If you frequented the Two Robbers’ website or Instagram in the past month, you’d notice a significant change. The website’s homepage now says “Two Robbers Spirits Company” with a “Website Coming Soon!” banner. And the Philadelphia-based hard seltzer company’s Instagram has been completely cleansed, with previous posts deleted and a handful of new photos in their place.
The shakeup is all to promote the launch of Two Robbers Vodka Soda, a line of vodka-based ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs), that started hitting the Philly market last week. The product will be the company’s core focus in 2024.
“The whole genesis behind this entire product was us going back to the drawing board and asking the question, ‘Based on everything we’ve learned over the last five years, if we had to redesign this idea of a seltzer product from the ground up … to be the best version of itself, how would we do that?’” Two Robbers co-founder and CEO Vikram Nayar told Brewbound.
The 4.5% ABV RTD will be available in four flavors: Pink Grapefruit, Cara Cara Orange, Sweet Gold Pineapple and Lemon Lime. The offering will be available in single-flavor 4-packs and a variety 8-pack, line-priced with the leading vodka soda brands ($11.99 and $19.99, respectively).
Nayar and his brother and fellow Two Robbers founder Vivek Nayar started planning the “next chapter” for the company more than a year ago. The company previously produced sugar-based hard seltzers, expanding into hard juice in 2023 with Double Punch. However, the malt- and sugar-based segment has been challenged for more than two years, after a short period of “insane explosive growth,” forcing Two Robbers to reconsider its portfolio.
“With the contraction in the category, the strategic shift that we wanted to make on the product side is making sure that we’re thinking about product in a way that really repositioned us to be on offense and put us back into a place where we felt like we had the best product we could have, given how much things have changed over the last five years,” Nayar said.
Spirits-based RTDs have been a popular next venture for bev-alc brands across beer, wine, spirits, as well as major non-alc companies (i.e. Coca-Cola’s RTD with Jack Daniels).
Total RTDs increased off-premise dollar sales +6.2% in 2023, while volume declined -0.6%, according to full-year data from market research firm Circana (MULO + convenience). When including only spirits-based hard seltzers, dollar sales growth skyrockets to +69.4%, and volume +67.8%. Meanwhile, malt-based hard seltzers recorded a -13.5% decline in dollar sales and -18.1% decline in volume.
While the data behind spirits-based RTDs is attractive, the market has also become increasingly crowded. In less than a year, the number of moving RTD UPCs in Circana-tracked channels has increased from 5,800 (through April 9, 2023), to more than 6,300 (through January 28, 2024). Spirits-based hard seltzer UPCs have increased from 490 to 558 over the same period.
The latter has also been dominated by E. & J. Gallo’s High Noon Sun Sips, which continues to grow in scan data, with dollar sales up +41.8% year-over-year (YoY) in the most recent Circana data (ending January 28). The product is also the fifth largest spirits product by dollar sales in Circana-tracked channels.
To differentiate themselves, Two Robbers is focusing on two key elements: a premium alcohol base and the use of real fruit.
A great deal of the spirits-based hard seltzer innovation recently has been “copycats to your typical vodka soda, which you saw in the early days of hard seltzer as well, [with] copycats of White Claw,” Nayar said. Those brands “from a formula standpoint, an ingredient standpoint,” are all “very similar:” “bulk corn sugar vodka,” clear liquid, natural flavors and other extracts, with “not much differentiation from the category leaders,” he said.
Two Robbers is taking a different approach. The company did blind tastings of “tons of different types of fruits” and “tons of different types of vodkas” to find the right high-quality ingredients. Packaging includes callouts to the ingredients, including “premium vodka distilled from French Winter wheat;” “sweet gold pineapple from farms in Costa Rica;” and “pink grapefruit from farms in Southeast Texas,” among others. The cans also include graphics to highlight “real fruit from real farms” and “no artificial flavors.”
“We’re leaning in quite a bit on the marketing front on talking about the liquid, which is something that frankly, a lot of RTD brands are unable to do,” Nayar said.
Nayar pointed out that competitor vodka soda brands rarely – if ever – show the liquid itself in marketing and social media, instead focusing on photos of packaging.
“That’s pretty unique for a product that’s positioned as a premium beverage product,” Nayar said. “If you think about any other beverage category, the premium products, whether it’s tequila or wine, the first image you’ll see on their Instagram or website is a liquid almost 100% of the time.
“In this category, the premium players don’t talk about their liquid,” he continued.
Two Robbers plans to do the opposite, highlighting the bright colors of the liquid itself.
“For us, it’s going to be 100% about that,” Nayar said. “We’re going to only do that – we’re going to probably be a little bit obnoxious about it. We’re going to be sampling people like crazy, we’re gonna be doing events like crazy. We’re very, very proud of the liquid we’ve developed and we want everyone to know that.”
Two Robbers is also focusing on the on-premise, something they did with their previous core products.
“Buyers in the on-premise are very, very quality sensitive and they want to have generally the highest quality products to serve to their customers,” Nayar said. “Whereas grocery is much more data, price point, that sort of stuff. In that world of [the] on-premise where quality wins, we tend to shine.”
The channel focus is also informing the RTD’s rollout strategy – starting with Philly, followed by New York City, and then the rest of the Northeast.
“Philly in a sense is ahead of the curve for some of these trends,” Nayar said. “Most bars have an RTD option at this point, and it’s usually High Noon or Stateside, so the channel has definitely adopted it.”
The change in alcohol base also means that Two Robbers had to adjust its distribution strategy, as the initial two markets have different rules for beer- versus spirits-based products. Two Robbers Vodka Soda has to be sold in state-owned liquor stores, while the company’s other products are sold in grocery.
For the initial Philadelphia launch, Two Robbers will be self-distributing. Time will tell what the company decides for later markets, which are scheduled to launch in the spring.
Similar wait-and-see sentiment can be said for the fate of Two Robbers’ original hard seltzers. Despite what Instagram may suggest, Two Robbers is continuing to sell its existing offerings; for now.
“There’s gonna be a little bit of a transition period that they’ll both be on the market,” Nayar said. “Time will dictate and proof of concept will dictate what the majority of the company is going to be in 12 or 24 months from now.”