You've been seeing them appear on supermarket shelves for a few weeks now: hard seltzer is coming to France. After conquering the American market in less than a year, this new carbonated, low-alcohol drink is invading the French market. But what is the perfect recipe?
As a reminder, a hard seltzer is an alcoholic and flavoured sparkling water. There are also "wine seltzer" where the alcoholic water is replaced by wine. In the United States, hard seltzer appeared 5 years ago, and now one American in two consumes it.
In France, where a few American brands have already established themselves (Snowmelt in the lead), many French brands have decided to take the plunge and tackle this new market. This is the case, for example, of Opéan, Fefe or Ogeu, which has just launched its first hard seltzer in three flavours. "There is currently a craze like we haven't seen for years for a new product", analyses Camille Bourigault, head of the Rayons Boissons section.
Hard seltzer can be declined in an infinite number of flavours. While many manufacturers have decided to launch with classic flavours: citrus (lemon, orange or grapefruit), strawberry or peach, as with Fefe or Opéan, there is still plenty of room for creativity.
The American bar and restaurant inventory management platform Backbar has identified the most popular flavours with consumers. Among them, the black cherry, still very rare in France, represents more than one in four hard seltzer sold in the United States. Mango and lime complete the podium. However, according to Backbar, trends are changing rapidly: citrus fruits are becoming less popular, while tropical variants (such as pineapple) are winning over consumers.
Hard seltzer is therefore an important diversification opportunity for French players in a context where the proportion of the population consuming low-alcohol drinks is constantly increasing: today, a third of French people say they consume them and this figure rises to 40% among 18-25 year olds.