About a quarter of the 152K+ convenience stores have spoken, and they shared some interesting opinions about the growing energy drinks category. And even if you aren’t familiar with every insight regarding this beverage category, I’m sure you intuitively recognize that convenience is the most important sales channel (by sales dollars) for energy drinks in the U.S. market. But here are my top “categorical” takeaways from the most recent Goldman Sachs Beverage Bytes survey. Firstly, 60% of retailers are expecting energy drink brands to increase prices before the end of the year. And I started off in that direction because I don’t want any avid consumers of energy drinks to be caught off guard when your preferred daily caffeine fix gets more expensive by a few percentage points later this year. Next, while I wasn’t particularly a fan of this new flavor…most convenience store owners characterized the launch performance of Monster Ultra Vice Guava as “very strong.” Finally, convenience store owners are projecting that every energy drink brand in the top seven will experience full-year growth of at least mid-single-digits from 2024.