hellowater, RISE Brewing Co., and UPTIME Energy to join Nestlé Waters North America's ReadyRefresh portfolio of brands

15-Jan-2020 - Last updated on 16-Jan-2020 at 23:00 GMT

Many may recognize Nestlé Waters North America’s delivery service, ReadyRefresh, for its 5-gallon water jugs delivered to virtually every corporate office that has a water cooler, but the service is expanding into several burgeoning beverage categories this year.

ReadyRefresh is Nestlé Waters North America’s direct-to-consumer delivery service where customers can order and set up beverage deliveries on a weekly to three-month basis through an easy-to-shop website. ReadyRefresh’s delivery network is capable of reaching more than 80% of the US population.

Convenience and variety are top two customer demands

Outside of its regional bottled water brands (e.g. Poland Springs and Ice Mountain) ReadyRefresh currently delivers Nestlé Waters North America’s other brands including Perrier and San Pellegrino. In November 2019, ReadyRefresh started to offer Vita Coco's original and pressed coconut water.

Addressing the fact that 97% of Americans do not meet their recommended daily intake of fiber, hellowater is a line of fiber-infused (from inulin) flavored waters with 0g of sugar and 5g of fiber.

“We ask our customers frequently, ‘What would you like us to do for you?’,” Henrik Jelert, executive vice president, ReadyRefresh, told FoodNavigator-USA. According to Jelert, the top requests that come up are convenience and a variety of healthy beverages beyond bottled water that consumers are starting to purchase on a more frequent basis, such as coconut water and cold brew coffee.

This past week, the delivery service announced a major expansion to its portfolio of healthy beverages available for nationwide delivery.

In the coming months, ReadyRefresh will start carrying fast-growing beverage brands including hellowater fiber-infused flavored waters, RISE Brewing Co. nitro cold brew coffee cans, and UPTIME energy drinks.

“For us, it’s breakthrough to distribute products that we don’t produce ourselves,” said Jelert.

"Launching with ReadyRefresh is one of RISE's most exciting partnerships to date," said Grant Gyesky, RISE Brewing Co. cofounder and CEO.

"Not only does it allow RISE to be accessible to the majority of the U.S. population, but it also brings us full circle from our founding when we would order 5-gallon containers from ReadyRefresh to brew our nitro cold brew coffee."

‘White glove’ beverage service

But why order weekly to monthly deliveries of beverages exclusively through ReadyRefresh? According to Jelert, ReadyRefresh feels closer to a white glove service than an anonymous face dropping off a package on your stoop.

“A big difference between us and many others is we have about 2,000 service representatives, and their primary objective is to build relationships,” explained Jelert.

Building shopper loyalty and repeat orders is a tricky business, and things like knowing the name of your customer and greeting them with your delivery go a long way, he argued.

“For Nestlé Waters North America, this is a critical component of the future. To build that relationship and be closer to our customers. It allows us to understand them better and provide a better service and better products that meet their needs," he said.

Nestlé Waters North America also has the logistics muscle to ensure that the other crucial elements of a direct-to-consumer business are in place such as on-time delivery, the ability to track a shipment in real time, and flexible delivery windows.

And according to Jelert, once a customer starts ordering their beverages with ReadyRefresh, they tend not to seek out other direct-to-consumer options.

“When we ask our customers, they say that we actually don’t compete a lot with Amazon,” he said.

“We found a way to service our customers so that they stay very loyal to us. They use I’m sure many ways to get their products delivered, but when it comes to the healthy beverage portfolio, they tend to stay very loyal with us.”