American consumers have taken a strong liking to ready-to-drink cocktails, and now Wisconsinites will soon have a brand to call their own.
Sheboygan food and beverage startup SNFood & Beverage LLC is gearing up to launch Carbliss, its brand of canned cocktails, in stores statewide.
Adam Kroener and Amanda Lennartz of Glenbeulah are the entrepreneurs behind the beverage. The duo began mixing drinks in their kitchen using vodka, flavored water and natural extracts after they started searching for a more nutritional summer cocktail option while on the popular Keto diet.
Kroener says while they liked the lighter feel and lower calorie counts offered by trendy hard seltzer brands such as White Claw, they felt the drinks lacked one imperative character: flavor.
“We were mixing daily,” Kroener says. “For several months, Amanda and I pondered, ‘Someone should put this in a can!’ Then, after a while, we decided that that someone would be us.”
The pair eventually came up with a no-carbohydrate, no-sugar, low-calorie, hand-crafted cocktail, and turned to Google “to bring the beverage to life,” Kroener says. They officially launched as a business in September 2018.
Ready-to-drink cocktails are having a huge moment. A Nielsen survey found sales of canned adult beverages are up more than 40 percent over the past year, and are largely driven by Millennials’ desire for price and convenience. Still, capturing drinkers’ changing palates is a crowded endeavor.
“We realized the guys who have the deep pockets can throw you under with the slightest quirk in the market,” Kroener says. “The cost to entry is pretty high.”
The challenges of entering the adult beverage industry haven’t slowed Kroener and Lennartz’s ambition, though. They got to work on building out their business, combining Lennartz extensive experience in accounting and marketing, and Kroener’s background in food manufacturing and sales.
“Adam has an entrepreneur spirit, and I have an accounting background. He has a lot of ideas, and I wrangle them in,” joked Lennartz.
Kroener also enrolled in a leadership program to help jumpstart Carbliss’ launch. That’s where he met Ray York, a business counselor at the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation (SCEDC) and the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, who helped them get the business off the ground.
“Adam and Amanda noticed a gap in the ready-to-drink mixed spirit production industry,” York said. “[They] were motivated to get this idea to market and their strong manufacturing, production, supply chain and management background was evident in their planning. They pulled together resources and made the connections to successfully launch this product.”
Today, SNFood & Beverage has three flavors under the Carbliss brand: Lemonade, Black Raspberry and Lemon Lime. Carbliss, which combines vodka, sparkling water and natural flavor extracts, has 5% alcohol, 0 grams of carbohydrates and 0 grams of sugars.
The startup recently received a long-awaited label approval from the state’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and Carbliss' beverages will be distributed to retailers through Badger Liquor.
So far, the business has been a labor of love for Lennartz and Kroener in more ways than one. The company is named for Kroener’s best friend, Stefan Nicholas Fiedler, who passed away in a motorcycle accident in 2016. And the former co-workers, turned friends, turned business partners—Lennartz and Kroener—are soon headed down the aisle.
In the meantime, however, the self-funded entrepreneurs are putting in the long hours outside of full-time jobs and their growing family to launch their business.
“One of the most difficult hurdles we have faced was determining how to share with the world that the beverage in the can tastes as good as we say it does just by seeing it on the shelf,” Lennartz said. “We’re excited to be a part of the [trend], and to see where they put us in the store.”
