5 Insider Tips For Breaking Into The Beverage World (Slideshow)

Frava CEO and co-creator Evan Berman came up with the concept of caffeinated fruit juice while he was studying for finals at Colgate University. He tells us that developing the idea for Frava came from drinking orange juice in the morning and wanting caffeine, but hating the taste of coffee.

Brian Liu, creator of Zenify told us, "we used PowerBrands, who has a development lab, to help us get the taste right." Frava used Allen Flavors, and SoBe used a German flavor company based out of Cincinnati. Strahm tells us, "the chemist can make our words come to fruition."

John Bello, founder of SoBe told us, "without a lot of money I wouldn't do it. You need at least $30,000,000 to stay the course [and] rise above competitors." That number seems steep but research tells us you need a hefty chunk of change to break into the beverage world.

When creating his new beverage, Nth Degree, former vice president and manager for Red Bull, Peter Strahm told us, "Not too sweet, it's the Goldilocks thing...[we] went through 8 to12 rounds of that kind of process – tweaking... [and] eventually you get to a point where you're tasting what you thought you described before." He says, "we thought we hit it right with Nth degree because we didn't have any issue that came forward on taste. Sometimes we get adults that say it's still too sweet but I'm going to say most of them are about 70 or 80."

Real Beanz representative Jenna Burke explained "It's really about face to face...What makes our product is the reaction, [and] when it comes to a good product, it's the experience." Frava uses a tactic they like to call "guerilla marketing," which entails going to major events and putting their product directly into the hands of unexpecting and potentially thirsty consumers