Stateside’s Matt Quigley on Super Lyte Summer as Hard Sports Drinks Explode

How do you balance two brands that are runaway successes? 

Stateside Brands president Matthew Quigley explained on the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast how the maker of vodka iced tea brand Surfside is juggling the addition of Super Lyte, a non-carbonated hard sports drink (vodka + ade).

From a marketing perspective, Stateside has created dedicated teams for each brand, he explained. On the sales side, the company has built a national accounts team and stable of state managers who, after two years, finally have the bandwidth to take on another brand. 

The result is another brand in Super Lyte that is being dubbed the drink of the summer, while Surfside is on pace to sell 13 million cases this year, Quigley shared. 

Meanwhile, Super Lyte is expected to sell four million cases by year’s end, making it the largest spirits-based ready-to-drink (RTD) launch of all time, he added.

“It shot the lights out in our core in Pennsylvania, Jersey, New York,” he said. “It just went gangbusters and it’s still doing incredibly, incredibly well.”

Stateside is now pushing Super Lyte into 40-plus states to gain a “first-mover advantage” with a host of new challenger brands entering the hard sports drink segment, Quigley said. 

The target now is for both brands to cross the 25-million-case threshold. 

“If they both get over 25 million cases, which is like High Noon’s highwater mark, I’m a happy guy,” Quigley said. “I think I’ve done my job. Time will tell.”

Ahead of the interview, Brewbound’s Jessica Infante and Zoe Licata breakdown the the latest headlines, including:

• Samuel Adams front of house workers’ successful unionization effort;

• Mark Anthony’s termination of Coors Distributing in the Denver metro;

• The end of Stateside’s lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch InBev over its Skimmers brand.

The duo also tackles the NFL’s crackdown on player celebrations pantomiming drinking a beer (or juice). 

Listen here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts