Premium mixer brand Thomas Henry is bringing out a watermelon flavour as it looks to capitalise on daytime drinking occasions.
Since its launch 15 years ago, Thomas Henry has grown into a category leader for premium mixers, and as an industry leader it continues to reinvent itself to stay ahead of the pack. The brand was founded by bartenders for bartenders, and everything is developed together with bartenders.
However, discussing innovation and how it plans to maintain its relevancy, senior international brand manager Marco Frizzarin, says there is a push to “stay young” and this means “appealing to pure consumption”, rather than just mixability.
“There are trends where people drink lower-strength alcohol, and sometimes with the younger generation, no alcohol at all, so we have to reinvent ourselves in that sense and innovate to work in that kind of field.
“In terms of the regular products, or the regular range, we try to think when we are developing and innovating about what can be something that brings our brand more into the daytime occasion, because people drink less in the night as well, and they also start to drink more during the daytime.”
Responding to this circumstance, or how the brand can be “a bit more daytime”, Frizzarin notes this month’s upcoming release of Vivid Watermelon.
The product is made with watermelon flavour and real fruit juice. As such, it’s primed for summer serves like a Highball or Spritz, or even as a standalone option.
He explains that the watermelon flavour helps Thomas Henry tap into summer daytime occasions and the low-ABV trend, as well as no-ABV. “This is one thing that we’re doing – looking at different trends in the industry. With watermelon, it’s an innovation because it’s the first watermelon premium mixer that was ever launched by any kind of mixer brand. It’s a category innovation, I would say.
“So one thing in terms of innovation is to try to do a category innovation in our core range, which is the premium mixes, and watermelon is serving us here to do that.”
Category innovator
Also making headway in the daytime occasion sphere is the espresso and tonic trend, which Frizzarin says is becoming increasingly prevalent in South and Eastern Europe.
Thomas Henry released its Coffee Tonic in 2018, which he says was actually “way too early to the party” even though the reception was good, so the brand discontinued it.
The product has found relevancy again though, as the espresso trend gains steam in many of its key markets: Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania.
“There are a lot of people and a lot of coffee places offering espressos with tonics mixed in, but not only tonics, it is espresso tonic, espresso ginger ale, espresso and bitter lemon. I know that Starbucks in Central Europe, in Germany has one on the menu. In some markets, espresso with our Pink Grapefruit is also going really well. There has been no mixer other than ours, or no mixer brand that has ever done this.
“So we’re developing in this direction. To see what are the possibilities here and what I try to see is how we can combine this also with our brands that are known for bar lifestyle and coming out of the bar scene, and try to basically broaden both the consumer and occasion base.”
First-to-market flavours
While Frizzarin can’t delve too far into the development side of things, he notes that “flavour is not just flavour anymore” and that while one can still try to launch lots of different products, “it has to be something that wasn’t there anymore”.
“If you want to keep updating the regular range, without having an additional functional benefit, there should at least be innovation as a ‘category innovator’ in mixers, in the sense of having a flavour profile that somebody else doesn’t have. And that’s what we’re doing with watermelon, for example, and also what we did with Mystic Mango and Pink Grapefruit.
“We were one of the first first pink grapefruit mixers in the market, and we’re crazily benefiting from it because we offered something that others didn’t have. Mango was never a thing to be in a mixer, and we launched it now last year, and received a Master medal at The Tonic and Mixers Masters 2024 competition.
He continues that these products are “becoming a door opener” for Thomas Henry, because “if you have something that others don’t have, you can go into a bar and say ‘okay, you have 10 Schweppes flavours, or you have 10 Fever-Tree flavours, but you don’t have this flavour from them, because they don’t offer it. Let us at least get in with that one flavour’.
“So it’s simple innovation in a way, because it’s just category innovation, but it can also help a lot in making business or getting a foot into the door of new other opportunities then.”
The underlying idea is that it has to make sense and fit the Thomas Henry brand, Frizzarin says to sum up.
“It can help us to promote Thomas Henry being a mixer that people can rely on, but at the same time not undermining the bartender, who is the most important person in our universe.”
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