Need mixers for your party? Craft beverage companies get creative with lemonades, ginger ales and tonics

As the festive season launches and parties move to drawing rooms, craft beverage brands rush to equip home bars with refreshing, healthier lemonades, ginger ales and even fragrant edible garnishes

From Deepavali till New Year, there is a surge in consumption, driven by a younger population with considerable spending capacity and a desire to experiment with new flavours. Enter homegrown, craft, non-alcoholic bottled beverages that offer respite from sugary fruit juices and regular mass-produced colas. While there was a flurry of premium tonic waters pre-pandemic, now it is time for craft lemonades and ginger concoctions.

Such is the Indian penchant for soft drinks, that the industry is growing at 16.2% to reach a mammoth $20.4 billion by 2030, according to Goldstein Market Research.

Sepoy and Co. Mixers, known for its variety box of tonics, launched a line of lemonades (at ₹95 per 200ml bottle) as soon as the second wave of COVID-19 subsided in June 2021. “Growing up, we always had some sort of lime cordial or a lemon fizzy drink. So, we wanted to look beyond the lemon offerings currently available in stores,” says founder Angad Soni.