17 Beverages Business Success Stories [2023]

Hello, my name is Dylan Jacob and I am the founder of BruMate, AKA, The Dehydration Company. We are a unique insulated drinkware brand with a sole focus on the adult beverage community.

I launched our first product line in November 2016. We did $250,000 in sales from November-December 2016, 2.1M in sales in 2017, and we are now doing over 1.1M/mo in sales, in over 1000 retailers nationwide, and are on track to do 20M this year with roughly 35-45% bottom line depending on our ad-spend.

I’m Andy Hayes and I’m the founder of Plum Deluxe, an online purveyor of delicious loose leaf teas.

We now have one of the largest tea subscription boxes and are about the pass the 7 figure mark in annual revenue.

Hey! My name is Justin Fenchel, and I am a co-founder and CEO at BeatBox Beverages out of Austin, TX.

Hi there. I’m Jen Hansard, the co-founder of Simple Green Smoothies where we create plant-powered recipes that gives you the energy and health to fuel your passion. It all started on Instagram in 2012, yet over the years (and with a LOT of hustle and luck) it has exploded into a brand of best-selling plant-based recipe books, live community cleanses, adventure retreats and the #1 green smoothie app in iTunes, Daily Blends. Since 2012, Simple Green Smoothies has helped over 2 million people take control of their health in a tasty and simple way.

Our programs can bring in as much as $30,000 a month in revenue, which helps me pay our staff, expenses and also allows us to help women farmers in Cambodia build mushroom farms through World Hope International. Click here to learn more.

Hello everyone, we’re Andrea Legg and Alex Balcer, founders of VIRTUE Tea in the beautiful Kootenay ski town of Nelson, BC.

Even though our business has been seriously impacted by COVID, online sales have tripled! I believe this to be from customers turning more to online shopping but also looking for quality tea and matcha. We now ship our tea and matcha to Yellowknife in the Canadian’s Northwest Territories, all over Canada in the US from New York to California.

My name is Charlie Markland and I founded Bodega Bay hard seltzer in June 2019. It's a revolutionary new type of alcoholic mixed drink that is very low calorie and very low sugar [just 73 cals per 250ml can].

Hello, my name is Harris Derner and I am the co-founder of Brine Brothers, an All-Natural Premium Brine company. I started Brine Brothers in 2016 with my friend of 25+ years, Michael Belicose. Our current products are all-natural, drinkable pickle brines; ‘Darn Good Dill’ - the classic for pickle lovers and ‘Chili Cherry Fire’ - for those who like it hot. Pickle ‘brine’ (also referred to as pickle ‘juice’) is the liquid solution that transforms cucumbers into pickles.

Hello! My name is Aaron Weast and I started Drink Shrub, a company dedicated to offering a sophisticated zero-proof solution to an age old problem: what to drink when you’re not drinking.

After selling the product at farmer’s markets, local retail outlets, food shows, etc. we aggregated the feedback from our customers and revised the recipe and branding in May of 2018. This new revision became what is known today as Small Barrel Shrub. Armed with this new branding and recipe we’ve tripled the number of doors in which we’re sold!

Hi! We are the Simple Goodness Sisters, real-life sisters Belinda Kelly (4 years younger, the bartender) and Venise Cunningham (the older sister and the farmer.) We are a lifestyle beverage brand focused on bringing the world a Happier Hour, from garden to glass.

The first product we launched were our simple syrups. The syrups launched in three flavors in Fall 2018 (Rhubarb Vanilla Bean, Marionberry Mint, and Huckleberry Spruce Tip), followed by 3 additional flavors in Spring 2019 (Lemon Herb, Berry Sage, and Blueberry Lavender), and edible flower salts and sugars for rimming in Fall 2019. During that time we pushed our ability to grow, harvest, and package in a major way, growing at a rate of 4 times our original production, with quite a learning experience along the way. We both come from a technical background in corporate Seattle, so organic farming, food production, and entrepreneurship are all areas we’re learning by doing, and Google!

I grew up in Sunny San Diego, attended THE Arizona State University then moved to New York to work 100-hour weeks on Wall Street. Five years into finance, I "retired" and spent some time learning to “surf” in Costa Rica. I have been skinny dipping in Vietnam, kissed stingrays in the Cayman's, lived for a summer in a Buddhist temple in Japan, spent more of my life living out of hostels than I'd admit to my mother, and generally partied my way across 30+ countries. Throughout all these journeys, I refused to let a cold slow me down. I want to help do the same for you.

My first test batch was only 100 units. I ran around New York hand-delivering every bottle myself. Since then, I have launched nationwide shipping and am projecting to reach $5k in sales over the coming months.

Hey! We’re James and Álvaro, the founders of Jibby Coffee—the feel-good coffee brand. We cold-brew organic Colombian coffee and balance it with tasteless, lab-tested CBD.

Did you know that caffeine is the coffee plant’s natural defense mechanism? By design, it’s supposed to make you feel jittery and anxious. We added CBD to help balance that out. We’re just wrapping up a hugely successful beta launch on our website, and working on a new production run—we actually sold out of our boxed coffee last week!

My name is Christopher Thomas. I founded a company called MADE SOUTH, and while I didn’t start Eli Mason, I was smart enough to buy it when I had the chance.

When we bought the business in 2017 it was doing a few hundred dollars per month in e-commerce sales. Today we consistently do in the low five figures, and it’s growing consistently every quarter.

Sol founded Leilo, the world’s first relaxation beverage. Now at 8 full-time employees and 30+ sales reps. They are on track to 10x last year's revenue.

The Coca-Cola Company is a global beverage firm founded in the United States in 1892 by Asa Griggs Candler. Various carbonated drinks and non-alcoholic beverage concentrates & syrups are manufactured, sold, and marketed by this world-renowned soft drink brand.

John Stith Pemberton, a pharmacist, invented the soft drink formulation in 1886. At the time of its origination, the product comprised cocaine derived from coca leaves and caffeine derived from kola nuts, both of which served as stimulants.

The recipe and brand were sold for $2,300 (about $71,000 in 2022) to Asa Griggs Candler in 1889, who founded the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1892. Since 1889, the corporation has been running a franchised distribution system, leading to world domination in the cold beverage market.

The company's success grew to the extent that it bought Columbia Pictures for $692 million in 1982, which it later sold to Sony for $3 billion. In 1993, the business purchased the Indian cola brand Thums Up. It also acquired Costa Coffee from Whitbread for £3.9 billion on August 31, 2018.

According to the Coca-Cola Company's 2005 annual report, the company sold beverages in over 200 countries that year. According to the 2005 data, nearly 50 billion beverage servings were consumed globally.

Coca-Cola was declared in 2010 as the first brand to surpass £1 billion in annual UK supermarket sales. The company's overall sales were estimated to reach $33 billion globally in 2020.

In recent years, the company has spent approximately $4 billion per year globally to promote its drinks to the general public and spent approximately $4.24 billion on advertising in the fiscal year 2019, the share of which was paid to advertise Coca-Cola.

James Nuttall, Neeraj Kakkar, and Suhas Misra established Paper Boat, a brand of traditional Indian drinks and culinary goods.

They launched the line of Paper Boat drinks in August 2013 to grasp the Indian packaged drink market. Paper Boat is a subsidiary of Hector Beverages, which started in 2009.

Neeraj Kakkar, the CEO of Hector Beverages and Paper Boat, was born and raised in Haryana, India. In 1998, Neeraj completed a Post Graduate Program in Management at the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon. In 2010, he completed a general management course, Master of Business Administration, from The Wharton School.

Initially, the founders thought of venturing into functional beverages. They noticed the demand for the ethnic drinks category in India. So they focused on creating beverages from ingredients passed from one generation to another.

Paper Boat Key Success Secrets:

• Focusing on consumers who longed for a simple, uncomplicated life.
• Tapping into a powerful human emotion.
• Taking customer feedback and improving or introducing new flavors as per customers’ demand.
  
• Innovation and making decisions quickly.
• Market segmentation has helped the brand to stand out from the competition.

The company aims to conserve ancient recipes while creating innovative Indian beverages. Paper Boat goods include no artificial coloring or preservatives. N.R. finances the firm. Catamaran Ventures, Footprint Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, among others, are led by Narayana Murthy.

Paper Boat has seen upward growth after being launched in 2013. The company claimed a 20% sales gain in the fiscal year 2020, which concluded in March last year. Revenue increased from INR 195 Cr in FY2019 to INR 235 Cr in FY20. They are currently expanding their business and launching new products in the market.