LaCroix: Air + water + essence = 😍

Americans are divided on a lot of issues right now. LaCroix, the sparkly water, is not one of them.

People love LaCroix, and they love to love LaCroix. It’s just flavored sparkly water, but there’s something kitschy and yet pure about loving something so simple so very much.

It’s calorie-free and carefree; the cans clearly did not anticipate that reining minimalist Instagram aesthetic. Yet the brand seems to have found its most natural expression in that very medium, where people enthusiastically document how it brightens up their pedestrian packed lunches and effervescent craft projects.

In one of the early signs that LaCroix was becoming a thing, the writer Mary H.K. Choi wrote in the New York Times Magazine: “LaCroix is not as exhilarating as taking ecstasy at Joshua Tree, blanketed by a glittering velveteen sky, but, boy, do I get stoked when I’ve remembered to pack one for the movie theater.”

LaCroix doesn’t shake our foundations. It’s a reliable refreshment, an affordable indulgence. And it’s become an icon in our age of tempered expectations—when we need to celebrate the simple things every chance we get.

By the digits

170 million: Gallons of sparkling water Americans drink annually.

17.3%: Increase in National Beverage 2016 revenues, to $826 million.

$100,000: Amount it would cost for a lab to independently validate LaCroix’s claim that it contains only natural essence oils.

Are we in a seltzer bubble?

For a company that makes fizzy water, National Beverage is notoriously opaque: The publicity-shy firm does not break out LaCroix sales or provide more than the bare minimum of financial data. LaCroix is the company’s biggest and fastest-growing product, accounting for roughly half of sales, but analysts are concerned that it masks a “flat-to-declining performance of the company’s other brands.”

A short-selling fund accused the company of manipulating its earnings in 2016, and last week shares of FIZZ (its stock ticker) fell when Coca-Cola bought the Mexican fizzy water brand Topo Chico—a cult hit across the border in Texas—for $220 million.

Brief history

1767: Joseph Priestley invents carbonated water at a brewery in Leeds, England, and a few years later publishes a paper titled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air .

1783: The Schweppes company is founded in Geneva.

1799: Thwaites’ Soda Water is founded in Dublin, and is credited by the London Globe as being the first to patent and sell “soda water.”

1915: “Corn flake scion” John Harvey Kellogg invents the “fruit beverage extract.”

1981: LaCroix is launched in La Crosse, Wisconsin by the G. Heileman Brewing Company as a Midwest regional brand and is later acquired by Florida-based National Beverage.

2002: Lyle Zimmerman, head of Alchemy Brand Group, redesigns LaCroix’s logo, including numerous swirls to connote water.

c. 2012: National Beverage relaunches LaCroix with neon-colored packaging.

2014: LaCroix launches its Cúrate spin-off line, with a slimmer can and a bolder flavor profile aimed at younger consumers. Sales triple within a year.

LaWhaaa…?

The product was named for its birthplace, La Crosse, and the nearby St. Croix river—hence the official pronunciation: La Croy. (The company’s website offers a handy mnemonic: “enjoy LaCroix.”) But people remain pretty flummoxed about how to pronounce it. Jimmy Fallon recently sent a writer out to investigate. (Starts at 2:37—worth it.)

Industry secrets

LaCroix may look like it would be “right at home nestled in a neoprene koozie screen-printed to look like an acid-washed denim jacket,” but there’s nothing accidental, or even particularly vintage, about its branding. National Beverage solicited a number of options in the design process, ultimately choosing the splashy design that consumers found most compelling by a landslide—despite the fact that it broke every logo rule in the book. One designer described it to Bon Appetit as “the love child of Monet and Grandma Moses.” Here were some of the other pitches:

Take me down this 🐰 hole!

When it comes to LaCroix, there are as many rabbit holes as there are bubbles. What do you feel like doing right now?

The essence of essence

There’s literally basically nothing in LaCroix except carbonated water and “flavors,” a proprietary mix of chemicals that the company prefers to call “essence.” In a recent deep dive, the Wall Street Journal reported that essence can refer to “flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof.”

LaCroix on its website says that “all natural flavors are essences or oils derived from the named fruit, i.e., lime / lime oils.”

Meet the competition

A number of other brands are also vying for cult popularity, including Sparkling Ice, Polar, and Topo Chico, as well as bubbly mainstays like San Pellegrino and Perrier. Even among this group, LaCroix’s growth is extra fizzy.

One thing you didn’t really wanna know

“Even when it’s unflavored, fizzy water contains an acid—carbonic acid—that gives it its bubbles. That acidity can gradually wear away tooth enamel.”