Carlsberg’s Seth & Riley’s Garage shuns sweet flavors, garish colors

The Danish brewer said the 4.6% ABV US launch – into a ‘hard drinks’ category now worth $1bn/annum – tapped into the nation’s tradition of homemade lemonades.

Bottles have been designed to look handmade with ring pull openings, and Carlsberg will also supply bars with ‘branded jars’ for customers to drink from.

Valeria Krynekskaya, Carlsberg’s innovation platform director, said: “We identified a significant gap for a transitional drink for young adults from sweet beverages to more sophisticated tastes such as beer or wine.​

“The majority of current alcoholic drinks for this target group are overly sweet and use garish colors to appeal to a very young market,”​ she added.

“Our proposition is trendy and modern, in a mature and responsible way,”​ Krynekskaya said.

Marketing around the new brand for ‘young, laid-back and relaxed young people aged 25 and over’ will feature the tagline ‘Kind of genius. Kind of’

Carlsberg said the core brand idea for Seth & Riley’s is the slightly odd: ‘It all starts with an empty garage’. Presumably, you then put something in the garage…