• 🆕 Hemp Bev Flyers Rebrands THC Line
• 🍉 More On Slice and Suja’s Strategy
• 🗓️ New Hope Slims Expo West Schedule
• 🍸 JLo Adds Margarita to The Mix
• 🤔 Cereal Bar Kith Partners With Topo Chico
• 🔍 Finding Rudy’s Roaster

Last year, sparkling beverage brand Sound was facing a crisis that could have spelled the end of the company – working capital was drying up, inventory was running low, and the business was downsizing sales and marketing as founder Tommy Kelly sought out fresh capital. But this month, Sound turned the volume back up and it’s ready for its encore with new owner Next in Natural.

Next in Natural, a CPG private equity firm based in New York, acquired the brand earlier this year and now, through a shared resources model, has gotten Sound back up and running. Products are now in stock online and in select retail, and above all it’s focusing on one key goal: Profitability.

The firm focuses on bringing brands in its portfolio to profitability within the first 100 days after a deal, and Jeff Lichtenstein, the firm’s CEO, said it has been swift to “reverse engineer” Sound’s strategy, undergoing “a mosaic of activities and actions from top to bottom line” to restructure the company’s operations and reduce expenses.

“You’ve got to be pretty lean and mean to get to profitability,” said Lichtenstein, who is also the new board chairman at Sound. “Sound has our full 35 person team, it just comes via this shared service model, so it's efficient and we can get the company profitable.”

Kelly is still running the business day-to-day as CEO, while his co-founder, Salim Najjar, has stepped aside for personal reasons, but remains with the business as an advisor and board member.

Sound is now pushing ahead with its existing line of sparkling waters infused with botanicals and tea, at a price point of $2.29 per 12 oz. can, but under Next in Natural it’s also weighing a broader innovation pipeline, in addition to re-establishing its foodservice channel business.

Read the full story on BevNET for more on Sound’s revival.

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Coming off a seed round investment in April, Flyers has completely reworked the design of its hemp-derived THC drinks with a bolder look to bring a more straightforward label, clearer callouts and a new color scheme.

🏪 The revamped look comes alongside Flyers’ brick-and-mortar retail expansion over the past six months; it is now part of some Total Wine And More Delta-9 THC beverage endcap displays.

👀 The hemp drink maker used Flyers co-founder Damon Gorrie’s branding agency Safari Sundays to design the new cans with an aim to stand out on-shelf and be seen as a family of products.

💬 “It's simple to make things difficult, but it's difficult to make things simple,” said Flyers CEO and co-founder Craig Lewis, comparing the old and new label looks.

Read about the strategy behind the change on BevNET.

Yesterday’s news of fresh beverage specialist Suja Life acquiring the trademark for throwback soda brand Slice was a bit of a curious one: after fits and starts under various ownership groups, the IP has been pretty quiet for the last several years. So why now, and what’s next? We reached out to Suja’s recently appointed CEO, former Stone Brewing boss Maria Stipp, to fill in a few of the blanks. Here’s what you need to know:

👷 Building the Base: According to Stipp, Slice is just one piece of a larger “next-generation better-for-you beverage platform” that “enables the company to introduce a new wellness product in a format that encourages consumers, who typically wouldn’t try health products.” 

🔥 Our take: With shot brand Vive Organic already in its portfolio, Suja is emerging as an interesting player in mid-market M&A.

🥤 Potential Prebiotic? Will Slice join the growing cohort of prebiotic-enhanced sodas? Stipp didn’t tip her hand, at least not specifically: “We are currently in the process of developing Slice’s new recipes. Most notably, they will feature a pared-down ingredients list focusing on gut health.”

Natural Products Expo West will no longer extend into the weekend, according to an announcement this week. 

⛔ The show will now end on Friday at 2 pm; previously it extended into Saturday afternoon. The North Halls will now only be open for two days, Wednesday and Thursday.

🔀 Another big shift: All halls will now open on Wednesday at 10 am; while the new schedule specifies that halls will open, it remains unclear if the Fresh Ideas Tent, a one-day co-located event on Wednesday, will return in 2025. 

📝 “Our goal with this schedule change is to increase ROI for Exhibitors, reduce crowding, allow space for more buyer-only hours, and simplify the product discovery journey,” the announcement reads.

While we don’t know if her marriage is truly on the rocks, we do know Jennifer Lopez’s new cocktail is meant to be served that way. 

✨ The House of Delola has added America’s favorite cocktail to its line of lightly sparkling cocktails. The Delola Light Margarita is positioned as the new skinny margarita with a lower calorie count and low sugar. 

💪 JLo jumped into the rising ready-to-drink cocktail category last April with the launch of three 750 ml and 375 ml flavors. The brand has been backed by Suntory Spirits, which has bet big on premium glass bottle RTD offerings.

🎉 The superstar is not the only one to go after the margarita this month, Hella Cocktail Co joined the party too.

Kith Treats, the cereal bar foodservice outposts of luxury fashion and lifestyle brand Kith, announced a collaboration with Coca-Cola-owned Mexican mineral water brand Topo Chico to bring a 3-SKU line of ice creams to all Kith Treat locations.

🍨 The three special treats (Botanic, Sunrise and Breeze) will be available for a limited time starting May 31 and feature fruit-infused vanilla ice cream smoothie varieties topped with Topo Chico Sabores slushies.

💧 The partnership also includes co-branded 12 oz. bottles of Topo Chico Mineral Water that will be gifted with the purchase of the treats.

👟 Coca-Cola has been leveraging the Topo Chico brand with a line of mixers launched in March as well as a collaboration with Converse on a co-branded shoe line.

Even for those of us who have seen more than our share of odd celebrity ventures, Rudy Giuliani’s Rudy Coffee has our eyebrows raised to what might be an all-time high. Sprudge, too, apparently, as the coffee publication followed the trail to find Rudy’s roasting partner: meet “Don Pablo.”

☕ Along with his day job as the head of coffee venture Burke Brands – which markets products under the banners Don Pablo Coffee, Subtle Earth Coffee, and Pablo’s Pride – Darron “Don Pablo” Burke is also a sometime filmmaker: see “The Coffee Fix,” which finds Burke traveling and lending his “experience, expertise and resources” to small businesses.

Does any of this matter? Probably not. But associating with a disbarred attorney who’s been indicted for felonies in multiple states has its inherent risks: according to Spurge, Burke Brands was subpoenaed to produce all documents relating to Rudy’s Coffee as part of the former mayor’s debt hearings.