The cans are in market. The hard problem is still the base.
Sidekick is fruit, New Zealand honey, and a splash of apple cider vinegar in a 250ml can. No cane sugar. No stevia. No erythritol. That recipe is settled. Holding it from one production run to the next is not.
Honey changes with the season and the flowers. Fruit changes with the batch. Vinegar moves the balance. In a can, sweetness, acidity, and stability still have to land in the same place.
This is a production note. It is not a funding pitch. The longer programme sits on How we develop.
What a lot actually does
A honey lot is not a brand of sweetness. It is a harvest — different flowers, different moisture, a different pull on the drink.
One lot can make the same fruit recipe read softer. The next can push it sharper. Vinegar that sat quietly on the last run can suddenly show. That is normal for a natural sweetener. It is a problem if you have promised a fridge can that tastes like last month’s.
The industry usually hides that movement with cane sugar, stevia, or erythritol. Those are out of this recipe. Whether a natural lot can be held inside a set range, without those sweeteners, is not known until that lot is tested.
What we are doing now
We measure how honey lot, fruit batch, and vinegar level move the can. Then we write the process that keeps the base inside a set range.
The result we want is simple: a clear account of which inputs actually move the drink, and a repeatable way to correct them.
A process that works on one lot can miss on the next. That is why this is a project, not a slogan on the can.
What we are not doing
We are not swapping honey for a diet sweetener so the panel looks “zero.”
We are not calling the can a wellness product because the honey is New Zealand honey.
We are not waiting on a flavour vote to tell us the base is finished. A flavour note is read. It does not write the process.
The kitchen story — how Nana’s shrub became a soda — is already on How we turned Nana’s shrub into soda. This page is the work after that.
Who does it
Fiona Tomlinson and Rogan Tomlinson. In-house, in Wānaka. Data and AI tools help us read drinkers, trade, the category, and the production record. We still choose the next technical problem.
What follows this project — a new fruit on the same base, then matching each batch to the honey lot it came from — starts when the process for the base is written. Not before. That sequence is on How we develop.
The can you can buy
The everyday range is still the everyday range: Cherry, Mango, Pear, Strawberry. Stock it on Fridge Fill. Read the label you are holding: How to read the Sidekick can.
