Sainsbury’s has rolled out a range of fruit and vegetable drinks inspired by juice bars as part of its biggest-ever soft drink category revamp.

The soft drinks range refresh, which kicked off in April and has continued this month, saw the retailer launch 93 own-label lines under the By Sainsbury’s banner and revamp a further 128.

In the past few weeks it has rolled out 250ml bottles of fruit and veg juices containing ingredients such as parsnip and cucumber (rsp: 89p). The drinks, also available in one-litre bottles since April, were inspired by high-street juice bars, said soft drinks buyer, James Curtis. “You can visit a juice bar somewhere like Borough Market and have a really nice fruit and veg juice made up, and we wanted to offer something similar,” he said.

The launch comes in the wake of Tesco’s rollout last month of its 12-strong Juice Bar range (rsp: £1.10 per 250ml bottle) last month. Both retailers are promoting their ranges with ‘five-for’ offers to target the adult lunchbox market.

Single-serve own-label juices and juice drinks are outperforming larger packs, up 1.8% by value compared with a 0.7% decline in multiserve packs [SymphonyIRI 52w/e 14 May 2012].

Sainsbury’s five-for promotion also covers its new flavoured coconut waters targeted at consumers who want the health benefits of coconut water but don’t like the taste. Sales of coconut water and drinks have risen 370% year-on-year to almost £4m [SymphonyIRI].

Much of Sainsbury’s recent soft drink NPD has had a health focus. In April it launched Pink Bolt, a version of its Blue Bolt energy drink that contains just nine calories per 250ml can. It is also targeting picnic-goers with the roll-out of four-packs of 330ml bottled juice drinks sold in cardboard carry packs with a handle.

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