---
title: "After Sugar-Free, Zero-Calorie, and Low-Burden, the Next Battle in the Beverage Industry Has Begun"
description: "In recent years, the beverage industry has become increasingly competitive. From sugar-free tea to sparkling water, from juice to functional drinks, whenever a single product gains momentum, a large number of followers quickly emerge, copying formulas, tweaking flavors, making minor packaging changes, and offering low prices to capture market share through speed. However, few products truly endure. The market appears lively but lacks innovation. Most companies are not creating new products but engaging in rapid imitation. Previously, a supplier for Pangdonglai mentioned a viewpoint: 'Consumers are not actually averse to new products; they just dislike new products without memorable points. The industry does not lack demand, but rather products truly developed from 'experience and value perception.'"
author: "Asher"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-11-12"
categories: "Consumer & Categories"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8wbYdjjbZBFP782Fo29FaA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%97%A0%E7%B3%96-0%E5%8D%A1-%E4%BD%8E%E8%B4%9F%E6%8B%85%E4%B9%8B%E5%90%8E-%E9%A5%AE%E6%96%99%E8%A1%8C%E4%B8%9A%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%8B%E4%B8%80%E5%9C%BA%E6%88%98%E4%BA%89%E5%BC%80%E5%A7%8B%E4%BA%86-6ee9b23f.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/after-sugar-free-zero-calorie-and-low-burden-the-next-battle-in-the-beve-6ee9b23f/"
citation: "Asher. “After Sugar-Free, Zero-Calorie, and Low-Burden, the Next Battle in the Beverage Industry Has Begun.” New Distribution, 2025-11-12. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/after-sugar-free-zero-calorie-and-low-burden-the-next-battle-in-the-beve-6ee9b23f/"
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---

# After Sugar-Free, Zero-Calorie, and Low-Burden, the Next Battle in the Beverage Industry Has Begun

> In recent years, the beverage industry has become increasingly competitive. From sugar-free tea to sparkling water, from juice to functional drinks, whenever a single product gains momentum, a large number of followers quickly emerge, copying formulas, tweaking flavors, making minor packaging changes, and offering low prices to capture market share through speed. However, few products truly endure. The market appears lively but lacks innovation. Most companies are not creating new products but engaging in rapid imitation. Previously, a supplier for Pangdonglai mentioned a viewpoint: 'Consumers are not actually averse to new products; they just dislike new products without memorable points. The industry does not lack demand, but rather products truly developed from 'experience and value perception.'

In recent years, the beverage industry has become increasingly competitive.
From sugar-free tea to sparkling water, from juice to functional drinks, whenever a single product gains a bit of momentum, a large number of followers quickly emerge, copying formulas, tweaking flavors, making minor packaging changes, and offering low prices, attempting to capture market share through speed.
However, few products truly endure. The market appears lively, but innovation is scarce. Most companies are not creating new products but engaging in rapid imitation.
Previously, a supplier for Pangdonglai mentioned a viewpoint: "Consumers are not actually averse to new products; they just dislike new products without memorable points. The industry does not lack demand, but rather products truly developed from 'experience and value perception.'"
This aligns closely with a case observed by New Distribution in recent market research—Guangdong Yinxue Group. As a company long dedicated to beverage production and R&D, Yinxue has not followed the industry's repeatedly exploited path of "sugar-free/zero-calorie/low-burden," but instead chose another route: putting real ingredients back into beverages, making value perception intuitive and explicit, enhancing taste, and ensuring zero preservatives.
Yinxue Group launched two new products with distinctly different concepts: "One Fresh Lychee Juice Soda" and "One Slice Fresh Lemon Lactic Acid Bacteria Drink." Rather than intensifying flavors, they allow consumers to experience unexpected taste layers, and the new easy-open can design lets consumers directly see a fresh fruit, greatly enhancing the "refreshment and pleasure" during drinking.
Out of curiosity, New Distribution had an in-depth exchange with Xue Wenfa, Assistant to the Chairman of Guangdong Yinxue Group, focusing on a core question: Why choose to redo the carbonated beverage category, which is already highly mature and even considered to have "no room for innovation"?
Yinxue's case may offer some inspiration for the next phase of growth in the entire beverage industry.
**Why Carbonated Beverages Deserve a Redo?**
Carbonated beverages are not a new category; they have a well-established consumer mindset in the Chinese market. Whether it's the stimulating refreshment of cola systems or the refreshing lightness of sparkling water in recent years, carbonated beverages have always been among high-frequency consumption.
But over the past three years, a subtle shift has been occurring in this track: what consumers drink, where they drink, and why they drink are all quietly changing, and this precisely determines that carbonated beverages need to be "redone."
First, under the pressure of multiple overlapping economic cycles, people feel somewhat suppressed, and many underlying emotions need release. "Refreshment" is a direct relaxation experience, a characteristic of carbonated beverages, but consumers' understanding of "refreshment" has changed. In the past, the refreshment of soft drinks was the intense stimulation of "sweetness + fizz," a one-sip impact, a sensory model long established by classic sodas like Coca-Cola.
But today, demand is increasingly diversified. Some consumers are beginning to seek a different kind of layered refreshment—not stronger, but more delicate. They hope to "taste the ingredients, experience changes in texture, and have a clean, not overly sticky, entrance," desiring "freshness" and "comfortable aftertaste" beyond just being refreshing—a sense of "crisp coolness."
Second, consumption scenarios have also changed. Previously, the main purpose of drinking soda was to quench thirst. Now, beverage consumption often occurs in social settings such as family gatherings, friend get-togethers, evening hangouts, hotpot and BBQ meals, where there is a need for topics and health attributes.
Beverages now serve not only to quench thirst but also to liven the atmosphere, create sharing moments, provide topics, and offer experiences. Therefore, whether a beverage can be "presentable," become the center of attention on the table, be photographed, make people want another cup, and be recommended to others—clean ingredient lists are necessary, but the product's value proposition and stance are even more critical.
Third, carbonation is no longer viewed as a single category but as a taste-enhancing technology. In the past, when we talked about carbonation, it meant soda; now carbonation can be layered onto tea to become sparkling tea; onto lactic acid bacteria drinks to become sparkling yogurt drinks; onto juice to become juice soda; and onto low-alcohol drinks to even become the flavor structure foundation for a new generation of slightly tipsy products, showing diversification and broad demand.
Xue Wenfa told New Distribution, "Carbonated beverages deserve a redo not because of a market gap or because old flavors have failed, but because consumers' ways of feeling, drinking scenarios, and the expression of taste technology have all changed. The industry does not lack new products, but it lacks new products with memorable points, experiential value, and a reason to exist."
Yinxue Group's new products, "One Fresh Lychee Juice Soda" and "One Slice Fresh Lemon Lactic Acid Bacteria Drink," are built on this foundation.
One Fresh / One Slice
**How Is the Carbonated Experience Being Reconstructed?**
In the exchange with Yinxue Group, what I focused on most was not the products themselves, but the underlying thinking that led to these two products. Because when the industry generally believes the carbonated track is mature and difficult to break into, they chose to return to the drinking experience itself and re-examine the value composition of carbonated beverages.
Xue Wenfa told New Distribution that when launching these two products, Yinxue's logic started from a very basic question:
When consumers drink carbonated beverages, what are they actually feeling? What do they want to get? What is the underlying motivation?
The Yinxue team's conclusion was that consumers are not only feeling the ingredient list and functionality—these are necessary conditions for excellent products. The impulse that intertwines sensibility and rationality is the original driving force of FMCG: the moment of entry, the moment of swallowing, and the instant after drinking—whether there is a physically and mentally pleasurable "crisp coolness."
In other words, the true competitiveness of carbonated beverages lies not in information but in sensation. And whenever sensation is involved, it involves taste layers and value presentation.
This is the foundation on which "One Fresh Lychee" and "One Slice Fresh Lemon Lactic Acid Bacteria Drink" can stand. **They do not simply use lychee and lemon as flavors, but present real fruit flavors as explicit value points.**
Consumers can understand at a glance: Why is it called "One Fresh Lychee" and "One Slice Fresh Lemon Lactic Acid Bacteria Drink"?
Unlike past flavor-named beverages, these two products emphasize "visible, imaginable, and matching when drunk." This direct, perceptible, and self-explanatory value expression is precisely the core reason consumers are willing to repurchase.
**Second, the layering of taste.** During development, Yinxue did not emphasize impact but pursued a layered refreshment.
"One Fresh Lychee" combines the sweetness of lychee, the fresh flavor enhancement, the rising sensation of carbon dioxide bubbles, and the refreshing aftertaste in the throat, creating a rhythmic drinking experience. It is not only stunning at first sight and captivating at first sip, but also makes you want a second sip. This experiential logic aligns with the aforementioned shift toward "delicate refreshment."
Similarly, "One Slice Fresh Lemon Lactic Acid Bacteria Drink" addresses a long-standing industry problem: lactic acid bacteria drinks tend to be heavy, sticky, and thick, and when carbonated, if the taste is not handled well, it can result in "flavor clash" or "tongue-coating stickiness." Yinxue adjusted the formula structure by reducing heaviness, enhancing acidity, and boosting fermentation aroma, allowing the bubbles to elevate the mouthfeel. The lactic acid bacteria drink is no longer "greasy," and the lemon is no longer "sharp"; the entire drinking experience becomes light, soft, and clean. This light-textured sparkling yogurt drink is still rare in the market.
Finally, there is the update in value presentation. Carbonated beverages entering social and group drinking scenarios means the product needs displayable selling points.
Yinxue chose the intuitive expression "One Fresh/One Slice" in naming, giving consumers an immediate cognitive anchor and taste imagination at the first moment of purchase and consumption. This presentation does not rely on external education but lets the product itself serve the explanatory function—the product itself is the best advertisement. This enhances discussion and recommendation willingness across channels, scenarios, and sharing.
From a product development perspective, "One Fresh/One Slice" not only represents a significant breakthrough in category iteration but also innovates in reorganizing new drinking experience scenarios, encouraging consumer sharing and repurchase.
**Yinxue: Not Making Products, but Satisfying Consumer Needs**
If we only look at the products themselves, "One Fresh/One Slice" seems to be two carbonated beverages with fresh flavors and clear value; but what truly matters is not what they look like, but why Yinxue was able to create them.
In a mature track widely considered difficult to innovate, most companies differentiate products through naming, labels, and parameters, while Yinxue directly returns to taste experience and drinking pleasure.
The premise of this shift is not accidental but a matter of capability.
Yinxue's ability to continuously innovate lies in its unique position in the industry chain. For a long time, Yinxue has undertaken R&D and production for numerous beverage brands, gaining exposure to the real market performance of many different types of products.
This means Yinxue sees not "what brands think consumers will like," but "what consumers are truly willing to drink, repurchase, and reject." This density of feedback loops close to the consumer end is the fundamental reason it can grasp taste trends.
This insight into consumer needs is the core of product capability. And Yinxue can translate this insight into scalable products because it possesses a closed loop of "R&D capability + process capability + stable mass production capability."
Xue Wenfa told New Distribution that Yinxue Group has 25 years of R&D and innovation accumulation, holding 9 invention patents, 11 proprietary processes, over 50,000 mature formulas, and has passed BRC system, FSSC22000, ISO22000, and organic certifications, with experience in successfully incubating over 100 brands.
In the production of the "One Fresh" and "One Slice" series, Yinxue uses a proprietary comprehensive sterilization technology that ensures a "crisp cool" taste while maintaining a clean ingredient list with zero preservatives—a strong competitive barrier built on years of technical accumulation by Guangdong Yinxue Group!
With such capabilities, "One Fresh Lychee" and "One Slice Fresh Lemon Lactic Acid Bacteria Drink" were not designed but deduced, aligning with both consumer demand changes and Yinxue's own capability curve.
**Final Thoughts**
From Yinxue's case, we can see that the competitive logic of the beverage industry is changing. **Beverages are not just thirst quenchers; they are also part of emotions, relationships, and scenarios.**
In this process, value expression is becoming more direct. Consumers want to see, imagine, and match what they drink. Beverages need to satisfy basic needs while also being "passable to others," even naturally becoming a shareable "try this." Such products with multiple value dimensions—shareable, discussable, and memorable—are more likely to drive repurchase than products emphasizing a single difference.
In this context, Yinxue's "One Fresh/One Slice" deserves attention not because it launched two new products, but because it offers a product innovation approach:
**Return to taste, not stack labels; enter scenarios, not follow trends; focus on experience, not just differentiation.**
Finally, if any friends are interested in Yinxue Group's case and products, you can add WeChat for further exchange:


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: Asher
- Published: 2025-11-12
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/after-sugar-free-zero-calorie-and-low-burden-the-next-battle-in-the-beve-6ee9b23f/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8wbYdjjbZBFP782Fo29FaA

## Copyright and AI use

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