As the largest hard seltzer brands cycle tough year-over-year comps, regional seltzer brands such as Boulevard Brewing Company’s Quirk Hard Seltzer are gaining traction in their home markets.
In 2022, Quirk is on pace to finish the year accounting for about 25% of the Kansas City, Missouri-headquartered craft brewery’s overall business, according to Bobby Dykstra, VP of sales for Boulevard’s parent company, Duvel USA. That’s up from 12-15% in 2021, the first full year of Quirk being on the market.
In Quirk’s home market of Kansas City, the brand started the year as the third best-selling hard seltzer behind segment leaders White Claw (Mark Anthony Brands) and Truly (Boston Beer Company). However, over the last eight weeks, Quirk has become the No. 1 selling hard seltzer brand in KC, according to NielsenIQ data shared by Dykstra.
Dykstra traces Quirk’s success this year to investments made behind the brand in what he refers to as the “Quirkdom,” a territory that includes Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Arkansas. He also credits buy-in from the company’s distributors who “really made it a priority.”
The strategy, Dykstra said, was not to attempt to compete nationally with the larger brands, but more so on the home turf that Boulevard has cultivated over the last 33 years in the Midwest.
“We doubled down at home,” he said. “We applied some of the craft beer learnings to what we do with hard seltzer, which is let’s get some consumer trial and recruit consumers where we have trust already built under the Boulevard name.”
The “launchpad” for the campaign behind Quirk started with a regional Super Bowl ad, which Dykstra called “a huge expense relative to our historical budgets and investments.”
The investment has paid off. Dykstra, citing NielsenIQ data, shared that:
- Statewide in Missouri, Quirk is the third best-selling seltzer brand, “inching up the list” from No. 4 behind the “mega brands.”
- In the Midwest, the brand is now No. 4, up from No. 6 at the start of the year.
- In Nebraska, Quirk is now No. 4, up from No. 7.
- In Iowa, the brand is No. 7, after starting the year at No. 9.
“We’ve just seen tremendous share growth,” he added.
The overall hard seltzer segment this year has struggled in off-premise scans (off-premise dollar sales -10.1% year-to-date through July 23, -14.2% L4W, per NielsenIQ). The segment holds a 9.3% share of beer category sales year-to-date, which has increased to a little more than 10% over the last four weeks.
According to Dykstra, Quirk’s ability to buck the overall segment’s negative trends this year is due the investments made behind the the brand, as well as offering a flavor profile that is unique to the hard seltzer segment, which he believes has attracted consumers who would have gravitated to FMBs or canned cocktails.
Quirk’s Cherry Blossom and Lime flavor is also among the “best performing, if not the best performing draft seltzer” brands, Dykstra said, sharing anecdotal evidence from the company’s distributor partners. He credited the flavor’s success with its vibrant color from real fruit juice, its “striking the proper carbonation level” and the company’s recommendation to serve it over ice, which creates a different experience for drinkers.
The investment behind Quirk has continued into the summer months with brand activations at the Lake of the Ozarks, which Dykstra referred to as “the capital of the Quirkdom.”
“We’re doing activations every weekend,” he explained. “We have a Quirk boat that takes a team of samplers and activation ambassadors around to all the great spots around the lake, and they do samplings on Quirk.”
Even before visitors to the capital of the Quirkdom reach the lake, they’re inundated with out-of-home billboards on the routes into the resort area from Kansas City, St. Louis and Des Moines, Dykstra said. It’s all part of a “360 degree campaign,” he added.
According to Dykstra, the release of Raspberry Rocket Pop marked the “pinnacle” of Quirk’s summer selling season.
“I totally under-called how much we needed, and I’ll probably wear that for a while,” he admitted. “But it was the No. 1 dollar per point of distribution in the Midwest during the very limited amount of time it was out at retail. We have signs up at local liquor stores that say, ‘Sorry, no more Rocket Pop.’”
Raspberry Rocket Pop won’t return until 2023, as the company faced challenges securing both raspberries and cans, which would have led to a post-Labor Day restock.
“We’re better off preparing for a huge next year,” Dykstra said. “Leaving the market literally thirsty for it and coming back in a smarter, more impactful way next year.”
Dykstra views Quirk as the biggest opportunity for “reasonable, scalable growth” currently available to Boulevard.
“We have a unique proposition, we have built it as a core competency, we have momentum. All those things point to this being a window in time where this is our biggest growth opportunity,” he said.
In order to increase production of Quirk this year, Boulevard culled several SKUs from its can lineup earlier this year, including its sample can 12-pack, Unfiltered Wheat mixed variety pack, and Kolsch. The company also added a semi-automated mixed canning line, which Dkystra said has helped Boulevard “get over the hump for production.”
Meanwhile, Dykstra admitted that the attention this year on Quirk has pulled some of the focus away from Boulevard’s canned cocktail side hustle, Fling, which led to a repositioning of Fling to more full-flavored cocktails with ABVs upward of 9%, up from 4-5% previously, and less of a focus on low calories, carbs and sugar counts. The move was meant to stop Fling and Quirk from competing for the same consumers.
Looking ahead to 2023, Dykstra said there are even more “robust” plans for Quirk, which includes chasing the two-and-half-times distribution left to get in its home market.
“We’re just going to keep hitting the replay button with investment and effort until we get there,” he said.