About a decade ago, LaCroix was everywhere. Flavored seltzers packed grocery store shelves and showed up in coolers at parties. White Claw arrived and changed the alcohol market. Truly followed. The seltzer era looked like it might last forever.
It did not. According to CNBC, non-carbonated drinks are now taking the spotlight, driven in large part by younger consumers who never developed the same attachment to bubbles that millennials did.
The numbers back that up. Malt-based hard seltzers, which includes White Claw, saw volume drop 1.1% in the 52 weeks ended April 26, compared with the year-ago period, according to data from market research firm Circana. Ready-to-drink premixed cocktails, many of them non-carbonated, grew 46.4% in the same period. Brands driving that growth include Surfside, Sun Cruiser, BuzzBallz, and Anheuser-Busch InBev's Cutwater Spirits.
Randy Burt, Americas director of consumer products at consulting firm AlixPartners, described what he is seeing across both alcohol and non-alcoholic categories. "If you think about where there's more growth, where there's more consumer interest relative to a few years ago, it's a shift more to still, across both [alcohol] and non-alc," he said.
The shift is being shaped heavily by Generation Z, generally defined as people born between 1997 and 2012. Over their lifetime, soda consumption dropped sharply from its 1998 peak. Reusable water bottles became standard. New drink formats like refreshers and dirty sodas went mainstream. That background shaped a generation with different instincts about what they want to drink.
Scott Scanlon, executive vice president of alcoholic beverages for Circana, described the pattern he sees among younger drinkers. "We're seeing a lot of promiscuity within consumption and alcohol around new products," he said, pointing to the rise of White Claw and Truly about eight years ago. "Now what we're seeing is then consumers jump to the newest product — that's Surfside, Sun Cruiser because of that."
Scanlon sees a clear generational divide between millennials, who drove the seltzer boom, and Gen Z consumers who are now steering the market toward something different.
Burt put it in terms of lifestyle choices. "Gen Z is a lot more likely to order tea-based beverages at happy hour, and they're sort of moving from carbonated — or seltzers — as their default, 'better for you' pick," he said. "I think that's part of the shift, toward wellness and functionality that you're seeing happen, especially from a Gen Z perspective."
That wellness angle is showing up across product categories. Functional teas and coffees, beverages with added health benefits, and non-carbonated options in general are receiving more investment from beverage companies looking to capture younger buyers. Seltzer brands have not disappeared, and carbonated drinks still hold a large share of the market. But the innovation energy has moved.
Brands like Liquid Death, which sells still and sparkling water in tallboy cans with aggressive branding, and Surfside Iced Teas have built significant followings by presenting non-carbonated drinks as lifestyle products rather than just alternatives to soda. That repositioning has helped pull younger consumers toward the still side of the cooler.
The broader consumer products industry is watching the shift closely. Companies that bet heavily on hard seltzer expansion over the past several years are now recalibrating, while newer entrants built around non-carbonated formats are gaining shelf space and brand recognition. The question going forward is whether the current wave of non-carbonated drinks builds lasting loyalty among Gen Z or whether that generation simply moves on to whatever comes next.
