This Friday, Vitaminwater (parent company: Coca-Cola) is opening a pop-up store in the old Helio space on the Lower East Side from which they will, we don’t know, give away Vitaminwater and have a D.J., probably. This strikes us as suspicious. Vitaminwater has engaged in this kind of flamboyant behavior for too long, and now, in the midst of a recession? It just sets off our internal alarm bells. How much longer can this possibly go on before the American public discover that this drink with the cutesy labels is really just water bundled together with sugar and food coloring? It’s like the credit default swap of drinks!
We expect they’ll be dragged in front of Congress to explain themselves shortly. “How were you allowed to do this?” Gary Ackerman will demand, carnation trembling in his lapel. “You think you’re so smart because you figured out how to package food coloring and water? It doesn’t have vitamins in it! It’s not even soda!” Then Michael Capuano of Massachusetts will lay into them: “You come up here, being like, hey, ‘We’re so cool, we have a drink named after 50 Cent, we’re on Gossip Girl, we’re like the American Apparel of beverages,’ and you know what, you’re right! You are the American Apparel of beverages. Because if you think about it, American Apparel doesn’t sell clothes, it sells pieces of material with armholes. Yeah! How do you like them apples? I’m from Massachusetts.” Yes. We called it. When this shit goes down, you can call us the Meredith Whitney of the beverage industry.
NYC Vitamin Water Popup Store Opening Friday [PSFK via Cityfile]
