Case Study: How Leading Ready-to-Drink Coffee Brands Found Growth Through Daypart Intelligence

The Challenge

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The ready-to-drink coffee category faced a complex growth puzzle. While morning consumption dominated with major players capturing the largest market share, even category leaders were seeing declining performance. Meanwhile, emerging challengers with cleaner ingredient profiles were growing rapidly, some by more than 30% year-over-year.

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The core challenge was twofold: established brands needed to understand why market dominance wasn’t translating to growth, while emerging brands sought insights to scale their success. Traditional analysis focused heavily on morning consumption, potentially missing opportunities in other dayparts. At the same time, rising consumer scrutiny of ingredient lists (76% of shoppers now consider ingredients a dealbreaker) created both a risk and a strategic opening across the category.

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Without granular insight into daypart performance, ingredient impact, and sentiment drivers, many brands were making decisions with partial visibility, leaving growth opportunities untapped.

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The Solution

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Harmonya delivered a comprehensive category intelligence analysis that reshaped how ready-to-drink coffee brands view market dynamics and growth opportunities. The solution combined three key data layers:

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Daypart Performance Analysis: By enriching product data and pairing it with sales performance, the analysis revealed detailed daypart indexing across the category. Beyond confirming morning dominance, it uncovered white space in afternoon and night occasions, exposing high-growth potential for targeted innovation and marketing.

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Clean Ingredient Impact Assessment: Through AI-powered ingredient mapping, the analysis quantified the relationship between ingredient composition and sales. Products containing fewer “bad ingredients” (like certain sugars, artificial sweeteners, and additives) consistently outperformed the category average.

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Consumer Sentiment Intelligence: Using insights from hundreds of reviews per brand, the analysis surfaced consumer-driven differentiators: language directly reflecting how shoppers perceive flavor, value, and experience. These insights revealed each brand’s strongest positioning territory and informed messaging frameworks grounded in authentic shopper feedback.

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The analysis also mapped emerging claim trends (21 high-growth consumer demands ranging from “Real Sugar” (up over 3,700%) to “Sustainable” (+15%)) pinpointing which brands were best aligned to capture evolving preferences.

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The Results

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Untapped Daypart Opportunities: The analysis confirmed that while mornings drive volume, afternoon and night segments represent substantial whitespace. Certain brands were outperforming the category average by more than 160% in afternoon consumption, while others dominated night occasions with indices above 2,000.

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Clean Ingredient Advantage: The correlation between ingredient simplicity and growth was clear. Brands with zero to minimal flagged ingredients saw 20–30% growth, while those with higher ingredient concerns declined. These insights provided clear direction for reformulation and repositioning.

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Consumer-Led Positioning: By capturing authentic consumer language, each brand gained a clearer view of how to position themselves. For some, it was about flavor satisfaction; for others, “value without compromise” or “premium everyday moments”, each rooted in actual shopper sentiment.

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Emerging Claim Roadmap: Tracking the fastest-growing claims equipped brands to guide innovation and portfolio planning. Claims like “Real Sugar” and “No Dairy” showed measurable sales impact, providing clarity on where to invest next.

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Harmonya’s analysis shifted the category conversation from static share reporting to strategic intelligence. Brands gained the ability to pinpoint growth drivers, refine positioning, and make data-backed decisions about innovation and market expansion in the evolving ready-to-drink coffee space.

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