How to build a beverage brand: Spindrift on embracing the sparkling opportunities in better-for-you drinks

Founded by Bill Creelman in his kitchen in 2010, the brand’s unsweetened sparkling water took the US by storm and is now second only to La Croix. Beverage industry veteran Dave Burwick took on the reins of the company last year: bringing with him 35 years of leadership experience from The Boston Beer Company, Peet’s Coffee and PepsiCo. And he believes there’s still plenty of runway for growth: with Spindrift Sparkling leading the pack but with newer innovations such as Spindrift Soda and new launch Spindrift Iced Tea helping expand the brand to new occasions and audiences. Burwick shares his top brand building insights with BeverageDaily; and shares what’s next for Spindrift... BD: Introduce us to Spindrift! DB: Spindrift was founded by Bill Creelman in 2010 with the goal to change what people expect from a beverage. So that means providing real ingredients, simple recipes and a believe that doing things the right way matters. Our mantra for the brand is that real fruit tastes better: so that’s the big difference with our brand compared to other sparkling waters. All of our products use real fruit sourced from real farms, handled with care throughout the production process and then ultimately leading to a variety of very flavorful, natural, simple beverage choices for consumers. Who is your target market? We call them experienced seekers. That’s a sort of psychographic: it’s people who are health conscious consumers with live active lifestyles, who care a lot about what they put into their body, and tend to read ingredient panels. From an age perspective, Gen Z and millennials are the core: although we have a broad range of consumers, it’s younger consumers have really embraced us. They’re eating and drinking much more healthily than the generations that came before them. And what we’re seeing lately is momentum accelerating around better-for-you products, particularly in beverages, and people choosing beverages more intentionally. Tell us about Spindrift’s growth trajectory to date It’s been a slow and steady build. I think what Bill and the folks who have been around for a long time did really well was to match up the right channel and distribution to reach that consumer we’re trying to reach. Initially the brand was built up in the food service; the high end of fast casual; then launched in grocery in Trader Joe’s - that was a great match up to our consumer. Then we went to Whole Foods and Costco and then more broadly across the US to all chains. I think the brand was built very smartly, in that it went where our consumers shopped first: it didn’t try to go everywhere at once. Now we’re seeing more and more people shift to better-for-you beverages: we’ve got bigger and the growth rate has nudged up. Last year, the flavored sparkling water category was up 7%: which is already very healthy for a beverage category [Circana]. And we grew basically 4x the category. And we went from the number four player to number two player. So last year was the year we accelerated growth and gained share, increased brand awareness, and really became a bigger player in the space. Spindrift Spiked - your foray into alcohol with a hard seltzer - didn’t work out: the product was discontinued in August after four years. What did you learn from that? We learned, first of all, was we can make a great product in other categories. The product was well-liked and consumers were very disappointed when we pulled it. What we didn’t realize was that it takes a huge investment to build a business in alcohol. You need to have a separate sales team, and you have the whole different distribution method for alcohol in the US. It’s a huge commitment and the hard seltzer category is not very healthy. We have so much growth in the rest of the business and Spiked was quickly becoming a distraction for us. It’s never easy to make this kind of decision, but I think it’s really important to focus on where the growth opportunity is for us: and that’s in non-alc. It’s been a year since Gryphon Investors, a San Francisco-based private investment firm, acquired a majority stake in Spindrift; and you came in as CEO at the same time. How’s that shaken things up over the last year? There’s a renewed sense of energy and possibility when an investor comes in. When an PE firm comes in and says: ‘We believe in this business; we believe in the growth potential of this business; and we’re going to make sure that you guys are able to invest to realize your potential’... that’s a big thing. So it’s a sign of confidence and approval in the brand. We brought in some new talent: so we’ve got a combination of old and new leadership, which I think is always important to revitalize the thinking in the company. And we have a great board, a set of advisors with deep experience in beverage, who can help the leadership team see all pathways to growth. And we came in with the ability to invest a lot more in brand building: and with knowledge of the supply chain and how to create a more efficient supply chain. The strategy hasn’t actually changed much: we still have a great product that is a distinct and differentiated brand; and it’s about bringing it to consumers, driving distribution, investing and building brand awareness. It’s more the resources and the thinking that have been enhanced significantly. What’s going to be big in 2026? It’s about executing well against the basics. Number 1: increasing physical availability. So we still have geographies, channels, customers we haven’t fully penetrated. So adding more flavors, SKUs, physical availability is a critical way to build the business. Number 2: increasing brand awareness. Advertising the brand, making consumers aware of the brand, we haven’t really invested historically very much in that. So we’re going to do a lot of that this year. And third is to innovate in new spaces. It’s also about adding to our sparkling business, so we’re launching three new flavors this year: a cherry, a yuzu mandarin and a ginger mule flavor. And the last piece is to continue to improve our margins. So our gross margins are really important: how do we produce more efficiently, how do we get the product to customers more efficiently. So those are the basics to how we run the business. And the challenge isn’t really coming up with a great strategy: the challenge is actually executing the strategy, so we’re focused on having the right people, the right resources and the right dialogue around the opportunities so we achieve our potential in these four areas. What’s your top tip to other brand builders? Be distinctive. It means consumers can find you really quickly. Differentiated is harder: everybody thinks their brand is differentiated: often they’re really not. To build a great brand, you have to connect the dots between your brand, the consumer, and the culture. If you make that triangle, if you can overlap consumer, brand and culture, you’ll be more visible and noticed by the consumer. So I think that’s also really important. Your experience includes high level jobs with PepsiCo, Peet’s Coffee, The Boston Beer Company and Weight Watchers. What translates from these to Spindrift? Again: connecting the brand and the consumer and the culture. Whether it’s footwear or beverages or automotives, whatever the category is. People talk about the consumer a lot: but do they really understand the consumer, the consumer’s motivations. Regardless of what brand or category you’re in, that’s really critical. And having a clear strategic intent for what you want to achieve with the brand; and communicating that to the organization so everyone really understands what this brand is and what it stands for. Particularly in a consumer-facing company, everybody who works for that company is a potential ambassador for the brand. So they really need to understand deeply what this brand stands for; that enables them to do their jobs better and translates into the marketplace. That’s whether you’re in sales, in marketing, in finance, in supply chain. How do you start and end your working day? I start every day by reading. I want to know what’s happening in the world, I’ll want to know what’s happening in business. I’ll read the New York Times DealBook from Andrew Ross Sorkin; Politico ; Semafor ; the Wall Street Journal ; industry newsletters. To get a sense of: what happened overnight; what world is the consumer living in, what world is the team living in? It gets my brain working and thinking and starting to connect the dots. I’ll start pretty early and do a good hour: and at the same time I’m probably planning out my day if I haven’t done that already.