10 tips for alcohol brands navigating new beverage categories

As consumer preferences shift toward moderation, wellness, and new drinking occasions, alcohol brands are being pushed to evolve beyond traditional categories to achieve category expansion. Success now requires a balance of easy access to consumer knowledge, innovation, brand trust, and operational agility.

Below are ten key strategies to help alcohol brands compete and grow in emerging beverage spaces.

1. Remember the fundamentals of customer feedback

As AI capabilities expand in data analytics, the fundamentals of market research remain critical for understanding how to interpret, investigate, and uncover meaningful insights. The platforms worth embracing are those that enhance efficiency while preserving the rigor that underpins strong analysis. Ultimately, the value of technology lies in how it is applied: the role of researchers remains to understand people, represent their experiences accurately, and ensure those perspectives inform decision-making. At Infotools, we not only understand technology and its benefits, but also specialize in customer feedback and the nuances that make it truly meaningful.

2. Expand into adjacent categories thoughtfully

Opportunities exist across RTDs, non-alcoholic options, and hybrid beverages—but not all expansions make sense. Successful brands stay close to their core identity, extend into categories where they have credibility, and avoid chasing trends without a clear strategic fit. Stretching too far can dilute brand equity, so adjacency matters more than ever.

3. Invest in continual innovation pipelines

Innovation must move from one-off launches to continuous pipelines. This means developing structured innovation processes, testing and iterating new concepts quickly, and balancing short-term hits with long-term bets. The winners treat innovation as an ongoing capability, not a campaign. A hub to centralize and store all learnings from testing should be considered, in order to revisit and leverage previous studies.

4. Leverage brand equity strategically

Established brands have an advantage, but only when that advantage is used correctly. To maximize brand equity, brands should use core brand cues to build familiarity, adapt tone and messaging for new audiences, and ensure consistency across product lines. Strong brands act as a bridge into new categories, reducing consumer risk.

5. Navigate regulation and compliance early

New categories often come with evolving regulations. Brands should engage regulatory teams early in development, stay ahead of regional compliance requirements, and avoid risky claims in functional or wellness spaces. Compliance is a key enabler of sustainable growth. Consider building regulatory streams into your innovation pipeline.

6. Prioritize occasion-based innovation

Consumers don’t just choose drinks according to their preferences; they also make choices based on context and occasion. With growing availability of data and advancement of technology, it’s never been easier to map occasions such as socializing, relaxing, or holidaying, design products for specific moments, and align marketing with real-life usage scenarios. The focus should be on when and why people drink—not just what they drink.

7. Build credibility beyond alcohol

Moving into low/no alcohol or wellness-adjacent spaces requires trust. To build credibility, brands should partner with experts or credible voices, be transparent about ingredients and processes, and avoid overpromising benefits. Expansion requires repositioning, not just extension. The FIFA Men’s Football World Cup in Qatar saw considerable innovation in 0% alcohol drinks due to local customs, and this trend has grown steadily since.

8. Embrace portfolio thinking

Rather than betting on a single trend, brands should diversify. This includes offering multiple alcohol strengths, various formats such as RTDs, spirits, and mixers, and different price tiers. Brands should think like investors and spread risk across opportunities.

9. Win at retail and in execution

Even the best innovation fails without strong execution. Key priorities include optimizing shelf and online placement, using clear category cues, and educating retailers. Success happens in-store and online.

10. Stay agile with data and feedback

New categories evolve quickly, requiring rapid learning. Leading brands track consumption and occasions, run pilots and limited releases, and iterate based on feedback. Agility is now a competitive advantage. The expansion of beverage categories isn’t a short-term trend—it’s a structural shift. Brands that combine consumer insight, disciplined innovation, and executional excellence will be best positioned to win. The right technology can help organizations work faster, dig deeper into data, collaborate better, and ultimately make more informed, confident decisions that drive stronger business outcomes.

At Infotools, we are focused on helping organisations centralize, analyze, and activate market research and insights data by bringing together data from multiple sources— your brand and customer tracking as well as your foundational segmentation and U&A studies to give you easy access to the data you need to grow your business —into a single environment where teams can explore relationships, uncover trends, and generate insights. Harmoni’s AI is purpose-built for insights teams, with ChatHarmoni guiding the platform’s proven analysis engine rather than replacing it. This ensures results are robust, transparent, and can always be validated using traditional methods.

Harmoni is a long-established, global platform with 30+ years of experience and active in 125 countries. We’ve been part of Ipsos since 2021. The platform enables users to create interactive dashboards and reports that support better, faster decision-making and improve business outcomes by increasing confidence, responsiveness, and depth of understanding.

The platform is structured around three key use cases: an analysis tool for deep, iterative exploration of datasets; reporting and dashboards for sharing KPI-driven insights with stakeholders; and a data hub that stores and integrates multiple datasets for ongoing, long-term analysis.

Harmoni enhances decision-making by making data accessible, explorable, trustworthy, and shareable—enabling organisations to move from slow, fragmented insight generation to fast, confident, and action-oriented decisions.