Ultrapremium juices have graced our pages on several occasions before, including First Blush and its varietal grape blends. But while most merely tout their antioxidant benefits, a new juice brand called Embodi was designed specifically to mimic the healthful properties of red wine.

Launched this summer, Embodi bills itself as the only alcohol-free beverage that provides the full spectrum of antioxidants and polyphenols found in red wine. Its line of three juice blends are specially formulated with an extract made from the seeds, skins and stems of red wine grapes to deliver more than 400 of the polyphenols associated with red wine's health benefits. Particularly notable among those is resveratrol, which has been linked with longevity and muscle endurance. The quantities are significant, too: One bottle of Embodi delivers the health benefits of two glasses of wine, the company says. Embodi is available in three flavours—Tropical Revival, Berry Renewal and Citrus Resurgence—at Whole Foods markets throughout the United States. Suggested pricing for each 8-ounce aluminium bottle is USD 2.49.

A full 38 percent of Americans don't drink alcohol, the company notes, and clearly that figure is even higher in some parts of the world. No end in sight to the "juicy" opportunities! ;-)

Website: www.drinkembodi.com
Contact: www.drinkembodi.com/contact.php

We're deviating from our regular schedule to bring you the best new business ideas spotted in the last 12 months—smart concepts that will continue to provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2009. The last of our 2008 selections features the most popular category on Springwise: food & beverage. Ten of our favourites from a long list of innovative ideas:

1. Graze — Healthy snacks, delivered by mail in serving sizes
2. Geschmackslabor — Taste lab restaurant lets customers add flavour to their meals
3. Honibe — Honey without the mess
4. Catch a Piece of Maine — Adopt a Maine lobster trap
5. Bin Ends — Wine tastings via Twitter
6. Tcho — Next-gen chocolate makers
7. Pink Flamingo Pizza — Balloon-enabled pizza picnic delivery
8. WineSide — Wine by the trial-sized tube
9. Morsels — Bakery focuses on bite-size treats
10. Sonntagmorgen — A customized cup of joe

Bonus | And three more that we just had to squeeze in:

• Kids Konserve — Reusable lunch kit for kids
• Volute — Single-serve wine flaunts its portability (and eco credentials)
• Eatbite — Mapping restaurants by photos of their dishes
  

Earlier this year we wrote about Crop to Cup, an online venture that uses product life stories to connect coffee drinkers with small African farmers who produce the beans they love. Now a UK-based startup aims to do much the same thing for wine with an online community that profiles and supports small-scale producers around the globe.

In a market where the average bottle of wine includes just 30p of wine along with GBP 1 of marketing, packaging and other costs, Naked Wines bills itself as an online farmers' market dedicated to "the kind of winemakers who want to spend their lives making great wine, rather than selling it." The site currently features 18 winemakers from Argentina, France, Spain, New Zealand and South Africa. Beyond simply listing basics such as their locations and product characteristics, however, Naked Wines includes a full-page profile for each one, complete also with their backgrounds, some personal details and their views on making wine. Users of the site can create profiles, rate wines, and chat with each other as well as the winemakers they're interested in. Based on what they've liked so far, Naked Wines can also make recommendations in Amazonesque fashion. All new wines are sent to a panel of consumer testers before they're added to the site, and all purchases come with a money-back guarantee. Through the Naked Angel program, meanwhile—embraced by many of the site's vintners—consumers can get 6 free bottles of wine plus 33 percent cash back on purchases when they prepay GBP 5 per month toward participating winemakers' wines.

Naked Wines was launched early this month by Virgin Wines founder Rowan Gormely. With its product life stories, (still) made here focus, social networking features and tryvertising undertones, it may just be a winning blend. A model to sample in other parts of the world!

Website: www.nakedwines.com
Contact: info@nakedwines.com

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

After witnessing the makeover given to traditional foodstuffs like cupcakes and popsicles, it seems it's now popcorn's turn. 479° Popcorn is handmade, made-to-order popcorn in flavours such as Alderwood Smoked Sea Salt, Ginger Sesame Caramel and Black Truffle & White Cheddar.

Taking a leaf from the book of gourmet wine tasting establishments, 479° offers 'Samplers' and 'Collections', all linked by theme. Samplers' five boxes feed 2-4 people, and the Collections' three canisters are enough for 4-8. Prices range from USD 33 for the Purist Sampler to USD 52 for the Caramel Collection.

Aware that posh flavours and presentation aren't always enough to ensure premium status, 479° Popcorn stresses its green credentials. The majority of its organic fair trade ingredients are sourced from farms close to its San Francisco kitchen, with the popped corn packaged in 90% recycled paper canisters that are also sourced from local suppliers. 479° Popcorn--named for the ideal Fahrenheit temperature for popping corn--is currently available in select Californian stores and via its website for delivery throughout the US. One for boutique cinemas to partner with?

Website: www.479popcorn.com
Contact: www.479popcorn.com/contact.html

Spotted by: Miriam Brafman

We've seen cone-shaped pizzas, super-fast pizzas, pizza vending machines and pizzas on antique wheels, but it wasn't until recently that we discovered balloon-enabled pizza picnics. Yes, that's right--Parisian restaurant Pink Flamingo Pizza allows customers to order their pizzas for delivery to the picnic spot of their choice through the help of a distinctive pink balloon.

Pink Flamingo, which has two locations--one in Canal St. Martin, and a new one in Marais--is already well-known in the city for its original and creative pizza varieties. "The Bjork," for example, features smoked salmon; "The Ghandi" is topped with spinach saag and Baba Ganoush; and "The Almodovar" offers a paella theme. Even more charming, however, is that patrons of the restaurant can order their pizza for delivery to a picnic spot such as the banks of the nearby Seine. Upon ordering, they simply tell the restaurant where they plan to dine and are given a pink helium balloon to take with them. Pink Flamingo's delivery staff--who travel by foot or bicycle--then spot the customer thanks to the eye-catching balloon. Prices for Pink Flamingo's pizzas, whether delivered or eaten onsite, begin at EUR 10.50.

For all those who thought there was nothing new under the sun in the world of pizza delivery--innovation strikes again! One to emulate in picnic-friendly cities around the globe. (Related: Beach barbecue on call.)

Website: www.pinkflamingopizza.com
Contact: pinkflamingopizza@gmail.com

Spotted by: Lamia Aloui

While candy bars with personalized labels are a dime a dozen, a German startup offers a tastier kind of customization, letting customers design their own chocolate.

The online ordering process at Chocri is similar to the customized muesli and coffee concepts we've covered--both of which also happen to be German.* After selecting either white, milk or dark chocolate, customers pick the ingredients they'd like to add: fruit, nuts, spices or bits of candy. Options range from the familiar (almonds, hazelnuts and raisins) to the adventurous (cumin, gummi bears and gold dust), and up to five ingredients can be selected. When they're done mixing and matching, customers pick a name for their very own 'meine schokolade', which is printed on the label. They're also given a unique product code for easy reordering. Prices range from EUR 2.50-6.50 for a 125 gram bar, depending on which ingredients are added. Chocri uses fair trade, organic chocolate only.

Confectioners (and anyone else in B2C, for that matter) looking for extra business should consider adding a made-to-order element to their products. Once consumers get used to having it their way, there's no turning back ;-) There's an unmistakable opportunity here for a smart web company, too: build a plug-and-play web solution for all those small businesses who need an affordable way to add customization to their existing offerings. (Related: Bespoke chocolate portfolios by Sir Hans Sloane.)

* Chocri even offers muesli by mymuesli as one of its 80+ ingredients.

Website: www.chocri.de
Contact: info@chocri.de

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

We've written numerous stories about pop-up spaces and sustainable innovations, but a new exhibition in Melbourne combines the two with a temporary cafe that's designed to demonstrate creative ways to put sustainability into practice.

Constructed about a month ago in Melbourne's Federation Square, Greenhouse by Joost is built entirely from recycled and recyclable materials. Straw bales, for example, are set into a fully recyclable steel framework that was uncoiled and cut on site, thereby forming the structure's exterior walls. Floors are made of deconstructed shipping crates, tables are fabricated from redundant fire hydrants, chairs are put together from restructured street signs and shade-cloths woven from tiles discarded by the Melbourne Cricket Club. An interior wall, meanwhile, comprises a small forest of wild strawberry plants growing in old plastic palettes, while a rooftop garden supplies several of the edibles served up by the Greenhouse's vintage-clad waiters and waitresses in tiny "taste-tubes" reclaimed from scientific trash. Behind the effort is celebrated flower artist and waste wizard Joost, who hopes "that this cost effective, self-sustaining, pop-up structure might serve as more than a momentary mirage in the city of Melbourne. Ideally it will educate, generate debate, and serve as a model for a cheaper, more spirit-lifting form of public housing in our suburbs," the site explains. The Greenhouse is slated to disappear at the end of January--without a trace, of course--but it's scheduled to reappear at the Milan Furniture Fair next year.

Seeing is believing, as the old adage goes, and for all the designers and builders that participated on the project, it's a sort of tryvertising as well, giving consumers a firsthand taste of what can be done. One for sustainability pros to emulate in other cities around the world? (Related: Test-sleeping for homebuyers.)

Website: www.greenhousebyjoost.com
Contact: cbaldwin@bttb.com.au

Spotted by: David Haddock

If ever there was a time of year made for free love, it's the holiday season. Apparently the same thought recently occurred to Manila cafe chain Delifrance, because this year it has launched a citywide Secret Santa campaign through which Filipinos can send each other special holiday treats--for free.

Two delectable Delifrance treats have been available for the giving this season: Almond Star Cookies, which were available from Nov. 10 through 23, and now Chocolate Chip Almond Biscotti, which will run through Dec. 7. To send treats, Filipinos need only enter friends' names and email addresses. Each friend is then sent an email with a special coupon that's redeemable at participating Delifrance cafes throughout metro Manila. There is no limit on the number of friends each user can treat in this way.

Free love is always a fairly sure way to win consumer goodwill, but when you give it away without limits during the holidays--and in tough economic times? Hard to imagine that could be outdone by anyone other than Kris Kringle himself! How could your brand create some free holiday cheer...?

Website: www.mysecretsanta08.com
Contact: Delifrance at 642-0021

Spotted by: Bong via Matthew Cua

For many urban dwellers, deciding what to have for dinner means deciding which restaurant to visit--a task that's not easy when you live in a place like New York City, with countless eateries to choose from. Eatbite/NYC is a new site that lets users browse through photos of individual dishes at local restaurants to let their craving of the moment dictate where they eat.

Eatbite currently features a collection of more than 200 photos of mouth-watering dishes that are served up at restaurants throughout New York City. Users can browse those photos sequentially for inspiration, or they can search by location, price range, landmark (near Columbia University, for example) or food type (Chinese, sushi or pizza, etc.). When they click on a photo of a dish that attracts their attention, the site tells them where to get it along with the price range to expect. Photos are tagged by key descriptors, and users can add comments to photos of any dish. They can also upload photos of their own and link them with restaurants from Eatbite's list.

In offering an alternative way to search information that is already widely available, ad-supported Eatbite is in many ways much like Dishola, which we covered earlier this year, but with less of a focus on reviews and more of a focus on photo-based inspiration. It also shares something in common with SeeYourHotel, which offers a slightly different twist on hotel search by focusing narrowly on location. Either way, Eatbite gives people a new way to search and restaurants another way to be discovered. Similar opportunities? On a general level, invite the crowds to contribute content of some kind, focus on a specific search criterion, and keep your costs low by using services like Amazon's S3 for flexible hosting and Google's AdSense for easy ad income. Now that's a recipe worth sharing! ;-)

Website: www.eatbite.com
Contact: admin@eatbite.com

Spotted by: Mina Zakhary

It may be better to give than to receive, but for those on the receiving end, there's no doubt real-world gifts are better than virtual ones. No surprise, then, that we're seeing the emergence of more and more ways for online friends to give each other offline presents. The latest? GetThemIn, which allows UK Facebook users to send each other real alcoholic beverages.

An assortment of wine, beer, champagne, spirits and specialty drinks are available through GetThemIn from brands including Heineken, Newcastle Brown, Blossom Hill, Harvey's Bristol Cream and Courvoisier; also available are a variety of complementary snacks. Users simply add the GetThemIn application to their Facebook account, and then choose what gift they'd like to send to which friend. Payment takes place through Google checkout, and users compose a message to let their friend know. An egift is instantly sent by Facebook notification and text message, which can be redeemed at any time in exchange for a product voucher that's sent through the post. That voucher, in turn, can then be taken to any GetThemIn participating store--there are hundreds across the UK, GetThemIn says--and used to collect the physical product.

GetThemIn has been officially granted the DrinkAware trust trademark license and will be donating a percentage of its profits to substance-abuse treatment center COUNTED4. Meanwhile, the company--which just launched in the UK last week--is already working on launching its application in the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland as well as on Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, MySpace, Orkut and LinkedIn. Increasingly OFF=ON and ON=OFF, as our sister site trendwatching.com would say; what other real-world gifts could be brought to the social networking world....? (Related: Real candy for virtual friends -- Real flowers for virtual pals -- Snail mail app for Facebook users.)

Website: www.getthemin.com
Contact: www.getthemin.com/contact_us.html