The hottest drink in America is water with bubbles.
Long a kitchen table staple in European households, sparkling water is making inroads in the U.S. thanks largely to Americans’ waning interest in soda. Between 2009 and 2014, the volume of carbonated bottled water sold in the U.S. has increased by 56.4 percent, according to data from Euromonitor International, a market research firm. Soda drinking declined sharply during the same period.
Still, sparkling water sales are a fraction of soda sales. The U.S. soda market is worth about $39 billion, according to Euromonitor. The market for unflavored sparkling water, flavored sparkling water and “functional” water — a category that includes flavored still water and enhanced still water like Smartwater — is just $4 billion.
It has a way to go before it catches up to soda, but sparkling water is indeed having a moment.
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But Birnbaum is confident that Americans’ shift away from soda is more than just a whim.
“We feel like we are now at the early stages of a revolution in the beverage industry in America,” Birnbaum said, noting that about 70 percent of SodaStream’s customers globally use the machine only for carbonating water.
“The death of soda comes with the life of something else,” Birnbaum said.
