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Botrista, the company behind data-driven, automated beverage platform, has successfully closed Series C funding round, bringing its total capital raised to USD 120 million since inception. This substantial investment underscores Botrista’s growing market presence and indicates a significant shift in the restaurant industry’s approach to cold beverage menus, reflecting the increasing global demand for quality and innovative flavour profiles.

Since its establishment in 2017, Botrista has rapidly developed into a recognised industry player, working with partners in 37 states. The company’s advanced platform enables restaurants to effortlessly serve an extensive range of high-margin, on-trend cold beverages – from boba drinks and refreshers to smoothies, shakes, cold brew coffees, lemonades, cocktails, and energy drinks – all from a single, efficient machine.

This innovative solution has attracted the attention of major players in the food service industry and secured significant investment from global leaders, including the Series C round’s lead investor. Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC). JFC, a global restaurant company with 18 brands in 33 countries, the second fastest-growing restaurant brand in the world.

Sean Hsu, CEO of Botrista and ex-Tesla automation engineer, expressed his passion for the partnership with JFC: “JFC’s support validates the vision for a more exciting beverage menu,” Hsu said. “This new funding will fuel our hyper-expansion into new markets and help more of our partners elevate their drink menu without increasing labor or complexity.”

JFC, a key player in the food service industry with 18 recognisable brands such as Smashburger, Jollibee and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, believes strongly in Botrista’s potential to transform the restaurant landscape. “Botrista is a game changer for the beverage industry”, Dr. Tony Tan Caktiong, JFC Chairman said. “We’re investing in a company that enables food service operators to deliver a world-class customer experience and provides substantial runway for sustained profitable growth.”

Botrista will invest the capital to meet surging demand. The company will invest further in AI technology to continue to create data-driven beverage menus for brand partners. In addition, it will allocate resources to R&D to broaden its beverage offerings and continue to seek out global suppliers of the best quality ingredients possible.

Jason Valentine, Chief Strategy Officer for Botrista, highlighted the company’s market reach: “We currently serve partners across 37 states, including national restaurant chains, independent restaurants, college campuses, movie theaters, theme parks, and other alternative venues,” Valentine said. “The timing of this fundraising perfectly aligns with the high demand from new partners and significant interest from growing restaurant brands on a global scale.”

For restaurant executives looking to stay ahead of beverage trends and boost profits, Botrista’s solution offers a compelling opportunity. With its innovative technology and strong financial backing, Botrista is well-positioned to continue shaping the cold beverage landscape in food service, offering a clear vision of the future of drink service.

As Botrista strengthens its confident market position, the company remains focused on driving innovation, enhancing operational efficiency, and delivering value to its partners across the food service industry.

Coca-Cola has launched a new limited-edition Coca-Cola 3000 Zero Sugar within the Coca-Cola Creations platform, with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The AI, in cooperation with humans, helped create both the taste and the design of the can, as Coca-Cola tries to identify what the year 3000 would look like for beverages. It is not just Coca-Cola using AI in the soft drinks category. Unilever, owner of PepsiCo, has developed AI tools to optimise various aspects of its business operations. Against this backdrop, the usage of AI in the soft drinks industry is set to grow for the discovery of new flavours and to enhance the efficiency of business operations, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Coca-Cola started with a core question to its customers: What would the year 3000 look like? Consumers were asked how they saw Coca-Cola in the year 3000 via the Coca-Cola Creations platforms. The company then used AI to analyse all the responses to create the framework for the futuristic product based on how people see the future through emotions, ambitions, colours and flavours.

Dragos Dumitrachi, Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Based on these inputs from consumers and its knowledge of beverage trends, the AI created a unique packaging and flavour profile for a carbonate in the year 3000. The packaging format is colourful, with a mix of spherical shapes blended in purple, pink, and blue colours with a pixelated logo, and the AI primarily perceived the future as being sugar-free. This is to be expected as low-calorie carbonates recorded a 39 % growth between 2015 and 2023 globally, with this growth set to continue over the next five years, as consumers increasingly focus on their health and wellness. According to the latest global survey* by Global Data, 81 % of respondents consider that it is nice to have or essential for a product to be good for physical fitness/health.”

Global Data expects the AI market to grow from USD 81 billion in 2022 to USD 90 billion by 2030, with a 35 % compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during 2022-2030. Recent progress in machine learning (ML) on the back of improved algorithms (e.g., Google’s AlphaGo, OpenAI’s GPT-3/ChatGPT, Tesla’s AutoPilot) and increasing computing power have enabled AI to become more widely used in the soft drinks industry.

The AI-driven applications developed by Unilever leverage neural networks and the GPT API is aimed at enhancing the company’s ability to respond to the evolving needs of its consumer base and broader market dynamics. On top of that, Unilever is using AI to identify alternative ingredients that can reinforce the resilience of their supply chains, making their products more sustainable and cost-efficient, and streamlining the number of ingredients without impacting the effectiveness or quality of the products.

Dragos concludes: “The AI market in the soft drinks industry is still in its infancy; the rules and laws that will govern it are still under debate. Global Data is forecasting that the use of AI for supply chain, administrative issues, and the discovery of new flavours and packaging formats in the soft drinks industry will only grow.”

*GlobalData 2023 Q2 Consumer Survey – Global, with 21,595 respondents, published November 2022