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ORLANDO — A 2-year-old boy was accidentally served sangria instead of orange juice at a Lakeland Olive Garden last month, prompting Orlando-based Darden Restaurants to caution its employees to be more careful with alcoholic drinks.
Earlier this week, a toddler was mistakenly given a small amount of alcohol at a Detroit-area Applebee’s restaurant — because a mixed drink was mislabeled as apple juice. Get the full story »
Look out, Four Loko. There’s a fruity-booze rival coming to the market — Blast from Colt 45 — and rapper Snoop Dogg is its pitch man.
Blast, produced by Pabst Blue Ribbon’s Colt 45, is an alcoholic drink but does not contain caffeine, the ingredient that got Four Loko and a group of partying college students in trouble last year. Get the full story »
Bethenny Frankel. (Skinnygirl)
Fortune Brands Inc., seeking to capitalize on the emerging market of low-calorie cocktails, has acquired the Skinnygirl brand created by reality-television star Bethenny Frankel.
Fortune’s Beam Global Spirits & Wine Inc. unit aims to build on the rapid growth of Skinnygirl Margarita — a bottled cocktail that boasts 100 calories per four-ounce serving — by expanding its distribution and introducing other drinks under the label. Get the full story »
U.S. consumers started drinking more higher-end spirits last year, leading the industry to see signs of a fragile recovery.
Liquor companies sold 190.7 million nine-liter cases in the United States in 2010, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States trade group. That was up 2 percent from 2009, when a recession crimped consumers’ drinking habits. Get the full story »
The Chicago-based manufacturer of popular caffeinated alcohol drink Four Loko said Tuesday it will remove the caffeine from its products, pulling the blend off the market just as the Food and Drug Administration is poised to ban it.
Phusion Projects said in a statement posted on its Web site that the company will remove caffeine and two other ingredients from its products going forward. The announcement came as the FDA is expected to find as early as Wednesday that caffeine is an unsafe food additive to alcoholic drinks. That finding essentially would ban Four Loko and other drinks like it.
