Ready-to-drink canned cocktails from JuneShine began quietly hitting store shelves in Southern California last week and officially launched March 1.
The release of the spirits-based canned cocktails marks the first non-hard kombucha product launch from the San Diego-headquartered company.
Co-founder and CMO Forrest Dein told Brewbound that the launch of the canned cocktails was the next step in his and fellow founder and CEO Greg Serrao’s overall ambition to make JuneShine a branded house built around “better-for-you, better-for-planet alcohol” offerings.
“The first three years were really building that foundation and the platform of the JuneShine brand to be able to launch new products, but we’re still hyper focused on growing the hard kombucha category as well,” Dein said. “That will be 90% of our business this year.”
The goal for 2022 is for the other 10% to come from canned cocktails, Serrao said. It’s all part of JuneShine’s strategy of competing in bev-alc’s fastest-growing segments and becoming a leader within the fourth category of alcoholic beverages.
According to Dein, JuneShine’s entry into canned cocktails is not unlike its genesis in 2017. He and Serrao perused the grocery aisles looking for alcoholic beverages built on “transparency” and organic ingredients.
“We felt like hard kombucha was super disruptive,” Dein said of JuneShine’s 2018 launch. JuneShine was part of a movement that led to more “organic, transparent products now in seltzer, beer, wine, hard kombucha,” Dein said.
However, Dein said the high-ABV, canned-cocktail space still lacks “transparency” with “no nutrition facts [panels]” and offerings “still loaded with sugar.”
“We felt like there was a gap in the high-ABV, canned-cocktail market for the JuneShine brand that we could solve,” he said.
JuneShine’s 8-10% ABV cocktails do not feature artificial ingredients or added sugar. The first wave of JuneShine canned cocktails will feature three flavors — Classic Tequila Margarita, Tropical Rum Mai Tai, and Passion Fruit Vodka Soda — each sold in 4-packs at $12.99. The company is also offering a variety 12-packs for club stores.
Additional flavors will roll out in April: Tequila Ranch Water and Vodka Mule. Look for special releases and collaborations with different distilleries and JuneShine ambassadors in the future.
“We’re really proud of the fact that we made a canned cocktail within the JuneShine ethos,” Serrao said. “What I mean by that is that it is high ABV, two shots per can. But there’s zero grams of added sugar, all the sugar that we have is from fruit juice and spices. So it’s all natural ingredients.”
The canned cocktails are mixed in-house at JuneShine’s Scripps Ranch facility. JuneShine sources its tequila from Casa Orendain in Mexico; its rum from Malahat Spirits in San Diego; and the company declined to disclose where it sources its vodka, but described it as “premium, ultra-pure vodka that’s six times distilled and gluten-free.”
Scout Distribution and Stone Distributing will take the product to market in Southern California. Additional states will follow in May. In the meantime, JuneShine will offer e-commerce sales to 47 states (excluding Alaska, Mississippi, and Utah) beginning next week.
JuneShine is focused on the off-premise channel for its launch and its top chain partners, such as Whole Foods, Vons, and Ralphs and among others. One place JuneShine’s canned cocktails won’t be sold is in its own-premise taprooms, due to California’s state laws.
Spirits-based products carry higher excise tax rates compared to malt- or sugar-based offerings. Serrao said the higher tax rates were “one thing on the cons list” but not a deterrent from entering the segment.
JuneShine, which has raised more than $30 million from investors, has sold more than 30 million cans of its hard kombucha, and is the top-selling hard kombucha maker in the U.S.
Serrao and Dein said they view its hard kombucha as being for brunch-to-sunset occasions, while canned cocktails are for the evening, Serrao said.
“We want to serve our consumers across their drinking occasions,” Serrao said. “And we think that canned cocktails, high ABV, is a different drinking occasion than hard kombucha. We’re not going after seltzer. It’s not to compete with High Noon.”
Dein added that JuneShine’s hard kombucha drinker base skews more female, and he anticipates the canned cocktails will attract a more “gender neutral” consumer base that skews a little older than JuneShine’s Generation Z and millennial base.