Natural ingredient supplier Kalsec has released the latest edition of its flagship consumer research series, "Beyond the Burn: The Next Degree," drawing on survey data from 9,000 respondents across 17 countries to track where the hot-and-spicy category is headed — and what it means for beverage manufacturers, co-packers, and flavor formulators sourcing pepper-derived inputs.
The Kalamazoo, Mich.-based company characterizes the findings as a categorical shift: spicy is no longer a single-note trend but a diversified market segment, with consumers demonstrating measurable preferences around heat level, pepper variety, and — notably — packaging signals. For beverage producers, that distinction matters at every stage of the supply chain, from raw material procurement and co-pack formulation briefs to SKU architecture and on-shelf planogram placement.
What the Data Signals
While Kalsec has not yet released the full report publicly, the framing around "pepper and packaging precision" points to two operational pressure points for beverage brand owners. On the ingredient side, suppliers and contract manufacturers will need to dial in heat calibration with greater specificity — distinguishing between the front-of-palate burn of cayenne-forward profiles and the slower, throat-level heat of chipotle or gochugaru derivatives. On the packaging side, consumer expectations around label communication of heat intensity are tightening, a dynamic that affects how brands brief design agencies and how retailers merchandise product in both the cold-chain and ambient sets.
The 17-country scope gives the research unusual breadth for a single ingredient supplier study, covering markets with divergent baseline spice tolerance and distinct route-to-market dynamics. Findings that hold across Southeast Asian, Latin American, and Western European respondents carry stronger formulation weight than single-market surveys — a consideration for beverage companies managing global SKU rationalization or evaluating regional co-pack agreements.
Implications for Beverage Supply Chain
For the beverage segment specifically, the spicy flavor vector has been one of the more commercially durable moves in the ready-to-drink and functional categories over the past several years, appearing in everything from hot-and-spicy seltzers to pepper-infused wellness shots and cocktail mixers. Natural heat extraction — Kalsec's core competency — is increasingly preferred over synthetic capsaicin analogs by brands positioning in the better-for-you off-premise channel, where clean-label claims carry planogram weight at retail.
Distributors and wholesalers operating in the three-tier system will also want to monitor the packaging-precision finding. If consumers are using label cues to self-select heat levels, that behavior has downstream implications for depletion velocity by SKU — faster turns on well-communicated mid-heat products, slower movement on items where the heat story is ambiguous on shelf. Understanding that segmentation helps wholesaler sales teams advise on assortment and end-cap placement.
Kalsec's research series has become a reference data point for flavor and ingredient procurement teams across the food and beverage industry. The full "Beyond the Burn: The Next Degree" report is expected to inform natural ingredient sourcing conversations heading into 2027 planning cycles. For more on ingredient and formulation trends shaping beverage manufacturing, see BeverageB2B's coverage of flavor supply chain and functional beverage category developments.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
