At the same time, the modern world demands focus, whether when working, studying, or even during leisure activities like playing video games. How are people to square this need for focus with a world seemingly designed to take it away? In part, though a larger role for coffee and tea products specifically designed for focus-enhancement.

Caffeine: The Nootropic That Dare Not Speak Its Name

One of the most interesting things about the focus-enhancing segment is how very few products actually position themselves as such. There are a great many people who have been reaching for coffee or tea their whole lives when they feel their mind slipping yet may have never heard the term ‘nootropic’, which is technically the correct way to refer to products that boost cognitive abilities like focus.

Therefore, there is the odd situation where caffeine and L-theanine are the world’s most used nootropics yet they are almost never referred to as such. This is important because there is a wave of new products hitting the market that are being explicit with their focus-enhancing abilities, threatening to muscle in on turf that has traditionally been dominated by coffees and teas. To avoid this, coffee and tea will need to be louder about their naturally occurring focus enhancing abilities.

Coffee and Tea on the Defensive in a Focus-Hungry World

These newer focus products tend to highlight more exotic and unfamiliar ingredients like lion’s mane, ginkgo biloba, or creatine. There are certainly coffee and tea brands who work with such ingredients (Four Sigmatic being perhaps the best-known) but increasingly nootropics are being used in the soft drinks space, especially in energy drinks. The energy-drink segment is attempting to diversify its appeal to new occasions and demographics and is increasingly launching products specifically designed for cognitive uses.

This year, for example, Rockstar launched a new product line called Rockstar Focus with a more explicit cognitive positioning than has previously been seen in energy drinks. In the years ahead, energy drinks will offer increasingly tailored energy boosts for specific usages instead of the more general energy positioning the category rose to prominence with – and cognitive enhancement is likely to prove among the most important.

They are likely to highlight their unusual nootropic ingredients to distinguish themselves from coffee and tea although in practice caffeine will probably provide most of the actual cognitive boost. Energy drinks are almost certain to be the most important emergent category, though powder concentrates and functional waters have also been experimenting and should see more product launches in the years ahead. Regardless of what formats end up on top, they will move straight into territory traditionally held by coffee and tea.

That will leave two options for coffee and tea. One will be to make themselves into pseudo energy drinks through adding additional nootropic ingredients, using RTD or on-the-go formats, and using splashy marketing highlighting how different they are from traditional beverages. The other will be to
double down on what they have always done with some tweaks to the marketing message.

It is likely that the coming years will see plenty of both. Products fortified with nootropic ingredients or even just extra caffeine and L-theanine (which brands like Bigelow have been experimenting with) will become more common. More importantly, the coffee and tea industries in general will become louder in the promotion of their products as already ideal for focus, leveraging its inbuilt advantages: a proven track record, widespread availability, affordable price points, and naturally occurring focus enhancing ingredients.

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