Brewbound 2023 Beyond Beer Company of the Year: BeatBox Beverages

Speaker 1 [00:12] The Beyond Beer Space is filled with a diverse array of products with different alcohol bases, flavors, forms, and packages, but one particular brand in a Tetra pack has been making itself known in scan data, on shelves, and in the headlines. This year's Beyond Beer Company of the Year is Beatbox Beverages, and here to chat with me about the brand and all of its recent milestones is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Amy Steadman. Welcome, Amy.

Speaker 2 [00:43] Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 [00:45] Yes, and congrats on being this year's Brewbound Beyond Beer Company of the Year. We're really excited to celebrate you guys this year.

Speaker 2 [00:53] Thank you. Thanks for the award.

Speaker 1 [00:56] I, I think it'd be difficult to say that most that there's anyone who doesn't know what BeatBox is for, but for anyone who is unfamiliar with the brand and what its brand identity is, could you describe it?

Speaker 2 [01:10] Yeah, Beatbox is designed to bring people together and have fun. The brand is all about community and inclusivity. You know, everybody's welcome to the Beatbox party. We have uh a bunch of different flavors of our product. They're nostalgic flavors with a kick. So blue raspberry, fruit punch, pink lemonade, uh, our newest is green apple. So, uh, really, you know, flavors that everybody loves and enjoys.

Speaker 1 [01:36] We just wrote a couple of pieces about you guys, but one that stood out to me was a little note, uh, that my colleague Justin Fenchel had. Um, your fellow co-founders, uh, were with you in New York for beer marketers insights, sharing some of the details about the brand and who your consumer base is. We knew BeatBox was resonating with younger consumers, but you guys also pointed out that over 50% of your consumers are 42 or older. Can you kind of dive deeper into what that consumer is like?

Speaker 2 [02:08] Yeah, we were finally able to purchase some data from Numerator to really look at, you know, who is buying Beatbox and we knew it was working, you know, all over the United States and all different types of classes of channels, um, but we didn't know exactly who was buying it and our consumer, like you mentioned, overindexes and Gen Z and millennials, but there are so many shoppers actually in the Gen X. And boomers categories as well that um that we're speaking to. We also overindex in Black and Hispanic communities and our shoppers also one that tends to spend more on average uh when they go shopping. So this has been some information that retailers have really loved to see, um, as we've put it in front of them because these are the kind of diverse shoppers that they're looking to bring into their stores.

Speaker 1 [02:56] Retailers are definitely responding to that and we're seeing that in your numbers and just the growth and where you guys are and your volume overall. You guys doubled in 2022 and you're going to be just shy of 140,000 barrels this year, which is an insane number. How have you been able to keep up with such massive growth in that time?

Speaker 2 [03:20] Yeah, I mean, absolutely it's a credit to our team. We've made significant investments in hiring folks and providing support, uh, you know, but really also with our company culture. I mean we want we want Beatbox to be a place where people come to do the best work of their career and have the best time doing it and so you know we've, we've not only invested in support so that our wholesale and retail partners can feel that, you know, support and keep up production and supply for them but um. Also create some amazing experiences for our fans as well. So, um, just making sure that we don't fall behind in, you know, hiring and our company culture so that we can take care of all of those cases and all of the different, you know, processes that that involves.

Speaker 1 [04:06] If anyone follows Beatbox on LinkedIn or if you're a rebound insider, you're paying attention to our newsletter, you might have seen a kind of celebratory photo of the whole Beatbox crew with Avril Lavigne this year. And that's because you guys collaborated with her on this creator series, Pink Lemonade, and it's expected to sell more than 6 million of them at retailers. This is huge for any brand and a celebrity partnership too, where, you know, you never know how a celebrity partnership is going to go. Can you explain how that partnership went and why you think it really resonated with consumers and was so successful?

Speaker 2 [04:43] Yeah, I mean, I think just like, you know, Beatbox is a, is a brand that's oriented around music and all of our flavors are very nostalgic and kind of flavors that we grew up with. Um, Avril Lavigne is an artist that many of our fans grew up listening to and loving her music, but she's also, you know, been creating awesome new music this year and working in, in expanding her collaborations in different genres from electronic to pop punk. To pop to even country. And so she's just, you know, similar to us in a lot of ways and that she's nostalgic, fun, and trying to speak to a wide diverse audience, but, um, also she's a genuine fan of the product. She was drinking Beatbox before recording in the studio, um, before we had this partnership. And so her enthusiasm, you know, coupled with the fact that she's such an amazing global star, uh, was just the right formula for a partnership.

Speaker 1 [05:38] It's totally cool, and I was geeking out a lot seeing that partnership come together. Um, speaking of music, you guys lean pretty heavily into marketing around music festivals too. That's been, we've talked before about the importance of that to your brand and to be able to connect with consumers. Can you talk about how, why that's so essential for Beatbox?

Speaker 2 [05:59] So the, you know, a lot of brands are built in the on-premise, you know, a lot of spirits brands and other types of alcohol beverage companies build their experience through bars and restaurants. For us, our on-premise strategy as music festivals, we kind of think about it like if you went to a winery in Napa and tried really nice wine and had a great experience there that you would go home and tell all of your friends about it and purchase it at home when you got there. And that's what drinking Beatbox at a music festival is like. The product is perfect for music festivals. The whole idea of the brand and the product was born in a music festival, and so it's really perfect for that environment. And once you're having fun with all your friends and beatbox is enhancing your experience, you know, what we find is people go home, talking about it, sharing it with their friends, and then when they see it in stores, they're really excited to buy it and kind of relive those vibes from the music festival at home, uh, listening to their favorite music. So that's something that's worked really well for us. We tend to send, sell a lot at music festivals. You know, we're usually one of the top 3 brands or products being sold and so for us, you know, the amount of sales also helps us be able to reinvest in sponsoring those festivals because you know they're not free obviously as we know, but the fact that we know that we're going to sell really well um makes it a really good return on investment for us to go and do more and more of those events.

Speaker 1 [07:26] It seems to be a Venue or type of place that more and more alcohol brands are realizing like you can really connect with the consumer there.

Speaker 2 [07:37] For sure. It's like a great place to try new products and you know just have fun with consumers and do fun things together. We have, you know, activations, we have the beatbox bus that we bring um and have artists perform on the bus. We have graffiti walls, we make bracelets with our fans, so it's just a really fun place to interact with, you know, people that are interested in your product.

Speaker 1 [08:03] We've chatted before about your distribution to strategy and wholesaler strategy as well. So Beatbox is a wine-based product, and you guys originally were looking at wine uh wine and spirits distributors, but transition to beer wholesalers, how was that particular transition helpful to Create this next chapter of growth for Beatbox. You

Speaker 2 [08:28] know, convenience is where the majority of beer is sold in the United States and so, uh, that's also where our shoppers are looking for products like Beatbox and so we wanted to make sure that we were aligned with the distribution network that could really service that channel. It's such a large volume for us, but Um, you know, convenience stores are also the first chains that took a chance on Beatbox and let us sell in the stores. Our very first store was a convenience store, um, in Austin, Texas. And so, um, it's, it's always been super important to us. I think we're just now kind of expanding more to the large format, liquor, you know, club channels, some of the other channels that are out there, but convenience has always been really important to us.

Speaker 1 [09:09] And we're seeing it's an incredibly important channel for kind of beer overall right now, and so anyone beer beyond who's succeeding in that space is definitely reaping the benefits of it.

Speaker 2 [09:22] Absolutely.

Speaker 1 [09:24] One thing that we also heard from your co-founders recently was that you guys are targeting $500 million in sales in the next 5 years. What is your strategy for sustaining your growth to get to that goal?

Speaker 2 [09:40] Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at Beatbox as compared to other brands um in terms of rate of sale, whenever we get into stores, we perform as one of the top brands in the store. And so we feel that we really have earned the right and deserve to be in, you know, almost all of the distribution that's available in off-premise. So we're definitely on a mission to get Beatbox into, you know, 75%, 80% of all off-premise distribution. We also haven't even touched the on-premise channel as much. As I mentioned earlier, and so any place people are having fun, be it, you know, sports stadiums to restaurants, things like that, that's another channel too that we're just now getting into. With our, you know, really high rate of sale, uh, we really feel the right that we've earned to be in a ton of different stores and so we're working with our wholesaler and our retailer partners to make sure that, you know, the millions of people that are looking for Beatbox on a daily basis can find the product in stores near them.

Speaker 1 [10:38] My final question for you, Amy, and we, I think we could talk about everything going on with Beatbox forever, and so you can just check Brewbound or you can hear from Amy yourself on stage during Brewbound Live. Um, but my final question for you here, and I'm asking all of our award winners, what is something that you have learned as a decision-maker in the bed E industry that you think is important for other industry members to know or that they can learn from?

Speaker 2 [11:07] Yeah, well, the alcohol beverage industry, nothing happens by yourself, right? Everything is working with channel partners and so we've brought it on ourselves to bring the fun back to the beer industry. We want everybody that interacts with anyone from our team to have a friendly and helpful experience. We want to be the easiest partner to work with, um, and that's why I You know, I think our company culture is really what's driving our success is working with our wholesalers, working with our retailers to solve their problems. So ultimately we can get in front of the consumer and, uh, have fun with them too. So that's our mission to make the world more fun and so we're hopeful to bring that to all of our partners that really make our success possible as well.

Speaker 1 [11:49] Well, congrats again to the whole Beatbox team that made all of your successes happen so far and made us want to award you the Beyond Beer Company of the Year. Can't wait to see what else you guys get up to.

Speaker 2 [12:02] Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.