Vultaggio refuses to sell AriZona Beverage Company to private equity
Don Vultaggio · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · Sep 1, 2025 · at 55:45
AriZona Beverage Company co-founder Don Vultaggio discusses rejecting buyout inquiries from private equity firms and conglomerate beverage brands to keep the business family-owned.
0:00 / 0:00exact quote · 0.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I'm not for sale.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Don Vultaggio
AriZona recently earned its co-founder's entire buyout amount in one year
“Absolutely. You know, what we earned last year was what to get bought out for, you know.”
Teamsters repeatedly threatened AriZona founders during early beer distribution days
“Yeah, we were threatened a lot, you know, we were threatened by the Teamsters about, you know, you can't do that, you know, that's not allowed, you know, because the Schaefer delivery guy, we were delivering Schaefer.”
Competing iced tea brands cut costs by using fake artificial flavorings
“The typical response in the flavor category was you know, you don't have to put a lot of tea in on a tea, you just put flavor, you can kind of Fake it up. And then I realized that what other guys are not doing is putting real ingredients in because, you know, …”
AriZona's can manufacturing cost is lower today than 33 years ago
“You know, our cost of making a can today is less than it cost us 33 years ago to make the same can.”
AriZona co-founders sometimes went over a year without speaking to each other
“There were times when I didn't speak to him for over a year.”
AriZona built a 1.25 million square foot factory with zero debt
“I built a factory in New Jersey that we needed desperately. You know, I'm very proud of it. It's a 1,250,000 square feet of a building that every single piece of it we own, we paid for. We don't have any company debt. We have no banks. We have no lending insti…”