In the latest in IFE's Buyer Insights series, we talk to Matthew Blake, Partner & Buyer - Soft Drinks at Waitrose & Partners, about the continued dominance of functional drinks, the growth of CBD infused drinks and why food & drink runs in the family. 

Tell us a bit about your role

I'm the Soft Drinks buyer for Waitrose with overarching responsibility for all Soft Drinks categories including Carbonates, Sports & Energy, Functional Drinks, Adult Soft Drinks, Mixers, Dilutes, Waters, Longlife Juice & Kids. This involves curating the ranges for each sub-category, working closely with our supply base to manage promotions/activations/ranging, working with our internal teams including supply chain/technical/admin/online, reviewing internal and external data points to support decision-making and forming the longer term strategy of the wider category. 

What do you love about working in food & drink?

Food & Drink is such an exciting area to be involved in and has always played a significant role in my life - my dad was a head chef for twenty five years so food has always run in the family! Trends within food and drink are constantly changing and evolving with new suppliers and categories coming to the market every month - being part of this and helping to bring new products to our customers is incredibly exciting.  

What trend or product do you think will be making waves in 2025?

Functional Soft Drinks continue to dominate the new products coming to market within the wider Soft Drinks category and I think that will continue throughout 2025. The biggest challenge with functional soft drinks is being able to identify the trends likely to stick and the ones to back commercially that we think will resonate the most with our customer base. 

Gut Health has continued to thrive across a number of different areas and despite the likes of kombucha being around for a number of years now, the category continues to grow with new entrants coming to the market. Other areas such as Natural Energy, CBD infused drinks and Magnesium drinks continue to perform strongly and I expect that to continue throughout 2025. 

How do you discover new products and trends?

As buyers, we work closely with our BrandsNew team at Waitrose to discover new products, suppliers and trends through the RangeMe platform. Outside of this, we also regularly visit shows and exhibitions as well as working with our existing supply base closely and their category insight teams to identify areas of opportunity. 

What are you hoping to learn/source from IFE this year?

I'm looking forward to visiting IFE this year and catching up with the soft drinks supply base, seeing what's new, what the future trends are predicted to be and identifying areas we should be looking at for our future ranges.