores. One founder, Leaonrd Marsh, would later say of the venture that he knew as much about juice as about making an atom bomb. As The New York Times noted in Marshs 2013 obituary, the three men did wind up making a bomb of sorts: a batch of carbonated apple juice that accidentally fermented, shooting scores of bottle caps skyward. Thankfully, this happy accident sparked a transition from the name Unadulterated Food Products to Snapple, a portmanteau of snappy and apple. Snapples bottles were made from a rounded glass, featured bright colors and a slightly cursive logo, and emitted a satisfying snap sound when the cap released the beverages carbonation. Snapples original business model involved partnering with independent distributors to stock the beverage in smaller stores. The brand truly took off in the early 90s, when it began to enter the cultural zeitgeist through a series of zany, irreverent ads that emphasized its underdog status compared to big names like Coca Cola and Pepsi. Undoubtedly, though, its biggest asset was a spokesperson named Wendy Kaufman, who, after appearing in several ads, became a beloved representative known as Wendy the Snapple lady (see this spot and this spot of Kaufman answering fan questions). Between 1992 and 1994, sales jumped from $232 million to $774 million. Then, in 1994, Quaker Oats acquired Snapple in a $1.7 billion transaction that would go down in marketing textbooks as a prime example of how not to make a deal. Quaker swooped in, sanded down Snapples edgy personality, made its bottles bigger, relegated Kaufman to the back burner, and scrapped its independent distribution model, only to sell the company just three years later to Triarc Companies for $300 million. A brand disaster, indeed. A post-“Quakergate” challenge Since Quakergate, Snapple has been fighting an uphill battle to maintain cultural relevancea journey thats involved multiple rebrands and several ownership changes. Along the way, it has shed many of the brand assets that originally made it an outlier on grocery store shelves. In 2008, Snapple became part of the Dr Pepper Snapple Group when Cadbury spun off its beverage business. Then, in 2018, Snapple joined Keurig Dr Pepper through a merger of Dr Pepper Snapple Group and Keurig Green Mountain. Between 2016 and 2017, Dr Pepper Snapple reported a 3% decline in the sale of Snapple products. According to Derek Dabrowski, SVP of brand marketing at Keurig Dr Pepper, Snapple has seen overall retail sales growth since the 2018 merger, but more recently that momentum slowed as shelf presence declined and marketing support eased. Undoubtedly, a not insignificant part of the brands struggles has emerged from the fact that Snapple has lost its quirk. The brand got refreshes in both 2008 and 2015, and in 2021 Keurig Dr Pepper gave it a full-on rebrand. Snapples new logo was ultra-modernized into a blue-and-white sans serif; its glass bottles were replaced with recycled plastic; and its charmingly kitschy graphics were swapped for more commercial imagery. The company also attempted to reach younger consumers with a new line called Snapple Elements, which ultimately fizzled out. Longtime fans of the brand bemoaned the changes,with many claiming that Snapple tasted better out of glass. Gone was the quintessential Snapple snap, replaced with a quotidian plastic sigh. Snapple’s vintage logo (top), current (middle), and 2026 refresh (bottom). [Image: Keurig Dr Pepper] A return to Snapple’s quirky form Now, it seems, Keurig Dr Pepper is realizing that its rebrand may have been a bit too hasty. Looking back, some of these efforts, especially chasing multiple trends at once, left the brand feeling a bit fragmented, Dabrowski says. Snapples upcoming brand refresh spans graphics, logo, packaging communication, and bottle design. The bottles illustrations will call back to earlier iterations of Snapple with bolder colors and a slightly more retro look. Flavor signalers like Real Tea and Real Juice will take center stage on the packaging, connecting to the brands origins as a healthy beverage. And the sans serif logo will be replaced with a modernized version of the Snapple logo that defined the brand in the 90s. The new Snapple logo isnt a carbon copy of the one from the late 80s and early 2000s, but its very intentionally inspired by that era, Dabrowski says. We brought back the iconic racetrack shape and heritage cues people recognize, then refined them to work better on todays shelveswith clearer readability, bolder color, and stronger flavor storytelling. Marketing to match Snapple has also been slowly tapping back into its irreverent advertising roots. Last fall, the brand launched a new campaign called Snapsolutely Refreshing with a media buy in its NYC hometown, including out-of-home placements across subways, street panels, office elevators and Times Square. It ran a one-day bodega takeover featuring free Snapple and branded merch. For a limited time, the brand even brought back glass Snapple bottles at a few retailers across the city. And the ad accompanying Snapsolutely Refreshing feels charmingly similar to something Snapple might have made in its 90s underdog glory days: A man in an NYC bodega is confronted by a series of slightly creepy, talking wellness culture beverages, like kombucha and probiotic soda, before ultimately choosing to sip a Snapple instead. Still, for diehard Snapple fans, a key question remains: Will the glass bottle ever make a real comeback? That remains a bit of a mystery. Dabrowski says that in September, Snapple will roll out a new plastic bottle that mimics the originals shape and embossed logo. And, when pressed, a spokesperson shared that the brand is continuing to test glass bottles and learn from consumer response. Whether Snapple ever gets its snap back remains to be seenbut, for now, the brand is at least looking (and sounding) a little more like itself.
Category:
E-Commerce
A CEO sits in a boardroom, staring at a strategy deck generated overnight by AI. The analysis is sharp. The recommendations are confident. The numbers line up. And yet something feels off. It feels flat, almost a little too perfect . . . This moment is becoming increasingly common for leaders. Artificial intelligence is now one of the most powerful management tools ever created. It can analyze markets in seconds, surface patterns no human team could find, and generate plans on demand. For many executives, AI already feels indispensable. But as intelligence scales at unprecedented speed, a quieter question is emerging inside organizations: How do we ensure AI is focused on human flourishing? Intelligence Is Scaling. Wisdom Is Not AI excels at intelligence. It detects patterns, predicts outcomes, and optimizes for efficiency. What it does not possess is contextual wisdom: the ability to understand why a decision matters, how it will land emotionally and culturally, or what it reinforces over time. Leadership has never been about having the most information. It has always been about deciding what matters when information conflicts. In an AI-rich environment, where intelligence is being commoditized, leaders face a subtle temptation to outsource judgement itself. When dashboards look precise and recommendations feel objective, optimization can easily be mistaken for wisdom. But AI cannot answer the questions leaders are increasingly accountable for: How is this affecting the precious humans in my care? What values are driving this decision? Is this decision indicative of the kind of world we are trying to build together? These are not computational questions. They are human ones. The Real Risk: Abdicated Leadership Much of the public conversation about AI risk focuses on bias or misuse. Those concerns are real. But inside organizations, a quieter risk is emerging: outsourcing thinking that affects humans to the machine. When leaders defer too often to AI-generated recommendations, they slowly lose confidence in their own judgment. Leadership shifts from sense-making to system-monitoring. Teams stop debating. Leaders stop interpreting reality and start validating outputs. The result isnt better leadership. Its thinner leadership. Over time, this shows up as cultural drift, ethical blind spots, employee disengagement, and loss of trustespecially during moments like layoffs, restructures, or major strategic shifts. When leaders cant clearly explain why a decision was made, people feel optimized instead of led. Strong leaders dont just decide what to do. They articulate why it matters. They connect decisions to shared meaning, values, and narrative. They help teams understand how todays choices fit into a longer human arc of transformation and evolution. AI can propose solutions. Only humans can author meaning. Why Clarity Is Becoming a Core Leadership Skill In an AI-saturated world, clarity is a force multiplier. Clarity about purpose.Clarity about values.Clarity about what not to optimize. Put simply: Clarity is deciding what you refuse to let AI optimize. AI will happily optimize for speed, efficiency, engagement, or cost reduction. It will not ask whether those optimizations erode trust, creativity, resilience, or long-term cohesion. Leaders must. This is why clarity, not charisma or technical expertise, is becoming one of the most critical leadership capabilities of the next decade. Clarity allows leaders to: Set boundaries around how and where AI is used Frame AI insights within human context Decide when efficiency should yield to ethics Protect creativity where optimization would flatten it Without clarity, leaders risk becoming reactive to machine intelligence instead of responsible for human outcomes. How Effective Leaders Use AI Without Becoming Dependent on It The goal is not to resist AI. It is to place AI correctly within leadership practice. Three principles can help leaders do that: Treat AI as an advisor, not an authority.Use AI to surface options, test assumptions, and explore scenariosbut make it explicit that final judgment remains human. In practice, this means leaders own decisions in their own words, not by pointing to an algorithm. Slow down at meaning-making moments.When decisions affect people, culture, or identity (hiring, layoffs, strategy shifts, values) pause. Ask not only What does the data suggest? but What does this decision communicate about who we are? Invest in judgment, not just AI literacy.AI skills matter. But judgment skills matter more. Organizations that thrive will be led by people trained to reason ethically, think systemically, and articulate values under pressurenot just operate tools efficiently. Meaning Is the Leadership Advantage AI Cant Touch In moments of uncertainty, people dont look to leaders for perfect predictions. They look for orientation. They want to know: What matters now? What should I focus on? How does my work connect to something meaningful? AI cannot provide that orientation. Leadership can. As machine intelligence accelerates, meaning potentially becomes more scarce and more valuable. Leaders who offer clarity amid complexity and purpose amid acceleration dont just build better cultures. They drive stronger innovation, greater organizational resilience, and long-term value creation. The Capability That Endures Every technological shift reshapes leadership. This one is no exception. But the core truth remains: leadership is not about knowing more. It is about seeing more clearly and exercising wisdom under pressure. AI will continue to evolve. Capabilities will expand. Tools will improve. What must deepen alongside them is human leaderships capacity for clarity, judgment, and meaning-making. Because in an AI world, the leaders who matter most wont be the ones who rely on the smartest machines. Theyll be the ones who remember in wisdom what it means to be human while using them.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you walk into a grocery store in the Netherlands or Germany, you might not realize youre being steered toward plant-based protein, from vegan tortellini to plant-based yogurt. But across Europe and the UK, major retailers are quietly driving that shift. And theyre seeing results at a time when plant-based sales are struggling in the US. Lidl, a budget supermarket, grew UK sales of its private-label plant-based line by nearly 700% from 2020 to 2025. In Germany, France, and Italy, plant-based retail sales are growing across multiple categories, with most of that growth coming from supermarkets own brands. Lidl is one of several retailers with a deliberate strategy to nudge consumers away from meat and dairy and toward plant-based food. In the Netherlands, major supermarkets now have an ambitious target: by 2030, they’re aiming for plant-based protein sales to outweigh animal-based food, in a 60-40 split. Meat (left) and plant-based meat (right) on display at a Lidl market. [Photo: Lidl] Climate is the biggest motivation. As grocery stores look at their own carbon footprintsdriven by policies like the EUs climate reporting rulesnearly all of the impact comes from food production in their supply chains. And nearly half of those emissions come from meat and dairy. Its hugethis is the biggest lever for a retailer in terms of reducing the climate impact, says Joanna Trewern, director of partnerships at ProVeg International, a Berlin-based nonprofit that advocates for grocery stores to prioritize plant-based protein. In the Netherlands, where stores have gone farthest to adopt new strategies, the organization co-founded a working group that helped retailers plan the transition. The Dutch government also issued a policy paper saying that the population was consuming more protein from animal sources than they should for a healthy dietthe opposite of the new dietary guidelines in the U.S. Stores have taken several steps to boost plant-based sales. First, since the cost of plant-based alternatives is still a barrier, theyve built up their own low-cost, private-label offerings. A core element of our strategy is ensuring that plantbased foods are just as affordable as animalbased alternatives, a spokesperson for Lidl Netherlands told Fast Company. At Lidl, the prices of our plantbased staple items are already equal to or even lower than their animalbased counterparts. This price parity ensures that cost is never a barrier for customers who want to make a more sustainable choice. Lower costs are critical for plant-based protein to grow, and private label products offer the biggest opportunity, Trewern says. “Retailers have more control over ingredient sourcing, it’s easiest for them to scale, and there’s more they can do in terms of price and investing in categories to bring the price down for the consumer,” she says. As plant-based sales have grown, Lidl keeps adding more products to its range. That includes more traditional plant-based protein, like tofu or chickpea-based products. The initial innovation in this space was very focused on convenienceproducts that really mimic meat, says Trewern. Now what were seeing is consumers are looking for something else. Thats led a lot of people to say plant-based is not doing well, the categorys failing. Actually, what were seeing now in many European countries is theyre starting to come back and the category is consolidating with a different type of product. More clean-label, whole-food product sales are going up massively. (Sales of tofu and tempeh are also growing in the U.S., though in both locations, they’re still a small fraction of overall plant-based meat.) [Photo: Lidl] Some stores are also offering new hybrid products. Lidl was the first to start selling a partly plant-based burger60% beef, 40% pea proteinthat tastes like beef but is priced lower than its regular ground beef and has a much lower carbon footprint. The store has also cut back on promotions on meat; twice a year, it makes sure its promotional flyers are meat-free and feature plant-based products instead. It’s also tested other strategies, like placing vegan meat next to animal-based products in the meat aisle. Partnerships with other brands can also help. The French retailer Carrefour worked with manufacturers like Danone and Unilever to bring new plant-based products to market, and met its original sales target seven years ahead of schedule. “Real behavior change happens when retailers and manufacturers work together to deliver products people love that reach price and taste parity with conventional options,” says Abby Sewell, corporate engagement manager at the Good Food Institute, an American nonprofit focused on the industry. The work can’t guarantee on its own that plant-based protein sales always growcountry-wide sales dipped in the Netherlands in 2024, for example, while some other markets expanded. But it’s a useful tool. In the U.S., supermarkets don’t yet have similar goals and strategies. And the growth of private-label brands offers more evidence that price is key. There’s still a large opportunity for more affordable, better-tasting products; almost three-quarters of American consumers are open to eating more plant-based food. “U.S. consumers say the most important factors that would make them more willing to eat plant-based meat are if it tasted better and was more affordable,” says Jody Kirchner, associate director of market insights at the Good Food Instiute. “This is an opportunity for the plant-based meat industry to continue to evolve and position itself for the next wave of growth.” “Weve seen this before with electric cars and solar panelsearly hype, a dip, then a return to growth,” Kirchner adds. “With the right investment and innovation, plant-based meat can find that same curve.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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