How Ricola is expanding with drops for mouths, not throats

Sales of cough and sore throat drops decrease precipitously in the summer months, when the cold-season sniffles turn to hurricane-season sweats.

In the 13 weeks that ended on June 13, sales in the US for cough drops totalled $245 million, compared to $351.1 million for the blizzardy 13-week period that ended March 29, according to Circana data provided to Retail Brew. That’s a drop (a drop drop!) of 30.2%. Similarly, sales in the category plummeted 38.7% in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the first quarter, per Circana.

Now Ricola, the 96-year-old Swiss herb drops brand, has a strategy to increase sales in the warmer months that, in every sense, is nothing to sneeze at. It’s introducing three flavors of lozenges that are not for colds or coughs but rather for everyday use. Instead of addressing coughs or sore throats, packaging describes them as “refreshingly mouthwatering.”

“The throat care category right now is really about when that consumer is sick, and we know and see that consumers want to utilize the category for when they’re not sick,” Becky Spruck, senior director of marketing at Ricola USA, told Retail Brew.

But as much as boosting warm-weather sales, the new products are also meant to appeal to the lifestyles and taste buds of younger consumers, who Spruck said increasingly turn to home remedies such as gargling with salt water over throat drops.

The flavors had “high appeal” when tested with Gen Z and millennials, who Ricola aspires to draw into the category with the new products.

The goal is “high consumer acquisition—that’s our lead strategy here,” Spruck said. “We’re really targeting the younger consumer here, and that younger consumer is not currently using the category.”

Suck ups: To promote the new products, “we really wanted to go where that younger consumer is,” Spruck said.

To do so—and to underscore the drops are suitable for wetting whistles during summer—the brand will launch its first TikTok Shop this summer, and will hand out samples at summer events, including at bike and theater festivals and minor league baseball games.

“We’re delivering millions and millions of samples to consumers over the course of the next few months,” Spruck said.

To promote the products, the brand is partnering with what Spruck called “active lifestyle” influencers, including Peloton enthusiasts and runners.

One challenge for the new product in physical retail, however, is that Ricola’s hard-won shelf space is in the cold and flu aisle, meaning, paradoxically, that the drops it’s making that are explicitly not for coughs and colds will still be found there.

That’s why the product will be displayed at end caps at retailers including Walmart and Target.

“It allows the consumer to see what’s new without having to go down an aisle that’s normally for when they’re not feeling well,” Spruck said.

Non-drop drops: All three flavors of the new products—lemon lime mint, orange mint, and grapefruit mint—also have what their packages call “a hint of Swiss Alpine salt.” While its product pages promise that they’ll “quench your dry mouth,” Spruck stressed that the products are neither claiming to be a fluid-replacing electrolytes source or a treatment for xerostomia, the medical term for dry mouth some experience as a result of aging or as a side effect of medications and radiation treatment.

The drops aren’t Ricola’s first attempt to expand beyond cold and cough remedies. Last August, it introduced Ricola Drink Cubes in France and Austria, venturing into an entirely new format.

Like the new lozenges, the products, a collaboration with Waterdrop, are fruit flavored and contain Ricola’s proprietary herbs. The products will continue to expand in Europe before possibly being introduced elsewhere, including in the US, per Ricola. The new drops, conversely, are launching in the US before possibly expanding to other countries.

Even farther afield format-wise, Ricola introduced limited edition logo-emblazoned scarves that smelled like their cough drops in November 2025 and included a small pocket intended for holding lozenges.

Priced at $40, they sold out “in minutes,” according to the brand. At this writing, one was available on eBay for $99.