© Cannabis Energy Drink
BY GAIL BARNES SUSTAINABILITY SPECIALIST
A study has identified cannabis beverages as one of the five trends for the future of the food and drink industry. Here are some packaging predictions.
The Innovation Group, the innovation and futurism unit of J. Walter Thompson Intelligence, has predicted some of the key trends for the food and beverage industry of the future.
In its latest trends report, it made findings such as that more than half of US and UK millennials will use technology such as apps and wearables to maintain a healthy diet, and, in what may have been a surprise for some, identified one of five trends for the future of the food and drink industry to be cannabis in beverages!
According to a summary of the study in FoodBev, “a wave of marijuana legalisation in the US has freed beverage startups to experiment with tetrahydrocannabinol infusions, as well as non-intoxicating hemp concoctions. Nearly three quarters of consumers surveyed across the millennial, generation X and boomer generations agree that marijuana will be as socially acceptable as alcohol over the next decade.”
In the US, Colorado and Washington both passed initiatives to decriminalise and legalise cannabis by popular vote in 2012, and since then, have both opened the first legal marijuana markets in the US. Legal retail sales began this year.
The 2014 midterm elections in the U.S. saw legalisation sweep over more areas of the country, including Oregon, Alaska and Washington DC. For now, it looks as if the west coast is the epicentre of the movement, but that may change with the elections in 2016.
While the study mentions cannabis beverages, one can expect product innovation to include edibles as well as drinkables.
The market has already seen some non-intoxicating hemp juices.
Packaging currently being used for legal cannabis containing drinkables and edibles is – for the most part – similar to packaging being used for conventional beverages and edibles, but as this new category gains scale at the same time as packaging innovations come to market, below are some predictions of the kind of packaging that one could see for these products:
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024