How We Name Our Flavors

Naming a flavor is harder than making one. Anyone can muddle a few berries and a sprig of mint and create something delicious. But naming that thing in a way that makes a kid point at the chalkboard and shout, "I want THAT one!" — that is the art.

Our naming process is, to put it generously, chaotic. We have tried serious approaches. We have tried committee approaches. We have tried "let one person decide and live with it" approaches. None of them have worked as well as our current method, which is essentially: argue loudly for 20 minutes, then vote.

Here is how it actually goes. Someone develops a new flavor — say, a strawberry lemonade with a little basil and a hint of black pepper. The flavor sits in the test fridge for a week while everyone tastes it and writes a name on a sticky note. The sticky notes go on the wall. Then on flavor naming day, we all sit on the floor of the kitchen with the pile of sticky notes, and we read them out loud.

Some of them are good. "Berry Bossa Nova." "Pink Pepper Party." "Strawberry Sundown." Some of them are terrible. "Sweet Spicy Surprise" (too vague). "Strawpper" (too made-up). "The One With The Pepper" (too long). And some of them are just jokes that someone wrote at 11pm while taste-testing for the fourth time. We have a sticky note in the archive that simply says "Wet Strawberry." We do not talk about Wet Strawberry.

We have three real rules for a name.

Rule one: a name has to make sense to a six-year-old. If a kid cannot point at the chalkboard and confidently say what they want, the name is broken. "Yuzu Tarragon Spritz" might sound elegant but it loses every kid in line. "Sour Sunshine" works.

Rule two: a name has to make sense to the person who walks up confused. The name should give a little hint about what the drink tastes like. "Pink Peppercorn" tells you "pink" and "a little spicy." "Lemon Drop" tells you "lemon" and "sweet." If your name needs a footnote, it is the wrong name.

Rule three: a name has to feel like us. We are a graffiti-sticker-loud-color brand. We are not a tea room. Our names should feel like they belong on a wall, on a tee shirt, or on a tag scrawled in marker. Punchy. Playful. A little weird.

The flavor that started this whole conversation, the strawberry basil black pepper one, ended up with the name "Garden Riot." A kid suggested it on day three of testing. She said it tasted like the herb garden in her grandma's backyard but loud. Garden Riot stuck immediately. It has been on our menu ever since.

Naming is a tiny art form that nobody talks about. Most brands rush past it. But every great flavor needs a great name, because the name is what travels. The name is what kids tell their friends. The name is what shows up on the chalkboard, on the cup, in the Instagram caption, in the memory. Get the name right and the flavor lives forever.