Bubbles, claimed to be full of nutritional benefits, differentiates a soft drink range that only months after bursting onto the retail scene became the on-trend, health-aware alternative to the usual celebration bubbly at London Fashion Week in September.
This year’s official soft drinks supplier to one of the world’s top designer catwalk events, the British brand created by London-based Kmera, co-founded by Nic Gorini and Leonardo
Laforgia, was commercially launched in November 2014 and is being sold in 700 stores across the UK and Continental Europe and the Middle East.
The so-called ‘pearl’ technology, technically known as industrialized spherification, creates bubbles filled with juices and vitamins of ‘superfruits’ sourced in Asia such as mango,
cranberries and açai. Speaking to Packaging South Asia Gorini said the process retains the taste and healthy values of active ingredients, and provides a platform to mix and match
flavours as well as a drinking sensation with a difference. On reaching the mouth the ‘popping pearls’ give the sensation of two different flavour hits.
For visual standout, Kmera designed a stubby plastic bottle shaped like a ‘double bubble,’ with the lower section concave to hold an in set wrapped, wide-mouthed straw which the consumer can easily slide out from beneath the label. “The packaging allows the straw to comfortably sit on the side while creating a super-distinctive shape that captures consumer attention and conveys the message of spherification – a drop of liquid coming into another liquid,” said Gorini.
Kmera selected London design agency Honey Creative to work on the branding of Jools Drinks. According to Gorini the drink concept formerly called Oob was market-tested at a
food and drink expo in Milan. Kmera went on to finesse the technology to produce commercial volumes and found a German processing partner to help take the product to the filling stage.
Industry acclaim for the brand has followed. It has been voted as Drinkpreneur 2014 Best New Beverage; Best Innovation in the Lunch! Innovation Awards; and Best Soft Drink runner up in the UK’s prestigious Quality Food Awards.
Marketing itself as ‘pure exotic goodness in a bottle’ Jools Drinks are available in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Dubai. Based on green tea, the range variants are cranberry and açai, apple and lychee and mango and acerola cherry.
In line with a market move to combine liquid hydration and nutrition, Kmera says it is seeking creative collaborators to take technology-enabled drinks into ‘unseen’ directions.
