The Ledger
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Spindrift discontinued a profitable five million dollar soda line for sparkling water
“So we made the hard decision to shut down. It was about a five million dollar business super profitable, and just focus our resources on, on the sparkling water.”
Creelman asserts there is no real standard for natural flavor additives
“There really is no standard for a natural flavor. There may very well be all of the things you described, but there's no assurance of that.”
Creelman: Scaling two distinct early-stage brands simultaneously is almost unheard of
“It's hard enough to make one brand successful, but to have two brands, you know, early stage brands succeed, mean something for the consumer, go on to really gain scale and traction is, is really almost unheard of.”
Creelman: Layering sweet and tart flavors prevents missing heavy sugar
“Sugar is a very one-dimensional flavor, so if you can introduce other flavors alongside a little sweet, a little tart, We think you won't miss that big hit of sugar.”
Creelman: Complex real-ingredient recipes create defensible moats against beverage copycats
“What is hard right now for you is going to be your point of difference later, you know, so trying to figure out, you know, how to make this brine, you know, using all of the ingredients that are called out on the label will only bear fruit down the road. Someo…”
Creelman: Beer companies can build massive businesses around a single SKU
“It's a big enough category that you have the luxury of having one product and building a really big business around it.”
Creelman: Keeping overhead low improves future fundraising leverage
“The more you can kind of test and learn on your own dime, if you will and keep the overhead down when you do go out and raise money, you'll really be in a different position of strength than if you take a big swing early on with like more and more overhead.”
Creelman: Only one or two problems actually hold a business back
“You know, I think it's so easy to get caught in, I need to solve all 10 problems equally, when the reality is it's probably one or two that are holding the business back.”
Creelman: Recessions lower the cost and competition for launching new products
“In some ways by the innovation pipeline kind of slowing down a little bit, As typically happens during cycles like this, it gives you a chance to be louder and it's a less crowded, you know, market place. And the investment often is less because there's just l…”
Creelman: Pioneering food brands require consumers to pause and consider purchases
“I think that's true of a lot of food and beverage brands that are pioneering a category, that are doing something really different. You need people to hit pause and spend a minute or two longer considering the purchase”
No US carbonated beverage plant had handled real fruit pulp before Spindrift
“So there wasn't a single carbonated beverage plant in the US that had ever handled a product like this.”
Creelman: Dropping sugary soda eliminated half of Spindrift's early revenue
“Yeah, about half our revenue.”
Creelman: Spindrift saw a 200% to 400% sales lift during initial lockdowns
“When the initial push came, we saw anywhere from, you know, sort of two to 400% lift.”
Creelman funded Stirrings with millions in personal debt instead of equity
“We never took outside capital at Stirrings. We borrowed like crazy. I mean, we were leveraged personally. You know, I had, you know, millions of dollars of notes that I was responsible for.”
Creelman: Stirrings accelerated Diageo buyout in 2008 amid economic downturn
“What ended up happening is in 2008, the business and the partnership really kind of hadn't fulfilled the potential that we had all imagined, and there were a variety of factors for that. One was the economy changing, the other was sort of the fit between their…”
Creelman: Early Spindrift Required Continuous Cold Storage Due to Volatile Ingredients
“Yeah, there was no other way to maintain that incredible fresh flavor that we were talking about at the time without keeping it cold. I mean, it just was too volatile a product.”
Early Spindrift formulations contained added sugar, natural flavors, and colors
“Maybe I'll just add to that that it was also more of a soda profile at the time, so it had a little bit of sugar in it natural flavors and color, you know, just sort of whatever. There were things added early on as we were just trying to dial in the flavor and…”
Spindrift focused exclusively on food service accounts for its first five years
“That food service focus with me and now my small team was really all we did for the first four or five years in our business.”
Creelman funded early Spindrift by taking out mortgages on his house
“So, what we ended up doing is basically putting mortgages on our house, and but again, now you're talking about buying inventory, and starting to hire a team.”
Creelman: Trader Joe's initially launched Spindrift unsweetened water in the East
“At the time, we really didn't have any customers for the sparkling water. The soda was doing well in those food service accounts, but the sparkling water, the unsweetened version was really not anywhere, and they Yeah, they just were incredibly brave and took …”
Spindrift decided to eliminate natural flavors entirely from its drinks
“We made the hard decision to get out of natural flavors entirely. That's really the, you know, kind of our position in the market.”
Creelman: Spindrift Was Developed During the 2007-2009 Recession
“We, so we started our development for Spindrift in the middle of the economic downturn in 2000, you know, sort of seven, eight, and nine. When we launched the first batch in 2010, there hadn't been innovation in, in the food and beverage market in, in sort of …”
Creelman: Spindrift's internal workforce is 32% diverse
“You know, we are 32% diverse at Spindrift, so we, you know, I felt an obligation to our team.”
Creelman: Stirrings structured Diageo deal as staged equity buyout
“The plumbing was that we ultimately ended up selling them, you know, a percentage of the business with the idea that we would then exit the business to them entirely pending kind of growth and trajectory of the business.”