CHICAGO – Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. is getting into the bottled iced-coffee market and enlisting bottling giant Coca-Cola Co. to help.
Coca-Cola will be making, distributing and marketing the ready-to-drink beverages to be sold starting in the U.S. early next year, Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ said in a statement on Thursday. The iced coffees will be sold in grocery and convenience stores, as well as Dunkin’ Donuts shops across the nation.
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“Our customers, especially younger customers, want to to have a Dunkin’ ready-to-drink iced coffee,” CEO Nigel Travis said in an interview. “It’s one of the fastest-growing segments of the packaged-goods industry.”
Dunkin’ is the latest company to recognize the potential of bottled beverages. Starbucks Corp. earlier this year enlisted Anheuser-Busch InBev NV to help with a bigger Teavana bottled-tea push. Those drinks also will be available in 2017. Dunkin’ lately has faced a tough consumer environment domestically: Second-quarter same-store sales growth slowed to 0.5 percent, compared with 2 percent in the prior period.
Dunkin’ shares fell 0.7 percent to $50.06 at 12:50 p.m. on Thursday in New York, while Atlanta-based Coca-Cola slipped 0.3 percent to $42.04.
The products will likely be distributed to “tens of thousands” of stores, said Travis, who declined to give financial details of the arrangement with Coca-Cola.
