Soft Drink and Ice Manufacturing (United States) — NAICS 31211

A Histometrics rollup primer for public-market and private investors.

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) 2022 code 31211 is the industry group that gathers the three ways America turns water into a packaged drink or a bag of ice: soft drinks (312111), bottled water (312112), and ice (312113). It is a useful level to look at because the three children share a physical logic — water plus packaging plus distribution — yet differ almost completely in size, growth, ownership, and how an investor can touch them.

1. Overview

At the factory gate this is a $51.5 billion U.S. industry employing about 89,000 people across roughly 1,325 plants [1][2]. But the single most important thing to understand about 31211 is that it is not one market — it is three loosely related businesses stapled together by a classification code:

• Soft drinks are a high-brand, high-margin, oligopolistic business dominated by a few enormous public companies (Coca-Cola, PepsiCo) and their bottlers.
• Bottled water is a fast-growing, packaging-and-logistics business that is unusually private — one listed pure-play and a long tail of family- and private-equity-owned bottlers.
• Ice is a small, intensely local, weather-driven route business with no public pure-play at all.

For an investor the practical message is that "buying the 31211 industry" is meaningless. What matters is which child you want and how it is owned, because the public-market access, the economics, and the growth direction are radically different across the three. This primer's value is the contrast.

A recurring theme runs through all three: the money is made in packaging and distribution, not in the liquid. Water is nearly free at the source, sugar and CO₂ are cheap, and frozen water is worthless if it melts. In every child, the durable advantages are brands, routes, freezer/shelf placement, and plant density — not the commodity itself.

2. What's inside — the three children and how they differ

The whole reason to read this level is the contrast across the children. Start here:

Read across the rows and the divergence is stark:

• Size vs. plant count invert. Soft drinks are ~81% of the money but under half the plants; ice is ~2% of the money but nearly a third of the plants. That is the fingerprint of two opposite structures — a few huge soft-drink/water plants versus hundreds of small local ice makers [1][3][5].
• Growth points in different directions. Bottled water is the structural winner (Americans now drink more bottled water than soda — 47.3 gallons per capita in 2024 versus 34.2 gallons for carbonated soft drinks) [6]; soft drinks are bifurcating (sugary cola shrinking, energy and sparkling growing); ice is essentially flat and tied to summer weather [5][7].
• Ownership runs from fully public to fully private. You can own the soft-drink chain many ways on the stock market, the water business essentially one way, and the ice business no way as a listed pure-play [3][4][5].

Scope and the key exclusions. Each child deliberately carves out neighbors, and two of those exclusions matter enormously for how you read the numbers:

• Flavoring syrup and concentrate → NAICS 311930, not here. This is the single biggest caveat at this level. The secret concentrate that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo sell to bottlers — the highest-margin activity in the entire beverage economy — is classified outside 31211. So 31211 captures the capital-heavy bottling half of soft drinks while the profit engine is reported elsewhere [8].
• Captive ice and ice vending → elsewhere. Ice made and used on-site by restaurants, hotels, and fishing operations shows up in their industries, and self-serve ice-vending operators are counted as retail (NAICS 445132), not manufacturing [9].
• Also excluded: tap-water utilities (221310), juice (311421), milk drinks (311511), non-alcoholic beer/wine (312120/312130), dry ice (325120), and ice cream (311520) [8][9].

3. How big it is (rollup figures and undercount)

Our ground-truth federal statistics for the 31211 level:

Average pay works out to roughly $67,000 per worker (annual payroll ÷ employees). CBP = County Business Patterns; the CR ratios and HHI measure market concentration (the HHI is the sum of each firm's squared market share; higher = more concentrated).

The rollup reconciles cleanly with its children — mostly. Plants and employment sum exactly: 622 + 288 + 415 = 1,325 establishments, and 71,454 + 12,598 + 5,389 = 89,441 employees. Receipts add to about the same $51.5 billion. Firms do not sum cleanly (389 + 210 + 268 = 867 vs. the reported 863), because one company can operate in more than one child code, so the parent is counted once, not three times [1][2].

A concentration paradox worth pausing on. Each child, on its own, is more concentrated than the parent: soft-drink CR4 is 48.2%, bottled-water CR4 is 78%, ice CR4 is 60.6% — yet the rollup's CR4 is only 43.5% and its HHI just 695 (a level the antitrust agencies would call unconcentrated) [2][3][4][5]. That is not a data error. Pooling three businesses whose leaders do not compete with each other — Coca-Cola does not compete with Reddy Ice — mathematically dilutes measured concentration. The 31211 aggregate makes the industry look far more competitive than any market a buyer actually shops in. Read concentration at the child level, not here.

Undercount caveats (the aggregate understates the real economy several ways):

1. The soft-drink profit engine is booked elsewhere. Concentrate/syrup sits in NAICS 311930, so the fattest margins in beverages never appear in the 31211 receipts [8]. This is a classification split, not fragmentation.
2. Factory-gate, not retail. The $51.5 billion is what plants ship, not what consumers spend. Retail markup, foodservice, and distribution add the bulk of the consumer dollar — U.S. bottled-water producer revenue alone reached ~$28.2 billion in 2024, with retail sales totaling roughly $50.6 billion; researchers put the broad soft-drinks retail market in the hundreds of billions [6][10].
3. Vertically integrated plants get coded to their dominant product, so genuine water bottling done inside a soda plant leaks into 312111 and out of 312112 [11].
4. Small and captive activity is missed — hundreds of tiny local ice operators, captive in-house ice, and ice-vending are undercounted or classified as retail/services rather than manufacturing [9]. Where small and owner-operated activity dominates (the ice tail especially), treat the federal count as a floor.

4. The investable universe — where value concentrates

The defining fact of this level: public value is overwhelmingly concentrated in soft drinks, and it thins out fast as you move to water and disappears at ice. Reserve tickers and scale figures for this and the next section.

Soft drinks — abundant, whole-value-chain access. Unusually, a public investor can pick exactly which seat to own:

• Concentrate/brand owners (the margin): The Coca-Cola Company (KO, ~$47.9B revenue, ~$13.8B operating income FY 2025), PepsiCo (PEP, ~$91.9B total revenue), Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP, U.S. Refreshment Beverages ~$10.4B) [12][13][14].
• Growth challengers: Monster Beverage (MNST, ~$7.67B net sales), Celsius Holdings (CELH, ~$2.52B revenue), National Beverage (FIZZ, ~$1.19B revenue), Zevia (ZVIA, ~$0.16B revenue) [15][16][17][18].
• Pure bottler (the capital-heavy half): Coca-Cola Consolidated (COKE), the largest independent U.S. Coca-Cola bottler, with a 39.7% gross margin and ~$951M operating income in FY 2025 [19].
• Private/PE: Red Bull (private), Refresco (KKR-majority-owned, the largest independent contract bottler), Polar Beverages (family-owned, describes itself as the largest independent U.S. bottler with owned brands plus private-label manufacturing), Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling, and emerging brands like Olipop and Poppi (acquired by PepsiCo in 2025) [3][20][21].

Bottled water — essentially one public door. Primo Brands (PRMB) is the only listed U.S. pure-play, formed by the November 2024 merger of Primo Water and BlueTriton (the ex-Nestlé Waters brands: Poland Spring, Pure Life, Deer Park), now with ~$6.7B revenue (FY 2025) [4][22][23]. Everyone else gives diluted exposure: water is a small slice inside KO, PEP, Danone (DANOY), and Nestlé (NSRGY). The real breadth is private — Niagara Bottling (family-owned, the dominant private-label maker, 50+ plants, revenue estimated above $5 billion), Fiji Water (The Wonderful Company), Crystal Geyser, and canned upstart Liquid Death (which raised $67 million in March 2024 at a $1.4 billion valuation) [4][24][25].

Ice — no public pure-play. Both national producers are now private: Reddy Ice (now including Arctic Glacier after the February 2026 acquisition; owned by PE firm Stone Canyon; ~$511M revenue pre-merger, ~100 facilities) and family-owned Home City Ice (~$136M revenue, ~160 locations, 25 states), plus hundreds of regional independents and a fast-growing self-serve ice-vending fringe (Twice the Ice, Ice House America, Everest, Kooler Ice) [5][26][27]. Listed exposure is indirect only — PE sponsors' shares (Carlyle's Arctic Glacier stake ended with the February 2026 sale), or ice-equipment makers like Hoshizaki, Pentair (PNR, via Manitowoc Ice, acquired for $1.6 billion in 2022), Middleby (MIDD), and Berkshire Hathaway's Marmon/Cornelius unit — none of which is an ice-production play [5][28].

Where value concentrates: for a stock-market investor, ~97% of the directly investable value of this level lives in the soft-drink child (Coca-Cola brands alone hold roughly 48% of the U.S. soft-drink market) [29]. For a private-market investor the picture inverts: water and ice — bottling assets, contract manufacturing, regional routes, and vending — are where private and PE capital actually operate, because that is where the assets aren't already public.

5. How the money works

Across all three children the profit sits in the same place — volume, mix, packaging cost, and distribution efficiency — but the shape of the economics differs.

• Soft drinks split into two economies. Concentrate makers (KO) run ~60% gross margins and 20–30%+ returns on capital because they sell formula, not liquid, and carry little physical capital; bottlers (COKE) run ~30–40% gross margins (Coca-Cola Consolidated reported 39.7% in FY 2025) on heavy plant, fleet, and packaging costs and absorb input-cost spikes first [3][19][30]. When fuel, aluminum, or labor costs spike, bottlers absorb the hit while the concentrate maker keeps collecting.
• Bottled water is a packaging-and-freight business with a services kicker. The bottle (PET — polyethylene terephthalate — plastic, whose price tracks oil) is the biggest variable cost; PET prices rose about 15% in 2024, squeezing margins [31]. Profit comes from plant density near demand (water is too heavy to ship far), mix shift toward premium/sparkling, and — distinctively — the home-and-office delivery and refill annuity (Primo's specialty), a subscription-like, higher-margin recurring stream. Primo reported a gross margin of 30.3% for full-year 2025, with adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.7% but net income of just $80.4 million (1.2% of sales) after $326.5 million in interest and financing expense — demonstrating the gap between adjusted metrics and bottom-line reality [4][22].
• Ice is pure logistics plus seasonality. Water and electricity are a small share of the sale price; the cost and moat live in direct-store-delivery (DSD) routes, refrigerated fleets, and company-owned in-store freezers. More than half of volume and profit is earned Memorial Day to Labor Day — the FDA estimates 80% of packaged-ice purchases occur in that window — so fixed costs spread over a short season keep margins thinner than the cheap inputs imply [5][32]. Historical Reddy Ice filings show labor at approximately 33% of revenue, with fuel, plastic bags, and electricity each around 5–6% [5].

Metrics that matter across the level: unit/case volume and organic growth; price/mix (premium, energy, sparkling, and single-serve carry richer margins than mainstream cola or bulk water); input costs (aluminum, PET resin, sweetener, electricity, diesel); and capacity utilization/route density — because all three are fixed-cost businesses that only pay when the plants and trucks run full.

6. What drives demand

• The soda-to-water substitution is the master trend linking the two big children: sugary carbonated soft drinks are in slow structural decline (U.S. per-capita soft-drink consumption fell ~0.4%/year 2020–2025) while bottled water became the largest packaged-beverage category by volume (16.4 billion gallons in 2024, up 2.9% over 2023) [6][7]. In 2024, bottled-water volume grew 2.87% versus just 0.21% for carbonated soft drinks [6].
• Health and "better-for-you." Zero-sugar, sparkling, and functional formats take share within both soda and water; energy drinks are the fastest-growing large category, pulling the majors into acquisitions. About 38% of 2024 global beverage launches were sugar-free or low-sugar; PepsiCo said 60% of its beverage volume in major markets came from low- or no-sugar products in mid-2025 [3][33].
• Weather and seasonality dominate ice and add a summer tilt to beverages generally; a hot, dry summer is a boom, a cool one a bust [5].
• Population, convenience, and away-from-home traffic underpin steady baseline demand for all three.
• Wildcards: GLP-1 weight-loss drugs (an unproven but plausible drag on calorie-dense drinks), municipal tap-water scares (which spike bottled water), and microplastics concern (one widely reported study estimated ~90,000 more microplastic particles per year in bottled versus tap water; 83% of Americans report concern) [3][4][34].

7. Regulation

All three children are regulated as food by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which sets ingredient, labeling, and good-manufacturing-practice rules; bottled water additionally has FDA "standards of identity/quality" that must be at least as protective as the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) tap-water standards [8][35]. Beyond that shared baseline, the pressure points diverge:

• Soft drinks face the most political heat: local soda taxes (per-ounce sweetened-beverage levies in Seattle, Philadelphia, Boulder, and several California cities), SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) restrictions under the "Make America Healthy Again" push — USDA's page updated in March 2026 listed approved food-restriction waivers in 22 states, most restricting soda, soft drinks, energy drinks, or other sweetened beverages — and reformulation pressure on sweeteners and dyes [36][37][38].
• Bottled water's fastest-moving front is packaging and plastics — extended-producer-responsibility laws, recycled-content mandates for PET (California requires 25% post-consumer recycled content from January 2025, rising to 50% from January 2030), and deposit schemes — plus PFAS ("forever chemicals") scrutiny (EPA finalized tap-water limits in April 2024, but FDA has not set enforceable bottled-water limits; FDA testing of 197 samples in 2023–24 found none exceeding EPA's tap-water levels) and water-sourcing/permitting fights [4][35][39][40].
• Ice is lightly regulated at the federal level (FDA good-manufacturing-practice; the industry largely self-regulates via the International Packaged Ice Association's audited PIQCS standard), but carries the sharpest antitrust exposure — its regional-monopoly tendencies and a real price-fixing history (2008–2010 guilty pleas for customer/territory allocation; Arctic Glacier's $9 million criminal fine) keep the Department of Justice (DOJ) engaged in every merger [5][9][41].

8. Consolidation

Every child is consolidating, but for different reasons and at different speeds — the common thread is that scale, density, and distribution compound in a business where the edge is logistics.

• Soft drinks consolidate on two axes: the majors continually reshuffle bottling (Coca-Cola refranchising to independents like Coca-Cola Consolidated and Refresco; PepsiCo at times buying bottlers back in-house) and continually acquire high-growth challengers (PepsiCo–Poppi 2025) — using emerging brands as an outsourced R&D-and-acquisition pipeline [3].
• Bottled water's landmark was the November 2024 Primo Water + BlueTriton merger into Primo Brands, creating the clear ~$6.7B branded leader, following Nestlé's 2021 exit from U.S. mass-market water (sold for $4.3 billion) — scale wins in a freight-and-packaging business [4][22][42].
• Ice reached its own milestone: in February 2026 Reddy Ice closed its acquisition of Arctic Glacier (for between $126.4 million and $179.4 million), combining the two largest packaged-ice producers into a roughly two-player national structure — but the DOJ required divestitures in Washington, Idaho, California, Oregon, and the New York City and Boston metro areas where their territories overlapped, capping how far a single national player can roll up [5][26][43].

Because the three leaders don't compete with one another, this consolidation raises concentration sharply within each child while leaving the 31211 aggregate looking benign — reinforcing the Section 3 point that concentration must be read at the child level.

9. Risks

• Structural volume decline in sugary soda — the biggest child's core sub-category is shrinking; the offset (energy, sparkling, water) is real but shifts the mix rather than growing the whole [7].
• Input-cost and freight inflation — aluminum, PET resin (oil-linked), sweetener, electricity, and diesel hit the capital-heavy bottling and ice segments first [3][4][19].
• Regulatory and tax pressure — soda taxes, SNAP restrictions (now in 22 states), sweetener/dye rules on soft drinks; plastics/EPR and PFAS on water; antitrust on ice, whose merger history keeps that risk live [5][36][38].
• Weather and seasonality — the dominant year-to-year swing for ice and a summer tilt for beverages.
• Concentration/single-category and leverage risk in the challengers and pure-plays — Celsius, Zevia, and near-pure-play Primo carry category-specific and (for PE-owned ice and post-merger Primo) debt-heavy balance-sheet risk that diversified giants don't; Reddy Ice's 2012 Chapter 11 is the cautionary tale [4][5].
• Private-label and commoditization — retailers' own waters and sodas (made by contract bottlers like Refresco and Niagara) cap branded pricing power; ice is a near-commodity [3][4].
• Slow-burn wildcards — GLP-1 drugs on calorie-dense drinks; microplastics on water's purity premium [3][34].

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Match the route to the child, because access differs so sharply:

• Public investors get a rich menu only in soft drinks: the concentrate compounder (KO) for defensive quality, the diversified staple (PEP, cushioned by Frito-Lay snacks), the pure bottler (COKE) as a leveraged bet on case volume and plant efficiency, or the growth tilt (MNST, CELH, FIZZ, ZVIA). Bottled water offers essentially one direct door (PRMB) plus diluted slices inside KO/PEP/DANOY/NSRGY, and there is no meaningful pure water or ice ETF (exchange-traded fund) — passive investors get the category only inside broad consumer-staples funds [3][4].
• Private investors own the parts the stock market doesn't: contract/private-label bottling (the Refresco/Niagara model — scale, plant density, low cost), regional spring-water operations, emerging functional brands, regional ice routes, and self-serve ice-vending machines. Deal logic in all three favors either lowest-cost regional scale or a differentiated premium brand — the squeezed middle struggles, and the exit is usually acquisition by a strategic or a roll-up sponsor [3][4][5].

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). Treat 31211 as a low-growth, high-cash-generation industry group whose three children move on different clocks. Bottled water should keep compounding at low-single-digit volume on the soda-substitution and wellness trends; soft drinks stay highly profitable even as sugary cola gently shrinks, with the upside residing in whoever wins the energy-and-functional transition; ice stays flat-to-low, weather-driven, and defined by consolidation-capped-by-antitrust plus the vending disruption at its edges. The common near-term swing factors are input/packaging costs and regulation (sweetener politics and plastics), and the common structural direction is more consolidation — because in every one of these businesses, the edge is distribution, and distribution rewards scale.

---

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 31211 and children 312111/312112/312113: establishments, employment, payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration by Largest Firms (NAICS 31211: receipts, firms, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. Histometrics child primer, Soft Drink Manufacturing (NAICS 312111) — federal figures, value-chain structure, investable universe, economics, regulation, consolidation.
4. Histometrics child primer, Bottled Water Manufacturing (NAICS 312112) — federal figures, Primo/BlueTriton merger, private ownership, packaging/logistics economics.
5. Histometrics child primer, Ice Manufacturing (NAICS 312113) — federal figures, Reddy Ice/Arctic Glacier merger, private ownership, DSD/seasonality economics, antitrust history.
6. International Bottled Water Association / Beverage Marketing Corporation, "2024 U.S. bottled water statistics" (16.4B gallons; 47.3 vs 34.2 per-capita; largest packaged-beverage category; producer revenue $28.2B, retail $50.6B). https://bottledwater.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/BWR_BWstats_June2025_FinalwithBMCad.pdf
7. IBISWorld, "Per capita soft drink consumption in the US (1980–2031)," 2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/bed/per-capita-soft-drink-consumption/1786/
8. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS, "NAICS 312111 definition and exclusions" (concentrate/syrup → 311930; adjacent codes), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=31211&input=31211&year=2022
9. U.S. Census Bureau, "NAICS 312113 — Ice Manufacturing" definition and exclusions (dry ice → 325120; vending → 445132), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=312113&year=2022
10. Novaone Advisor / Grand View Research, "U.S. Soft Drinks Market Size," 2024. https://www.novaoneadvisor.com/report/us-soft-drinks-market
11. U.S. Census Bureau, "NAICS 312112 — Bottled Water Manufacturing (definition; vertical-integration coding note)," 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/
12. The Coca-Cola Company, 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/21344/000162828026010047/ko-20251231.htm
13. PepsiCo, Inc., 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/77476/000007747626000007/pep-20251227.htm
14. Keurig Dr Pepper Inc., 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418135/000141813526000016/kdp-20251231.htm
15. Monster Beverage Corporation, 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/865752/000110465926020831/mnst-20251231x10k.htm
16. Celsius Holdings, Inc., Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1341766/000134176626000017/ex9914q20251.htm
17. National Beverage Corp., Fiscal 2024 Annual Report. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/69891/000143774924028674/nbcars.pdf
18. Zevia PBC, "Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results," 2025. https://investors.zevia.com/news/news-details/2025/Zevia-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2024-Results/
19. Coca-Cola Consolidated, Inc., 2025 Form 10-K. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/317540/000162828026009057/coke-20251231.htm
20. Refresco, "About Us," 2024. https://www.refresco.com/en/about-us/
21. Polar Beverages, "About Us." https://polarbeverages.com/about/
22. Primo Brands Corp., Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, SEC EDGAR. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2042694/000162828026012779/prmb-20251231.htm
23. Axios, "Primo Water and BlueTriton merger," 2024. https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/primo-water-poland-springs-private-equity
24. Wikipedia, "Niagara Bottling," 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Bottling
25. Retail Dive, "Liquid Death raises $67M at $1.4B valuation," 2024. https://www.retaildive.com/news/liquid-death-funding-investment/709928/
26. U.S. Department of Justice, "Justice Department Requires Reddy Ice to Divest Assets to Proceed with Acquisition of Arctic Glacier," 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-reddy-ice-divest-assets-proceed-proposed-acquisition-arctic
27. Local 12 (WKRC) / Home City Ice, "Home City Ice celebrates 100 years," 2024. https://local12.com/news/local/home-city-ice-celebrates-100-years-as-family-owned-business-in-cincinnati-tommy-sedler-employees-refrigeration-sayler-park-frozen-bagged-delivery
28. Pentair, "Pentair Completes Transaction to Acquire Manitowoc Ice," 2022. https://investors.pentair.com/news-releases/news-release-details/pentair-completes-transaction-acquire-manitowoc-ice
29. Statista, "Soft drink market share in the U.S. by company, 2024." https://www.statista.com/statistics/225464/market-share-of-leading-soft-drink-companies-in-the-us-since-2004/
30. Latterly.org, "Coca-Cola Business Model: Concentrate Sales and Franchise Bottling," 2024. https://www.latterly.org/coca-cola-business-model/
31. Grand View Research, "Bottled Water Market — PET resin costs and margins," 2026. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bottled-water-market
32. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FDA Regulates the Safety of Packaged Ice," 2023. https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/fda-regulates-safety-packaged-ice
33. Associated Press, "PepsiCo says 60% of beverage volume from low- or no-sugar products," 2025. https://apnews.com/article/0404b23518e65e2e6cd3487381411d7f
34. Fox News / ScienceDaily, "Microplastics in bottled water vs. tap; consumer concern," 2024–2025. https://www.foxnews.com/health/hidden-reason-scientists-say-bottled-water-may-not-cleaner-choice
35. International Bottled Water Association, "Regulation of Bottled Water" (FDA standards; FD&C Act §410; EPA/PFAS interface), 2024. https://bottledwater.org/regulation-of-bottled-water/
36. Tax Policy Center, "How do state and local soda taxes work?" 2024. https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-state-and-local-soda-taxes-work
37. The Hill, "Red states leading push to ban candy and soda from SNAP," 2025. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5443705-gop-led-soda-candy-snap/
38. U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, "SNAP Food Restriction Waivers," updated March 2026. https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/waivers/foodrestriction
39. CalRecycle, "Minimum Recycled Content Requirements for Plastic Beverage Containers," 2024. https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/Contracts/Advertisement/2229
40. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FDA Testing Finds Bottled Water Samples Do Not Exceed EPA PFAS Limits," 2024. https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-shares-testing-results-pfas-bottled-water
41. U.S. Department of Justice, "Cincinnati Packaged-Ice Manufacturer Sentenced to Pay $9 Million for Its Role in a Customer and Territory Allocation Conspiracy," 2008–2010. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/cincinnati-packaged-ice-manufacturer-sentenced-pay-9-million-its-role-customer-and-territory
42. Food Processing, "BlueTriton (Formerly Nestlé Waters) — Nestlé Waters North America sold for $4.3B (2021)," 2024. https://www.foodprocessing.com/business-of-food-beverage/news/55089743/
43. Federal Register / U.S. DOJ Antitrust Division, "United States v. Reddy Ice LLC, et al. — Proposed Final Judgment and Competitive Impact Statement," 2026. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/18/2026-03102/united-states-v-reddy-ice-llc-et-al-proposed-final-judgment-and-competitive-impact-statement

Federal business statistics (establishments, employment, payroll, firms, receipts, concentration ratios, HHI) are from the U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023 and 2022 Economic Census (Concentration), as ingested into Histometrics. Where a value is suppressed in the federal source it is not reported here.