New Stroh Toast Is ‘To Your Health’ : Brewer Introduces Juice-Based Drink as Beer Sales Sag

Along the bottling line at the Stroh Brewery Co.’s plant in Van Nuys--where the air is thick with the smell of beer--thin, 10-ounce bottles of a juice-based soft drink called Sundance are being boxed and shipped off for their debut this week at California supermarkets.

Stroh, which has a reputation for serving blue-collar beer drinkers, is hoping that premium-priced, all-natural Sundance will bring in a new market: upscale and health-conscious young people.

1st Non-Alcoholic Drink

The move reflects an effort by the Detroit-based brewer to compensate for a shrinking beer market by following the trend toward natural, caffeine-free beverages. Sundance is the company’s first non-alcoholic drink.

“We’re hoping there are lots of people who love juice, but, toward the afternoon, they find it a bit heavy,” Stroh’s president, Roger Fridholm, said in an interview last week at the Van Nuys plant. “What we’re offering them is a carbonated product that’s lighter.”

Sundance is more than 70% juice, with carbonated water and no added sugar. The beverage comes in apple, grapefruit, cranberry and orange flavors.

The only drinks now on the market comparable to Sundance--such as Napa Naturals made by Adams Natural Beverage in Sacramento--are produced by smaller regional companies that sell mostly through health-food stores.

Stroh will sell Sundance at first only in California, a state that industry experts say may be particularly receptive to such a product. Eventually, it plans to produce the beverage at all six of its breweries nationwide.

Stroh, the nation’s third-largest brewer, acquired the Van Nuys facility as part of the 1982 purchase of Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. The 32-year-old plant supplies 11 Western states with Stroh’s and its sister beers, including Old Milwaukee, Schlitz, Erlanger and Schaefer. Stroh bought the F&M; Schaefer Brewing Co. in 1981.

Sundance is not Stroh’s first non-beer beverage. That distinction goes to a drink, made from juice and alcohol, called White Mountain Cooler, which has been produced at the Van Nuys plant since last March. After the wine coolers, Fridholm said, Sundance was the next logical step in the company’s evolution.

Beer Consumption Down

Overall, U.S. beer consumption has dropped about 1% since 1983, according to Beverage Industry magazine. And, although the amount of beer brewed in the United States was down 1% over the last year, according to the National Beer Wholesalers’ Assn., the amount of imported beer sold in the United States has increased about 10%.

As foreign competition has gotten stronger, Stroh has decreased its beer production in recent years. According to Beverage Industry, the company made 23.4 million barrels of beer last year, down more than 21% from 1978.

Stroh, with sales last year of $1.6 billion, has seen its market share shrink to 12.6% last year from the 23% held by Stroh and Schlitz in 1975.

Juice-based soft drinks, however, are growing in popularity, industry analysts say. Pepsi’s Slice, with a 3% share of the $25-billion-a-year beverage industry, has established a niche that is now being tested by Coca-Cola’s new Minute Maid sodas. Both drinks are 10% juice--one-seventh the amount in Sundance.

The soft-drink giants will be formidable competitors for Stroh because of their better-organized retail networks, said Robert Weinberg, an independent St. Louis beer marketing consultant.

“I don’t know how any brewer expects to compete with Coke and Pepsi,” Weinberg said. “I’m not enthusiastic about brewers in this business.”

Not Positioned as Diet Drink

Moreover, Slice and Minute Maid sodas come in low-calorie varieties sweetened with aspartame--commonly known by the trade name Nutrasweet. Sundance, which is not expected to appear as a diet drink, has more than 100 calories in a 10-ounce serving, about as much as a low-calorie beer.

“The big growth market is in diet soft drinks,” said Roy D. Burry, who follows the beverage industry for Kidder Peabody & Co., a New York brokerage firm. “The consumer who wants all-natural probably wants low-calorie, too.”

Fridholm said consumers know that they can’t have it both ways. “Unless you’re talking plain water, there’s no way to get around calories in a drink that tastes good and is good for you,” he said.

Compared to its competitors, Sundance isn’t cheap. A four-pack of 10-ounce bottles retails for $2.50 to $3. A six-pack of 12-ounce Napa Naturals goes for about $2.40, and a comparable package of Slice costs consumers less than $1.90.

Sundance’s connection with Stroh is not apparent to the shopper. The company has started a new subsidiary, Pacific Health Beverage, to market the product, and the Stroh name does not appear on the Sundance label.

Emphasizing ‘Good Health’

What does appear on the label, which is designed to resemble that of a health-food product, is a list of what the beverage does not have. No additives. No preservatives. No added sugar or fructose. No artificial sweeteners. No color added. No caffeine. “Enjoy in Good Health,” it says.

The advertising campaign is not that of an upstart company. Stroh will spend $4.2 million on television ads that will run from April 21 through December. The ads feature Sundance at beach parties, in bars, at the office and at home.

Stroh has adapted the 1970 Van Morrison song “Moondance” for its ads, with adapted lyrics that say: “It’s a natural time for a Sundance.”

The plant, which employs about 400 hourly workers and 100 salaried ones, hasn’t grown all that much since its wine cooler and soft drink expansions. Most of the work is automated, including the most complicated process, bottling and packaging.

For Sundance, the plant merely added two small rooms, installed about $5 million in aluminum tanks that store the fruit-juice concentrate and put in pumps that mix in the same treated water used in the beers.

“It’s a simple process, mixing concentrate and seltzer,” Fridholm conceded. “You could do the same thing at home yourself, but chances are you wouldn’t.”