Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993                   TAG: 9306230040
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LOW-CALORIE DRINK GOES TO MARKET WITH LESS-IS-MORE PITCH

Debutante 1 speaks: "And she's got the nerve to say her father makes more money than my father."

The two debs commiserate. Up walks actor Judge Reinhold, of "Beverly Hills Cop" and "Ruthless People" fame. He isn't dressed properly, and one deb points out: "This is a black-tie affair."

Judge: "Sorry, but I'm on a quest for ideal refreshment."

Deb 1: "Well then, go to the kitchen and get a bottle of mineral water!"

Judge: "Mineral water? That's tasteless and boring!"

Deb 1: "Well then, scrunge up some change and pop it into a diet soda machine!"

Judge: "Most diet soda is full of artificial coloring! Artificial, you know, like your personalities!"

A waiter speaks: "Would you ladies like some 2 Calorie Quest?"

Judge: "Hey, I'm a man on a quest. For ideal refreshment."

Waiter: "2 Calorie Quest is ideal refreshment. With clear, sparkling spring water, luscious fruit flavors. And only two calories."

Only two calories. That's the key message Quest wants heard in this radio commercial script.

With a $40 million advertising budget, Seagram Beverage Co. hopes to capture a big chunk of the $1 billion New Age beverage market.

New Age used to refer to meditative types who practiced yoga and tai chi, shunned alcohol and loaded their vegetarian diets with spaghetti squash. Now, the label is being given for fruit-flavored drinks like Quest, Clearly Canadian, Appalachian Premier Sodas made by Roanoke's Quibell Corp., Nordic Mist (Coca-Cola) and Ice Mountain (Perrier).

Seagram is betting that its low-calorie drinks - flavored peach citrus, tangerine lime, raspberry and black cherry - sweetened with aspartame (Nutrasweet) will take over the market when consumers find out what the other makers of flavored and sweetened waters didn't tell you.

Their products have calories. About nine calories per ounce, in fact.

In another year, labels on the waters will have to list calories. For now, the customer's only clue that a beverage is not calorie-free is mention on the label of ingredients such as sucrose, malt, maltose, lactose, fructose, corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, molasses, dextrose or dextrin.

Some flavored waters are calorie-less, such as Quibell's flavored spring water. Just look at the label.

The water battle is being fed by society's trend toward fearing everything, tap water to sugar to alcohol. In its May issue, the trade publication Food Business referred to "neo-prohibitionism" as a term for the consumer's tempered alcohol consumption that is driving companies like Seagram to look for new markets.

So, how is Quest doing? Mark Taxel of New York, executive vice president of marketing for Seagram, said market volume has ranged from 2 percent to 13 percent.

Bruno Rolando of Roanoke, who handles Quibell's marketing, said he hears it's gathering dust on store shelves. Rolando isn't too happy, anyway, because Seagram's promotional material, which compared calories among the various flavored waters, had the wrong count and the wrong name for Quibell's product.

Eskimo Pie Corp. of Richmond has teamed with Seven-Up USA of Dallas to market frozen desserts. James L. Cheatham, spokesman for Eskimo Pie, said the company will develop and test new Seven-Up products before summer 1994. Eskimo Pie now holds licenses for major national brands including Tootsie Roll, Ghirardelli Chocolate and Welch's fruit juice.

Groceries in Roanoke cost 2.8 percent more this month than a year ago, according to the Market Basket monthly survey by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It was the largest increase of the four survey areas: Roanoke, Richmond, Norfolk and Northern Virginia. The cost of the 71 items surveyed was 0.4 percent more in June than in May. What increased the most? Corn flakes, oranges, frozen ocean perch fillet and salmon.

This warning from the state's Division of Consumer Affairs: A group called American Disabled Veterans, which is supposedly selling key rings to raise money for homeless veterans, is not registered with the state and is not affiliated with Disabled American Veterans.