As the weather gets hotter, people finally have a legitimate excuse to enjoy the joy of cold drinks. Besides various novel-flavored ice pops and ice cream, beverages are also a good choice to beat the heat. High temperatures drive up sales of various drinks, with July, August, and September being the peak season for online beverage sales. As the beverage market becomes more segmented and consumer attention is limited, beverage brands have to pull out all the stops to make a name for themselves in consumers' minds. Faced with a dazzling array of bottled and boxed drinks, which one can win your heart? And what "dark cuisine" have you tried in the beverage world? -01-

What Drinks Do Men and Women Prefer?

Coca-Cola, well-known to everyone, first entered China in the 1920s. After the 1980s, more domestic carbonated drinks emerged, including today's popular Beijing Beibingyang Soda, Qingdao Laoshan Cola, Guangzhou Asia Soda, and Jianlibao. In the 1990s, more domestic beverage brands came to the fore, such as the well-known Wahaha and Huiyuan. Later, in the Chinese market, herbal tea, milk-containing drinks, plant protein drinks, and tea drinks all experienced development booms. "Every man has his hobbyhorse." If we were to choose the most popular beverage category, which one would take the crown? Shudu Jun (data analysis) counted related topics on Weibo like "My Favorite Drink" and found that overall, tea drinks, fruit and vegetable juice drinks, and coffee won the most consumers' favor. Coffee's high ranking is thanks to the rapid development and strong subsidies of offline coffee shops in recent years. With people's pursuit of health, carbonated drinks, which are suspected of being unhealthy, can only rank fourth. (Click to enlarge) However, men and women prefer different beverage categories: men love tea drinks the most, while women prefer fruit and vegetable juices. In fact, for each category of beverage, consumers value different functions, which also shows some taste differences between men and women in beverages. According to Ipsos's "2018 Beverage Industry Innovation Analysis," for juice, consumers value taste the most; if the flavor is excellent, it's half the success. (Click to enlarge) For "happy water for fat guys" (cola) and ready-to-drink tea, the most important thing is that it tastes refreshing; taste is secondary. When choosing functional drinks, consumers value whether they provide longer-lasting energy, with "provides lasting energy" ranking first at 47%. When choosing coffee drinks, the ability to refresh and invigorate is ranked first. When drinking plant protein drinks and yogurt drinks, most people go for nutritional richness. In other words, women love fruit and vegetable juices largely because of their taste, while men like tea drinks because they value the refreshing quality. -02-

The Best-Tasting and Worst-Tasting Drinks

There are many types of beverages, and under each type, there are even more drinks with different ingredients and flavors. For drinks, being tasty is still important to win people's hearts. Shudu Jun counted related answers on Zhihu about good-tasting drinks and found that among the top 15 best-tasting drinks, eight were fruit and vegetable or fruit tea flavors, three were milk drinks, three were sodas, and only one was an alcoholic drink (rice wine). Ranked first is Jinshayuan Danzhu Leaf Drink from a Sichuan local beverage company. This plant-based drink, which extracts the "essence" of danzhu leaves and tastes cool and refreshing, was once popular but has now been discontinued, yet many people still miss it. (Click to enlarge) Coconut Palm Coconut Juice, despite being a "mudslide" in advertising packaging, has won many people's love and ranks second in popularity. Ranked third and fifth are different flavors of iced black tea. In addition, iced rice wine, Jianlibao orange-honey sports drink, Genki Forest, and iced cola also made the list. Besides drinks that please everyone with good taste, some brands have taken a different approach, aiming to create a niche, novelty image. For example, Laoshan White Flower Snake Grass Water, Kvass, and Heysong Sarsaparilla, which have gained fame in recent years, attract curious brave souls to try and complain, greatly increasing their visibility. Shudu Jun also counted the drinks most hated by Zhihu netizens and found that among the top ten, four were fruit and vegetable juices, such as the top-ranked "Nongfu Orchard 30% Mixed Fruit and Vegetable," which mixes various fruits and vegetables but whose taste is not accepted by some consumers. Brands like Mizone, Scream, Iced Black Tea, and Cola, which are usually popular, have some products that deviate from conventional tastes, such as red date cola or red Scream that tastes like ginseng, making them miss out on being considered tasty by the public. (Click to enlarge) Among the top 10 worst-tasting drinks, two have exotic characteristics: Peruvian frog juice and Indian drink Jaljeera (cumin water), whose names already reveal a dark cuisine vibe. Peruvian frog juice, as the name suggests, is a drink popular in Peru, made from live frogs, with aloe and honey as supplements. Indian drink Jaljeera (cumin water) uses cumin as a base, flavored with lemonade. Although some fruit and vegetable juices taste good, some mixed formulas are hard to accept because they are too sour or too sweet, especially when ingredients like carrots or cilantro, which have clearly polarized public opinions, are added. Some people may like them, but they are not widely accepted. -03-

Summer Is Here: What Should You Drink with Hotpot?

In different occasions and seasons, suitable drinks also vary. For example, on a winter day with howling wind, nothing is more suitable than a hot latte. In summer, the most indispensable thing is the ice-cold "happy water for fat guys." In Shudu Jun's ranking of the most popular sodas, Coca-Cola tops the list. It's worth noting that many local sodas also appear on the list of most popular sodas. Jianlibao, Bingfeng, Blackcurrant Soda, Laoshan Cola, and Asia Sarsaparilla all deserve the title of "pride of domestic brands," and the new generation domestic beverage internet celebrity Genki Forest is also rising. (Click to enlarge) Another thing that cannot be missing in summer is hotpot. High temperatures cannot stop hotpot lovers, and when sweating profusely, you need an ice-cold drink to counteract the heat of the hotpot. However, the best drink with hotpot is not soda. Hotpot flavors vary greatly between the north and south. Northern instant-boiled mutton focuses on meat, while the south has many schools—Chongqing and Sichuan hotpot is heavy on numbing, spicy, and oily flavors; Cantonese "da bin lu" emphasizes tasting the original flavor of ingredients; Yunnan-Guizhou hotpot can have both the sweetness of mushroom soup and the stimulation of sour and spicy soup. No matter what kind of hotpot, sour plum drink is considered the "best companion" for hotpot. Sour plum drink is a traditional summer thirst-quencher, made from dark plums, hawthorn, and rock sugar. It has a mellow taste with a faint smoky flavor, sweet and sour to stimulate the appetite. When you're full, a sip can cut through the grease and let you continue feasting. (Click to enlarge) Besides sour plum drink, soy milk can also relieve spiciness. Vivi Soy Milk is the second most suitable drink with hotpot, and its popularity is not far behind the first. Vivi Soy Milk is more familiar to people in Chongqing and Sichuan. It's a local Sichuan beverage brand. "Cold Vivi in summer, warm Vivi in winter," it has a mellow taste, cuts through grease and spiciness, and is suitable for all ages. It's perfect with hotpot. In addition, herbal tea, coconut juice, and milk tea are also very popular. Besides sodas like cola, Vita Lemon Tea is also well-liked, especially in Hong Kong and Guangdong, where this sweet and sour tea drink is more popular. After exercise, during breaks, when tired from work, after meals, or when eating hotpot... drinks have become an indispensable part. Compared to childhood when a simple glass bottle of soda could make us happy for a long time, today's drinks are more aesthetically pleasing, but the moments that touch our hearts are fewer. In the adult world, drinks have gone beyond ordinary thirst-quenching. Life is bitter enough; we need a drink to sustain us. If one cup isn't enough, then two. Source: NetEase Shudu (ID: datablog163) Author: Pan Ziyi Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.