By this week­end, the term Net­flix and Chill may have a whole new mean­ing as An­gos­tu­ra in­tro­duces its new Car­bon­at­ed Soft Drink (CSD) brand.

And the apt­ly named An­gos­tu­ra Chill fea­tures a flavour you know and love; Lemon Lime and Bit­ters.

An­gos­tu­ra Chill re­places the An­gos­tu­ra LLB brand.

But fear not, no for­mu­la changes have been made to the Lemon Lime and Bit­ters, so you can en­joy the same taste you have grown ac­cus­tomed to.

“This is a de­ci­sion we did not take light­ly. We took a long, hard look at what the fu­ture of this brand is go­ing to be and where we are go­ing to be as a com­pa­ny,” Hema Ramkissoon the Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er—Mar­ket­ing at An­gos­tu­ra told the Busi­ness Guardian.

An­gos­tu­ra LLB was first launched in 2007 and con­tains the au­then­tic An­gos­tu­ra aro­mat­ic bit­ters cre­at­ed in 1824 by Dr Jo­hann Siegert.

“Though its key in­gre­di­ent is Caribbean, the recipe for An­gos­tu­ra LLB is unique­ly Aus­tralian. There, the recipe has been shared over the years from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion as a tra­di­tion­al drink en­joyed by golfers at the 19th hole,” An­gos­tu­ra stat­ed.

Ramkissoon said since the launch of An­gos­tu­ra LLB the drink has over time has be­come a sig­nif­i­cant part of T&T’s cul­ture and who we are.

But when An­gos­tu­ra un­veiled an­oth­er drink fea­tur­ing its sig­na­ture bit­ters last year they re­alised they were faced with a brand­ing is­sue.

“We had been tweak­ing a for­mu­la and we thought let’s see if this line is ready for an ex­pan­sion and we launched Sor­rel and Bit­ters and in­ter­est­ing­ly it was a hit,” Ramkissoon said.

“All of our dis­trib­u­tors, all of our part­ners said they have nev­er seen any­thing like that be­cause peo­ple were just so ea­ger to try some­thing new. And they were so ex­cit­ed by an ex­ten­sion of this line and they were al­so so ex­cit­ed by the taste and the flavour,” she said.

“But dur­ing our re­search what we did find is that every­one kept say­ing LLB Sor­rel and not Sor­rel and Bit­ters, not re­al­is­ing it was an en­tire­ly new flavour, a new com­po­si­tion, a new for­mu­la­tion,” Ramkissoon said.

Ramkissoon said at that point An­gos­tu­ra re­alised the brand had out­grown it­self.

“So in­tro­duc­ing and tran­si­tion­ing to an ar­chi­tect of Chill al­lows us to say okay we are now go­ing un­der the name Chill and have all of these flavours,” she said.

An­gos­tu­ra Chill will in­tro­duce the new flavour Blood Or­ange and Bit­ters and in Oc­to­ber re-in­tro­duce Sor­rel and Bit­ters un­der the new brand.

Ramkissoon said there are many more flavours that An­gos­tu­ra in­tends to in­clude in the Chill brand.

Ramkissoon said the An­gos­tu­ra Chill brand will help the com­pa­ny in its thrust to in­no­vate.

“As with every oth­er com­pa­ny the pan­dem­ic has pushed our abil­i­ty to in­no­vate. I feel that An­gos­tu­ra and the cul­ture of An­gos­tu­ra has been to not lie down but to part­ner with our work­ers, to part­ner with all of our stake­hold­ers to con­tin­ue to thrive,” she said.

Ramkissoon said the An­gos­tu­ra board has set a clear man­date that they are go­ing to use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to piv­ot.

“It was a man­date and a vi­sion set by our chair­man and our board and they iden­ti­fied in­no­va­tion as re­al­ly the way to con­tin­ue car­ry­ing this com­pa­ny in­to the fu­ture by ex­pand­ing all of our brands,” Ramkissoon said.

“I think when you think of the phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess of Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters re­al­ly be­ing one of the old­est sur­viv­ing com­pa­nies. We are 197 years old with Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters and the ac­qui­si­tion of that line and Chill is re­al­ly just re­al­ly build­ing on that,” she said.

“It is build­ing on the ar­chi­tec­ture of one of the most suc­cess­ful brands in T&T, mar­ry­ing that to cre­ate some­thing mag­i­cal,” Ramkissoon said.

She said the goal is for An­gos­tu­ra to be known for its in­no­va­tion.

“We want to hold true to the fact that this is the same LLB there is no for­mu­la change, we still are the brand that you love. We are still the drink that you love,” she said.

“When you think of the name chill it­self. What epit­o­mis­es T&T oth­er than the word chill. You think of our Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, our cock­tail mak­ing skills. We are just chill in our DNA. So what bet­ter way to take our norms, our cul­ture, our mes­sag­ing, our com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the world than some­thing that is so Tri­ni,” she said.

Ramkissoon said the aim is to take An­gos­tu­ra Chill glob­al.

“Our lit­mus test for suc­cess is re­al­ly fly­ing the T&T flag glob­al­ly and hav­ing Chill car­ry with the An­gos­tu­ra name go­ing in­to ju­ris­dic­tions,” she said.

“We ex­pect to see this in Aus­tralia, we ex­pect this in the UK, we ex­pect to see this in Latin Amer­i­ca, as with every oth­er suc­cess sto­ry we are tak­ing An­gos­tu­ra Chill glob­al,” Ramkissoon said.

Ramkissoon said An­gos­tu­ra Chill and its flavours are for those who are con­scious about nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents.

“We still boast our colour­ing is nat­ur­al and that our flavours are from ful­ly nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents,” she said.

An­gos­tu­ra Chill is al­so non al­co­holic.

Ac­cord­ing to An­gos­tu­ra, Chill’s tar­get au­di­ence are young ur­ban­ites be­tween 18 and 29 years old who are sim­ply seek­ing fun and re­lax­ation as a re­ward for their so­cial­ly busy lifestyle.

“They val­ue con­ve­nience as it suits their day-to-day rou­tines, but don’t want to com­pro­mise on in­gre­di­ents or flavour,” An­gos­tu­ra stat­ed.

An­gos­tu­ra said the young ur­ban­ites want to be in­spired not sold to.

“They en­joy hav­ing the free­dom to el­e­vate their drinks eas­i­ly, dis­cov­er new flavours or quick­ly con­sume on the go,” it stat­ed.

“They want a drink that is a re­fresh­ing change of pace that is some­thing to ap­pre­ci­ate with their friends, not just mind­less­ly gulp,” it stat­ed.

All of An­gos­tu­ra Chill’s flavours will be avail­able to con­sumers in 275ml glass bot­tles and 237ml cans.

On­ly Lemon Lime and Bit­ters will be avail­able in the 355ml cans.

The sug­gest­ed re­tail price for An­gos­tu­ra Chill cold is $6 .