United Center, Chicago, brands its own water bottles.
Constellation Brands Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center (CMAC), Canandaigua, N.Y., sells only eco-friendly fully-recyclable water containers. And St. Augustine (Fla.) Amphitheater and Ponte Verde Concert Hall are going completely green and installing water stations that fill bring-your-own water bottles.
“Bottled water, long a concessions staple, has experienced somewhat of a renaissance in our concessions business over the past couple of years,” said Jaime Faulkner, CEO of E15, the analytics group owned by Levy Restaurants. “Consistent with broader consumer shifts in behavior, fans are switching from soft drinks to water at a pretty significant rate.”
Soda still accounts for over half of all non-alcholic beverages sold at Levy’s Major League Baseball (MLB) venues for example, explained Faulkner, “but its standing as the drink of choice is aggressively being challenged by the bottled water category. In fact, soda is the only non-alcoholic beverage category experiencing a negative annual trend, while water is growing 15 percent, year-over-year. Juice, energy and sports drinks are also trending nicely, but on much smaller volumes.”
Bottled water’s one percentage annual growth is even more impressive considering it was already the second most purchased non-alcoholic beverage, after soda, accounting for one-third of units sold two years ago, said Faulkner. If the respective MLB trends in non-alcoholic beverage hold true over the next few years, bottled water units sold will pull even with soda by the 2020 season.
“Many teams are exploring sub-sectoring the non-alcoholic beverage categories and breaking them out for multiple sponsorship opportunities, as opposed to the status quo of having one of the major soda sponsors cover all of the non-alcoholic beverage categories with their portfolio,” Faulkner said. Several years ago at United Center, the Bulls and Blackhawks brought in Culligan water as the official water sponsor, and put the team logos on the bottles. Culligan advertising is prominent on multiple levels of the arena and the concourses, as well. Approximately 2,500 bottles of the branded water is sold at each event.
At CMAC, Director of Venue Operations Chris Tuttle said that their plan to be more sustainable and tackle plastic water bottle waste was to initiate a partnership with Just Water, an eco-friendly water company started by actor Jaden Smith and his partner, Drew Fitzgerald.
Just Water’s water is sourced out of Glen Falls, N.Y., located just a few hours away from CMAC. “It’s a clean-water state and seemed perfect for us,” said CMAC Executive Director Lynn Freida, who was also impressed with the way Just Water’s boxed water was eco-friendly. Freida said they “made a good deal” and the price is comparable to their former water supplier’s price.
As of June 4, when Dave Matthews played, Just Water was the only water option available at CMAC.
Drew Fitzgerald, Just Water cofounder, said that he started the parent company, Just Goods, with Smith in 2012.
Just Water debuted in 2015, backed by investors Lionel Richie, Queen Latifah, DJ Calvin Harris, the elder Smiths, and others.
Fitzgerald said that the highlight of the product is its paper-based bottle, which is made from renewable resources that can be regrown naturally. Fifty-four percent is paper from certified forests, 28 percent is plant-based plastic, 15 percent is traditional plastic and three percent is made from aluminum.
Our packaging paper comes from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forests, where new trees replace the ones that are harvested, explained Fitzgerald, adding that the Just Water bottle recently improved from 53 percent to 82 percent renewable resources by using a plant-based plastic derived from responsibly-sourced sugarcane.
“We have third-party verification that with our bottle today, there is a 74 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared to an average, medium weight plastic bottle,” he emphasized.
The cost of Just Water is $1.10-$1.29. Fitzgerald said that the cost of producing the bottle was “slightly higher then a plastic bottle, but we have projections that show when we get to scale the cost will be on-par with traditional plastic water bottles.”
St. Augustine Amphitheater and Ponte Verde Concert Hall took the eco-friendly water concept to the next level. “We wanted to make our venue greener,” said Ryan Murphy, GM. “Around the time of these discussion, Jack Johnson was looking to bring his only show to Florida. One of the conditions to be able to get the show was to meet rider requirements regarding green issues. This gave us the perfect reason to jump-start our initiatives.”
For Murphy, going green meant more than just an eco-friendly bottle. The goal of his team was to eliminate plastic water bottles altogether. Thus the Green Hands initiative was born. “It was a way to minimize waste,” said Megan Murphy, lead of the Green Hands project at the venues. “We transitioned to boxed water, and we set up water refill stations all over the venues and encouraged patrons to bring their own water bottles.”
The water stations have counters on them so the patrons can see how many plastic bottles are not being sent out into the landfills, said Megan Murphy, adding that at this point many thousands of plastic bottles have been saved from the scrapheap.
As part of their community outreach, the venue brought 800 reusable bottles to a nearby elementary school and installed four water refill stations at the school, each costing $2,800. The money to do so was raised at the venues by selling Green Hands reusable bottles to guests. Bottles sold between $10-$12, for various sizes.
Murphy said that the guests love the program. “It’s a happy arrangement,” he said, adding that the concessionaire, Professional Concessionaires, Inc., was a little worried at first about revenue loss but quickly came onboard. “They understand the level of goodwill generated by this program. People feel better about coming, and it’s a positive impact across the board.”
“There were so many water bottles backstage,” said Ryan Murphy. “Now we’ve got the stagehands carrying their reusable water bottles and using the water stations and no plastic bottles falling out of the trash cans.”
Murphy said that Johnson is not the only artist demanding greener venues. About half the artists he wants to book now require green initiatives, many supported by Reverb, a Portland-based company founded by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her musician husband, Adam Gardner of Guster. Reverb provides comprehensive, custom greening programs for music tours while conducting grassroots outreach and education with fans around the globe.
Chris Spinato, project manager and brand sponsorship, Reverb, said that the nonprofit sends a representative on tour with their clients to act as the ‘green manager’ and offers clients a ‘green rider’ that spells out the requirements for a green tour experience.
Reverb clients include Alabama Shakes, John Mayer, Dead & Co. and Zac Brown Band. Spirato said that Reverb enters into contracts with the artists, sometimes paid for directly by the tour and other times financed through sponsors like Clean Energy Advisors and reusable water bottle company Nalgene.
“Our goal is to look for ways that we can all make a positive impact on our environment and reduce our footprint,” said Spinato. “At music venues, there is currently a lot of unnecessary waste.”
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THE MESSAGE IS IN THE WATER BOTTLE
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