As the ready-to-drink cocktail trend continues to surge, so does market pressure from within the category.
Vervet, a farm-to-can sparkling cocktail line, announced this week that it is winding down its business after the marketing costs required to compete with the recent influx of other RTD cocktails made the business unviable.
“For premium canned cocktails, we have about two and a half years of historical data that paints a really clear picture,” said co-founder Tuan Lee.
Vervet’s trajectory illustrated to its founders that there was minimal thirst for higher-end canned cocktails— like the company’s California-made four-packs priced at $24.99— compared to the value-priced RTDs that have continued to emerge since Vervet was founded in 2019. RTDs have grown into nearly $11 billion business after a few years of explosive growth, according to new data from NIQ. Premiumization trends have driven some trade up from malt-based drinks to cocktails (spirits-based sales have grown 55% since last year), but Lee said there’s another consumer insight that challenged the start-up’s success.
“Consumers actually just want to trade trends,” he said. “They weren’t necessarily trading up and spending more to get greater value that might be personally aligned with their lifestyle and what they say they want— they were having a good time hopping from hop water to hard kombucha to seltzers to cocktails.”
With RTD UPC proliferation nearing 7,000 items in the last 52 weeks according to NIQ, driving trial and retention requires heavy marketing spends for digital and in-the-field campaigns, said Lee.
“Without the funding that would provide that level of marketing support, we know the pathway to success is very narrow,” he said.
The company reviewed its financials with investors after this quarter, and decided to halt pursuit of further funding “because of the narrowing possibilities of this premium cocktail growing to a $10 million or $20 million business,” Lee said.
Founded by Hope Ewing, Alex Rosenblum and Lee, Vervet may have had the misfortune of being too early or niche for a young category. Ewing, a longtime bartender and author in Los Angeles, knew first-hand that the farm-to-table movement was starting to translate to spirits, inspiring consumer interest in transparency and local ingredients. And in 2016 when their planning started, the founders saw whitespace for portable craft cocktails. The self-funded venture launched with just $100,000 initially targeting non-traditional on-premise venues — the kinds of entertainment venues that shut during the pandemic.
The founders closed the business a few months into launching and were only able to raise enough money to re-launch earlier last year. In total they raised $1.5 million over three rounds, one of them including the backing of Diaego’s Distilled Ventures Pre-Accelerator, marking a turning point for the company. Vervet was one of the first companies backed by the Pre-Accelerator, which has attracted more than 400 applications from underrepresented founders in the beverage alcohol space.
“In addition to funding from Diageo, securing this partnership included a team of people to help us figure out our pain points and how best to optimize towards scale,” he said. “Having this founder-level support was incredible and accelerated the discovery of valuable information.”
The company secured distribution with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits in California, and relaunched with e-commerce nearly country-wide. The plan was to go deep and become a regionally loved brand before expanding nationally. But the costs of distributor incentives, plus marketing dollars needed to drive retail trial were overwhelming. E-commerce was also unprofitable.
“As you scale that’s why lots of beverage alcohol brands are very measured with how they use direct-to-consumer, it’s typically to improve marketing,” Lee said.
That lines up with recent trends: online dollar sales for RTDs have declined 3.7% in the last 52 weeks compared to last year.
With more time, Lee suspects more seasoned merchandising could have educated consumers on differences in RTDs and would have provided a boost for the company. But RTD selections are still fragmented based on distribution access, and at launch retailers were still keeping up with how to stock and showcase the variety of emerging options. There’s another education challenge too: convincing consumers to see their purchases as investments in underrepresented, diverse founders.
“The investment community is now asking ‘who am I investing in?’” said Lee. “But I think that will need to continue to scale with consumers should wealth equity begin to materialize in a meaningful way.”
That may be changing, thanks to the next generation of BevAlc drinkers: Gen Z is on the forefront of conscious consumerism and younger shoppers say they are choosing products based on their values and wellness goals. The founder added that most diverse-founded brands are wearing that label proudly, but want to market off their brand’s other attributes too.
As the company closes down, Lee is hopeful other entrepreneurs can learn from his experience. Embracing the iterative process is one lesson.
“Build your best assumptions, making sure that they always add value and then once you land upon a confirmed solution, scale it, and that’s the best time to talk to investors,” he said.
Finding investors with expertise in the industry was also key to navigating the start-up phase.
“Take those early stages to measure thrice, cut once,” he said. “Once you get to the chain retail level you’re really focusing on trial and retention and what those costs are— understand that this is a very cash intensive business.”