If you still haven't had your morning caffeine, these figures might just wake you up. According to the NPD Group, sales of iced coffee at quick-serve (aka fast-food) venues were up 38% from March 2007 to March 2008, after rising 37% the year before. Talk about an energy boost!
All of a sudden, I see more clearly why McDonald's
That's good news for investors in fast-food establishments, and yet another challenge for the recently languishing Starbucks. (Trust me -- I'm a shareholder.) It also seems to spell trouble for drinkmeisters Coca-Cola
A sip of stock strategies
Consumer consumption trends can guide us to great investments, especially if we monitor how well different companies respond to them. As my colleague Alyce Lomax recently showed, companies that fail to meet consumers' desires -- like American automakers, who stubbornly pushed inefficient vehicles even as gas prices rose -- will suffer. But companies that can stay ahead of the latest trends are more likely to cash in. So are their investors.