Our Party Punch Beverage Brand Exploded From $18M/Year to $100M/Year [Update]

Justin Fenchel

•

Published: December 11th, 2023

save

Justin Fenchel

Founder, BeatBox Beverages

$11M

revenue/mo

Founders

164

Employees

BeatBox Beverages

beatboxbeverages.com

from Austin, Texas, USA

started March 2013

$11,000,000

revenue/mo

Founders

164

Employees

Discover what tools Justin recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Justin recommends to grow your business!

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business Whe... Ben Horowitz

Shoe Dog Phil Knight

Want more updates on BeatBox Beverages? Check out these stories:

1. How We Doubled Our Monthly Sales From $250K To $500K Since Last Year (2020) ➜

2. How We Launched And Grew A Party Punch Beverage To $3M/Year (2019) ➜

3. BeatBox Update: We Hit $18M Revenue In 2021 (2022) ➜

This is a follow up story for BeatBox Beverages. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 5 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

Hi there! My name is Justin Fenchel and I am one of the co-founders/CEO at BeatBox Beverages. What started as a class project at the business school at the University of Texas has now become the fastest-selling Ready To Drink (RTD) alcohol product in the US!

BeatBox is an 11.1% wine-based party punch in eco-friendly, portable Tetra Pak containers. Each box is 16.9oz and tastes much more like a Gatorade and vodka than a wine. We have flavors like Blue Razzberry, Green Apple, Fruit Punch, Pink Lemonade, and more.

We sell to beer distributors across the country, who then sell to retail accounts (think Walmart, 7-11, Circle K, etc).

In our first year of business in 2013, we did $200k in total revenue. Flash forward to today and we will do $100m in revenue in 2023. The growth has been insane.

In 2017 we did $1m, in 2018 it was $2m, in 2019 it was $4m, in 2020 it was $7m, in 2021 it was $18m and in 2022 it was $40m. We have gone from a small team to now having over 165 full-time employees and hiring rapidly.

And yet, we are still in just 25% of all the accounts we could be in in the US! So we have lots of room to grow much further. We have ambitious targets to grow revenue to $170m+ in 2024 while having a strong EBITDA of $10m+

You have to hire great people to get great results. Once we started bringing in people with industry experience things started to turn for us.

We have been aggressively expanding into new markets in the US with our 500ml Tetra Pak. A key to that growth has been winning in chain stores. In the alcohol industry, about 75% of the volume is sold through chains vs. mom and pop stores. So you have to be there.

What got us here won't get us there, and despite the incredible growth we have to constantly find ways to break the wheel and build better systems/processes.

In 2019 about 15% of our business was in chains, but now it’s close to 60%. We are sold in over 7,500 7-11, 4,500 Circle K’s, over 1,500 Kroger and Casey’s stores, another 850 Quik Trips…

It’s growing rapidly as our Nielsen data continues to show as the fastest-selling product in single-serve wine and RTD cocktails. It took us a long time to get into this many accounts and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight in the alcohol industry.

You need a motivated distributor network to be excited about selling the product to retail. Because we have high margins for them, are completely incremental to traditional beer that they sell, and have high velocities, we've had very excited distributors and we’ve gotten more share of mind.

As sales have grown, our scan data has grown and we’ve been able to share that with retailers to get them excited about bringing BeatBox in. You need to figure out your best path to market (for us that was beer distributors) and make it as easy as possible for them to sell. Not just being another of the same product is also critical. You have to be incremental and different.

Additionally, our marketing has gone viral with a collaboration with Avril Lavigne with our Pink Lemonade Flavor. This came about because we found out Avril loved BeatBox! She would have some during her studio recordings. So we reached out and worked out a partnership for our pink lemonade flavor and saw huge increases in demand for pink lemonade over the summer. Our amazing community of fans continues to get bigger by the week.

We made this product because we loved bringing people together and having a good time centered around music. That has stayed true in our marketing and it is why consumers relate so well to our brand and keeps them coming back.

You have to stay alive long enough until you can figure it out. So if you truly believe in your product, vision, company, etc….then don’t give up. Keep fighting until you figure it out

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

I think the most important lesson we’ve learned in the last year is that you have to have a growth mindset. What got us here won't get us there, and despite the incredible growth we have to constantly find ways to break the wheel and build better systems/processes.

It took us a good 7 years to figure out the right combination of product, team, distribution network, and marketing. We almost went out of business probably 5 times...have gone months without salaries and many sleepless nights.

Additionally, you have to go the extra mile to maintain an amazing company culture, which I can proudly say we have built. As a remote company in this new world, you have to find ways to keep everyone connected.

As an example, I make sure to have a 1 on 1 with everyone on my teams at least once a month to make sure that they are heard and that the reasons they wanted to work at BeatBox and what they hoped to get out of the role are still in play. We invest a ton in building/fostering our company culture.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

Next year we plan to pass $170m in revenue and believe the BeatBox brand can do $500m+ in revenue by 2028. That would mean being in 75% of all the off–premise accounts in the US. It’s an ambitious goal but we know we are up to the challenge!

It is a dream come true. Since day 1 we said we want to be the Red Bull of the alcohol industry, and now we have a chance to do it. It’s surreal.

Have you read any good books in the last year?

Our team runs on many components of the Entrepreneurs Operating System (EOS). So we have everyone on our team read Traction. It’s common sense stuff but when used all together it can change the way your company runs.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

But what never changed is our belief in our brand and our will to survive. You have to stay alive long enough until you can figure it out. So if you truly believe in your product, vision, company, etc….then don’t give up. Keep fighting until you figure it out. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do it because you can if you find the right leverage points and never quit.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

Yes, we are going to be hiring for 25+ positions in the next year. Check out our LinkedIn to see when new jobs are posted!