In an exclusive interview with Hard Seltzer News, Katie Beal Brown, founder and CEO of Lone River Beverage Company, revealed major secrets to success in the hard seltzer market — a rocking team and an emphasis on brand differentiation.  This is the transcript of the full interview.  Enjoy!

Can you talk through your role as a Founder and CEO of a beverage startup. What were some early challenges you overcame as someone new to the beverage industry? 

Just knowing that my expertise was more in the branding and marketing world and I’ve really relied on my team to bring expertise from other parts of the industry. Especially on the operational and financial sides of the business. What I think has been really great to see is just how clear the vision is for everybody and how they have bought into really supporting it and driving it forward from all aspects of our business.

How did you assemble your team?

When we first started talking about bringing this idea to life, it was really just my husband and myself. We’ve kind of collected people along the way — from our business partners, our investors and our distributors. We hired our first employee a little bit over a year ago on the sales side, and he brought a whole other level of expertise just in being able to get our product on shelves. More recently, we’ve been really bringing in expertise from an operational perspective — helping us navigate a lot of the challenges we’ve seen in the COVID supply chain disruptions that have kind of swept across the industry.

How have you approached marketing and advertising as a new business at the onset of the pandemic?

What we heard early on was that the best way to drive sales for a new brand is through trial and that’s through a robust plan of in-store samplings — that was immediately taken off the table when we launched. So, we knew that would be a challenge. But, we had already put a lot of the pieces in place for a digital first approach. We’ve really leveraged our strategy in social media to drive the level of awareness that we needed in order to get our new brand in front of people — just knowing that they also weren’t necessarily spending a lot of time in the store either — so they may or may not have seen us on the shelf. I think by way of that approach it’s actually created enough demand to where consumers are taking trips to the store specifically to seek out our brand. So that’s been really great to see in something that we’ve invested a lot of capital and time into. We’ve gone along and really worked [sic] in putting money in the places that are working the hardest for us.

In a category that really focuses on feminine branding — slim cans, fruity flavors — what made you decide to opt for a more gender neutral approach with your brand?

When we looked at the hard seltzer category we felt like the growth was really being driven by what we call a ‘sea of sameness’ — [with] a lot of products that looked, felt and tasted the same. So, we saw a huge opportunity to carve out a point of differentiation for our brand. I always knew with my background that I wanted to look at this as building a brand versus just putting a product on the shelf. So as we started to build the brand, it was really rooted in far West Texas where the original recipe comes from — and obviously where I grew up and where my family still is. I think when you look at far West Texas, in a lot of ways, it’s emblematic of the American West and the value sets associated with that. So, by way of that, I think we’ve been able to kind of build a brand that’s bigger than just the ranch water product — one that celebrates that kind of western lifestyle associated with [West Texas]. And it is inherently a little bit more rugged and masculine, so I think that has also just benefited us in carving out that point of differentiation.

Can you talk through Lone River launch distribution strategy and future expansion plans?  

We launched in April in Texas and Tennessee, both statewide. Tennessee was one that we were really interested to see the resonance in what the consumer would do, and we really benefited from the country music associations there. We’ve managed to capture some pretty high profile country musician fans but also just tap into that audience that I think actually really spans much more of the US than people realize. So, when we think about expansion, I think there’s the obvious options within [sic] the continuous states connected to Texas and Tennessee. But, I do think there’s also a national appeal in that value set that’s associated with the American West. I think is inspirational for a lot of people especially in today’s environment.

Was getting your product to social media influencers a part of your marketing and advertising strategy from the beginning?

I definitely knew that it was important to get our product in the hands of people that I believed best resembled the kind of lifestyle that we represent — whether it be these rodeo athletes that have really gravitated towards our brand, or country musicians. We were just recently featured in a Parker McCollum music video that he shot on his ranch in East Texas. A number of other musicians in Nashville — that honestly we didn’t even know had purchased our product — we just randomly saw posting on their pages. I think it speaks to the brand itself and kind of what it represents and something that that audience maybe wants to be associated with.

We love your use of social media, and social media customer interaction seems very active.. You’ve seen customers adding creative rims, what are some of your favorites? Might these ideas inspire new flavors in the future?

I think for me in most of my career I felt very disconnected from the consumer. Oftentimes we were getting feedback from consumers in really controlled research environments. This [customer interaction] has been really fun to me because it’s a very dynamic one-to-one conversation that we are constantly having with them through social media. That was a behavior and a ritual that we started to see emerging in our fanbase — people really making the product their own [with rims]. We actually did a quick shoot to kind of capture some of that and post it back on our page, and it ended up being one of our highest engagement posts just because I think that it’s something that was naturally happening among our base. As I think to further innovation that’s absolutely a place that we will look to and be inspired by — our fans and kind of what they’re looking for. Our product inherently was developed to fill a consumer need that hadn’t been met yet. So, I think maintaining that one-on-one conversation will be really important for us. 

Can you speak about the new flavors (spicy and rio red grapefruit), and how you decided on those + what other flavors and beverages we might see from the company in the future?

We actually just this week released our Spicy Ranch Water variety and then our Rio Red Grapefruit Ranch Water. As we looked to expand our portfolio and our flavor profiles, it was really important to me to maintain that differentiation. We are one of the first spicy seltzers to hit the market, and I think that is very different from a lot of the fruitier floral flavors that you see from some of the bigger brands. Given that our drink is really inspired by a tequila-based cocktail, we wanted to pull from flavor profiles in that category adjacency and maintain that throughout our portfolio. Moving forward for innovation we’ll obviously look to introduce new packaging formats like a variety 12-pack and [sic] single can for the convenience channel. As far as flavors go, it’s really important that it’s not only rooted in the area of the country where our product is from in West Texas, but also pulling from those category adjacencies — doing something that, again, just feels different from the trends that already exist. 

What advice can you offer other entrepreneurs looking to enter the hard seltzer market?

I think going into next year the category, I think we will see an onslaught of new entrants. I think it’s really critical for any new brand to carve out that point of differentiation to ensure that they are offering something new and not just following what a lot of the other brands have done.

Anything else you think is important that you would like to add?

I think recently what’s been really interesting to me is I think [with] a lot of these bigger brands that are driving the category, there isn’t as much storytelling behind them. That’s something that I think has been successful in other parts of the category and something that I think consumers have been really interested in when it comes to our product. So, I’m excited to see how that continues to resonate with people and how we can continue to find ways and platforms to really share that story.

  

Stephanie Meade
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