The Coca-Cola Co. and Bacardi will launch a co-branded RTD cocktail next year, a move that follows the soft-drinks giant’s partnership with Brown-Forman on Jack Daniel’s.
The Bacardi Mixed with Coca-Cola cocktail will initially be released in Mexico and “select” EU markets in 2025.
The companies said the “global benchmark” for the new drink's abv is 5% but added it would vary by market. The promotional launch includes packaging that displays an abv of 5.9%.
“We are continuing to develop our portfolio as a total beverage company, including in the growing alcohol RTD market. This new relationship with Bacardi Limited supports our strategic expansion,” Coca-Cola Co. chairman and CEO James Quincey said.
Bacardi CEO Mahesh Madhavan added: “Through this relationship, we will expand our reach and accessibility so that even more consumers of legal drinking age can enjoy this classic Bacardi rum and Coca-Cola cocktail.”
In 2022, Coca-Cola teamed up with Brown-Forman to produce a cocktail with Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and Coca-Cola.
That deal marked the first time the two companies had worked together on a product, although Brown-Forman had previously released pre-mixed Jack Daniel’s and Cola RTDs, which it has now discontinued.
Last year, Coca-Cola announced the launch of a co-branded RTD with Pernod Ricard. The two companies rolled out the vodka-based Absolut & Sprite cocktail.
Before the launch with Brown-Forman, Coca-Cola worked with Molson Coors to release a Topo Chico Hard Seltzer and had also experimented with alcoholic soft drinks, including a hard lemonade in Japan.
However, it had not used the Coca-Cola brand on an alcohol product until the alliance with Brown-Forman.
When that partnership was first announced in 2022, Ricard Woodard noted for Just Drinks it underlined a shift in attitudes at Coca-Cola about alcohol, a company and brand that has millions of sub-LDA consumers among its most avid consumers.
“Famously reluctant to get involved in the past, under current CEO James Quincey it has dipped more than one toe into the murky waters of booze, via Topo Chico hard seltzer and alcoholic spinoffs of its Simply and Fresca brands,” wrote Woodard.
“That this venture is happening at this moment also reflects the swift and deep changes currently sweeping through the large and amorphous RTD category. Historically perceived in many western markets as a low-margin gateway into bev alc, it is now a hugely diverse sphere encompassing everything from hard seltzers to premium premixed cocktails, from reinvented alcopops to hard teas, coffees and kombuchas.”
