Waterloo has not yet met its Waterloo. In fact, it’s making more like early season Napoleon, conquering territory and building the empire.

Case-in-point: at $150 million at retail, the Texas-based brand is growing faster than any significantly-sized sparkling water brand (+56% y/y, +223% on four-year stack) per Nielsen numbers provided by Bonnie Herzog of Goldman Sachs Equity Research. That kind of growth takes money and it takes strategy, so we called up CEO Jason Shiver and CMO Kathy Maurella to find out what’s driving the growth.

First, the soundbite: “In three years, we’ve just about tripled our business,” Shiver started off by saying.

The tripling has happened, according to Shiver and Maurella, because of different marketing, sales, and data strategies:

• Most marketing is going to areas where the brand has the best retail penetration and is geared toward creating brand loyalty amidst the growth via shopper and field plays.
• The company’s national awareness is coming from PR - a deal with chef Curtis Stone - and social media plays
• Goldman Sachs helped Waterloo with a significant raise in the spring – Shiver said it was “tens of millions of dollars” – from investors outside the core group (who also reinvested). He noted it was hard to get done: “Let’s not fool anybody, this environment that we’re in, from a macroeconomic perspective… is the worst that I’ve seen,” Shiver said.
• With the raise, exits aren’t in the immediate offing – but the brand will continue to have a tough time penetrating convenience as well, Shiver acknowledges. Instead, they’ll focus on more supermarket channel penetration, as well as food service, international, and drug. Also, notes Maurella, “across every major retailer in the country, is that this brand overindexes on their dotcom sales versus the category…. So there is clearly, within the retailer set we’re in, we know that’s an opportunity.”

We talk through the strategy and decisions that have put Waterloo on the map, including the value of investing in research, why they don’t fear Liquid Death, and some key promotions at the company.

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The prebiotic, better-for-you soda space is a lot bigger than it was in 2019, when agave-based beverage brand Mayawell first began conceptualizing its brand identity. At the time, the team aimed to use its front label to explain exactly what the product could do for a consumer, but as the category matured, that real estate began going to waste. 

Mayawell is about to release a completely new look – one that honors the liquid’s Mexican heritage and calls out its key differentiator, agave, for its role as both a sweetener and prebiotic fiber in the pulque-inspired brew. 

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In this week’s new products roundup, G Fuel recruits The Witcher to create a fruity new caffeine-packed potion, Onyx Coffee seeks to take the guesswork out of brewing an “exceptional” cup of coffee and waterdrop enters the iced tea space.

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Spirits-based RTDs continue to hold strong sales growth, gaining interest from former hard seltzer fans, according to an analysis of NielsenIQ data by Goldman Sachs Equity Research. 

• Dollar sales growth continued for spirit-based RTD, with sales up 40.2% in the two-week period ending August 12, versus 42.3% for the four-weeks and 46.6% for the 12-weeks.
• High Noon and Cutwater continue to lead sales, with Jack Daniels’ RTD dollar sales up +218.2% for the two-weeks likely thanks to Jack & Coke. Fresca Mixed Cocktail also continued to gain momentum following its recent launch.
• Dogfish Head Cocktail dollar sales sharply decelerated, down -4.8% for the two weeks, versus 3.1% in the four-weeks and 25.2% in the 12-weeks. 

Category sales growth remained strong for FMBs too, up 18.8% for two-weeks in line with 18.9% in the four-weeks and 20.1% for the 12-weeks. Hard Tea and soda are leading the category, with hard lemonade declining thanks to a sharp deceleration from Simply Spiked.

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* RISE Brewing Co. takes its four RTD SKUs global with Whole Foods

* Functional soda NEOPOP now available in NYC via Gopuff

* Giant closes fulfillment centers, but opens 164 doors to Mocktail Club.

* Machu Picchu Energy climbs into 150 Weis Market stores across Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware. 

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Our latest Nielsen data recap sparked some raised eyebrows: specifically, those numbers regarding prebiotic soda giants Poppi and Olipop. For full perspective, we’ve included SPINS data (which does not source from the same set as Nielsen), which shows a slightly different picture. Recall that NielsenIQ uses US xAOC (eXtended All Outlet Combined) including Convenience Stores to summarize multi-channel markets and aggregates all national cross-outlet market data, and includes certain retailers (Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s) that other providers do not. 

SPINS - Dollar Sales, 52-weeks ended July 16

US MULO

• Olipop - $106.7 million (+320.6% year-over-year)
• Poppi - $75.5 million (+264.4% year-over-year)

Natural Channel 

• Olipop - $27.9 million (+83.2%)
• Poppi - $10.4 million (+108.6%)

SPINS - Dollar Sales, 12-weeks ended July 16

US MULO 

• Olipop - $41.7 million (+274.9% year-over-year)
• Poppi - $29.6 million (+284.1% year-over-year)

Natural Channel 

• Olipop - $8.6 million (+91.9%)
• Poppi - $3.7 million (+139.5%)