Beyond the three-tier system every beverage alcohol brand must navigate, ready-to-drink brands are entering a category growing faster than almost anywhere else in beverage alcohol, and getting more crowded by the month.
According to IWSR data, the U.S. RTD category is on pace to reach $21 billion in value by 2027. Spirits-based RTDs alone grew 17% to $3.3 billion in 2024 before growing another 14% in 2025.
That growth has pulled a flood of new SKUs onto a shelf space that barely existed as its own category a decade ago. It has also forced new entrants to solve distribution problems that don’t map neatly onto the wine and spirits networks most brands expect to use, since RTDs often move in higher volumes and thinner per-case margins that suit beer distribution more than traditional spirits distribution.
The six brands below arrived at that shelf from very different starting points: a former high school teacher who taught herself federal permitting from scratch, a 15-year distribution veteran launching two brands at once, and two friends with no industry background who built a mission-driven brand selling RTD beverages with a 5% revenue donation.
Each found its own way to solve for capacity, distribution, and differentiation in a category defined by explosive growth and constant new competition.
Park Street Imports is the back-office and importing solution for alcoholic beverage brands entering the U.S. market.
BuzzBallz: Turning Distinctive Packaging Into Vertical Integration and Scale
From Classroom to Container Manufacturing
BuzzBallz founder and CEO Marilee Kick entered the beverage alcohol industry in 2010 after leaving a career as a high school teacher, with no prior experience in spirits and no professional network to lean on.
She has said she learned the regulatory process largely by using Google and working through the TTB’s Beverage Alcohol Manual on her own. She secured her federal basic permit along with separate distillery and winery permits within a single six-month window, among the fastest such approvals at the time.
The brand’s spherical, see-through plastic packaging became both its signature and an early operational headache. Unable to get major manufacturers interested without committing to volumes she couldn’t afford, Kick sourced a supplier through Alibaba to produce the container while protecting her intellectual property.
When that supplier began raising prices and couldn’t keep pace with demand, Kick and her team traveled to China to study the manufacturing process. They then built their own machinery to bring production in-house, a costlier path she has said she doesn’t regret.
Breaking Through With Distributors and Scaling Up
Early distribution was rocky. When BuzzBallz launched in California, a room of roughly 100 sales reps at the distributor sold only 38 cases in six months. Then Kick promoted an employee originally hired as a receptionist into a sales role, and she sold roughly 300 cases in her first week.
A 2012 appearance at the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) convention brought 15 new state distributors virtually overnight and a double gold medal for its Tequila Rita.
Kick has also credited hiring Blair Casey, previously with distributor Southern Glazer’s and the first person to buy a BuzzBallz product in Texas. His 25 years of distributor relationships gave the brand a network she couldn’t have built alone.
BuzzBallz has continued investing in vertical integration, controlling its own container manufacturing, filling, packaging and marketing even while working through third-party distributors. In 2024, Kick said the company invested $48 million in a production facility expansion intended to double manufacturing capacity, after running distributors out of stock had let competitors fill the resulting shelf space.
The brand leans on convenience stores and other off-premise, single-serve occasions rather than the on-premise. Today it employs around 1,000 people and sells in all 50 states and 27 countries.
It is beginning to expand into Western Europe and, longer term, the Middle East, using bonded warehouses abroad to manage inventory.
Surfside: Riding a Vodka Soda Pivot Into the Fastest Growth Curve in RTD
From Family Juice Business to a COVID Pivot
Surfside CEO Clement Pappas came to the beverage industry after 15 years at his family’s juice company, Clement Pappas & Co., which had evolved from a regional fruit and vegetable cannery started by his grandfather. He ran the business as a subsidiary for about two years following its 2012 sale, staying on until 2014 before his non-compete cleared.
He co-founded Stateside Vodka in Philadelphia with Matt and Brian Quigley after Pennsylvania loosened its distillery licensing laws. The bet was that a well-made vodka could win a local following even as bourbon and cocktail culture dominated the conversation.
The company got its first bottle off the still at the end of 2015 and built Stateside primarily across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
COVID-19 forced an early pivot. Pappas has said roughly 88% of the company’s revenue sources, including Pennsylvania’s state-run liquor stores and all on-premise business, closed almost overnight.
The team responded by launching direct-to-consumer delivery under the state’s self-distribution privileges. They used a Facebook post to generate demand and pulled salespeople and tasting-room staff into vehicles to sell directly to homebound consumers.
That effort brought in about $1 million over two months, funded a still upgrade, and left the company with a base of loyal new customers who stuck around after lockdowns ended.
Launching Surfside and Finding the Right Distribution Fit
That extra capital gave Matt and Brian Quigley room to pursue a ready-to-drink line Pappas had previously resisted. They launched a vodka soda in summer 2021 that sold out immediately.
Surfside itself, a canned iced tea with a retro surf-inspired can design, followed in summer 2022. It was kept deliberately separate from the Stateside name, with the connection noted only on the back of the can.
Surfside sold about 200,000 cases in its 2022 launch year, grew to roughly 1.3 million cases in 2023, and was on pace for four to five million cases in 2024. That run rate reflects close to 600% growth between 2022 and 2023.
Distribution evolved by trial and error. Finding wine and spirits wholesalers unequipped for RTD volume and margins, Surfside shifted toward beer distributors, whose cold-box and pallet-based operations were a better fit.
On-premise sales account for over 30% of volume, which Pappas attributes partly to the product’s 4.5% ABV, positioning it as a beer alternative.
As of the interview, Surfside was live in 44 states. It had grown from roughly 15 to 20 employees to 148 full-time and 243 full-time-equivalent staff, with two dedicated recruiters.
A 2024 Pennsylvania law change permitting RTD sales in grocery stores opened a new channel. Pappas projected the state’s volume of more than one million cases annually could easily double.
On The Rocks Cocktails: Building an Airline-First Channel That Led to a Beam Suntory Acquisition
Taking Restaurant Cocktails to 30,000 Feet
On The Rocks Cocktails began as a side project of a Dallas restaurant group co-founded by Patrick Halbert and Rocco Milano. Their beverage programs had earned a reputation as the best place in the city to get a cocktail, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Patrons working in airline in-flight beverage service, including staff from Virgin America and LSG Sky Chefs, suggested the cocktails would work well on flights. Halbert sold his restaurant interests to pursue bottled, ready-to-serve cocktails full time, working with a contract manufacturer rather than building his own distillery.
The Virgin America relationship fell through when Alaska Airlines acquired the carrier and discontinued its beverage program mid-onboarding. Halbert and Milano regrouped and secured Hawaiian Airlines as their first live account, launching with a Cruzan rum-based Mai Tai and a second custom cocktail.
Halbert has said the brand sold close to 400,000 Mai Tais through that single relationship in a year.
To solve for shelf stability without spoilage, the founders consulted Dave Wingerhoff, a food scientist who had spent 15 to 20 years in food science and development at Diageo. They landed on a 20% ABV formulation that carried no microbiological spoilage risk and could be stored at room temperature, frozen or chilled.
Rebranding, Retail Growth and the Path to Acquisition
Branding needed a mid-course correction. The product launched as OTR, but consumers didn’t understand they needed to pour it over ice, so the team renamed it On The Rocks to make that step explicit.
Outside the airline channel, distribution was built manually. Halbert and Milano cold-called hotel front desks off Google and Travelocity listings to land accounts at the Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons before any distributor carried their inventory.
By 2019, an 18-SKU lineup across six flavors and three package sizes drove 500% growth. That pushed the brand to roughly 9,000 retail accounts by 2020, including Target, CVS, Kroger and Whole Foods.
The path to acquisition ran through Halbert’s business partner Steve Owsley. His existing relationships with Beam Suntory, built through programs with the Dallas Cowboys and Legends Hospitality at Texas Stadium, led to an initial brand license agreement and small joint venture rather than an outright sale.
Halbert deliberately aligned On The Rocks’ state-by-state distributor selections with Beam Suntory’s existing network, choosing partners like Southern Glazer’s or Republic to minimize disruption in the event of a larger deal.
Beam Suntory, which had previously acquired Skinny Girl and has stated ambitions to become the largest RTD company in the U.S., ultimately acquired the entire brand in a deal that closed in 2020. Halbert has described the process as a handshake agreement reached in under five years from founding.
SipMargs and Su Casa Mezcal: A 15-Year Distribution Veteran’s Deliberate, Market-by-Market Build
Building SipMargs With an “Own and Move On” Strategy
Joey Angelo spent 15 years on the distribution side at Empire, one of the largest wine and spirits wholesalers in the country. Before that, he worked as a bartender and co-owned a tiki-themed bar with a friend. He has said evaluating thousands of brands passing through Empire’s portfolio taught him what not to do.
Angelo left a role at Viva 32 Tequila to launch SipMargs in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns. He spotted a gap between watered-down tequila sodas and heavily sugared, cocktail-strength canned margaritas like Cutwater.
SipMargs became a sparkling, lower-sugar margarita positioned between those two poles. Development began around August 2020, and the brand launched on Cinco de Mayo of 2021.
Early distribution was difficult because established wholesalers, including Southern Glazer’s and Breakthru, weren’t yet structured for RTD margins or truck-space economics. Angelo has said a case of his product generated far less margin than premium spirits brands like Casamigos or Tito’s.
As volume grew, he shifted more distribution to beer wholesalers already equipped for cold-chain, high-volume products. He also pursued a deliberate “own and move on” strategy, dominating markets like New York, New Jersey and Florida before entering new territory. He cited California’s several hundred BevMo locations as a specific green light for entering that state.
In early 2025, SipMargs completed a full rebrand with new packaging and a $3 million investment from Palm Tree Crew. Angelo has said the deal brought both capital and access to talent and infrastructure the brand couldn’t previously afford.
By late 2025, SipMargs was approaching 60,000 cases annually and expanding from roughly 10 to 11 states into every major U.S. market within 60 days.
Su Casa Mezcal: A Cocktail-List-Only Brand
Angelo also launched Su Casa Mezcal in 2023 as a cocktail-list-only brand, sold exclusively in full-case increments to avoid loose bottle placements on back bars.
He has said the brand averages close to five cases, or 30 bottles, per account per month specifically because those accounts feature it on a cocktail list.
The bottle uses a raised, grip-friendly texture for bartenders working with wet, icy hands. Its bright blue color scheme stands apart from the darker, skull-and-day-of-the-dead aesthetic common among mezcal brands.
Su Casa retails around $25 and leans on a more approachable, agave-forward recipe than a traditional smoke-forward profile.
Crafthouse Cocktails: Staying Independent by Replicating the Bar Experience in a Can
Bringing Bar-Quality Cocktails Home
Crafthouse Cocktails was founded by Charles Joly and Matt Lindner, two hospitality industry veterans who had worked together since 2000. Lindner had opened his own Chicago bar, Bird’s Nest, at age 23. Joly developed concepts including the agave-focused lounge Salud and the craft cocktail bar The Drawing Room, which opened in 2007.
The idea for Crafthouse originated in 2011 after Joly received a late-night call from a guest struggling to recreate an aviation cocktail at home from a recipe the bar had written down for her. The call convinced the founders there was demand for bar-quality ready-to-drink cocktails that people could take home.
The company built its product around a strict rule: use the same spirits, fresh citrus and simple syrup the founders would use behind their own bar. That meant no flavored malt bases, grain neutral spirits or preservatives common among competitors.
The only concession to shelf stability is pasteurized citrus paired with a higher-than-typical ABV. Because no domestic bottler in 2011 could handle fresh ginger, lime and pineapple juice at scale, the founders worked with a small Canadian facility that had previously bottled hard ciders.
Early flavors included the Moscow Mule, South Side and Paloma. The first and last remain the brand’s top two sellers by volume.
Retail, Travel Partnerships and Independent Growth
Getting into Whole Foods was an early milestone, won by approaching in-store buyers directly despite the chain’s once-a-year reset cycle and initial disinterest in the category.
A bigger one came roughly two years after launch with a placement on United Airlines, which at its peak represented as much as 65% of Crafthouse’s business. It led to further placements on Amtrak’s Acela line, a Marriott pilot program, and status as the only RTD cocktail brand aboard Virgin Voyages’ cruise ships.
About two years before the interview, the company redesigned its 200-milliliter format from a four-pack glass bottle to an individual-serve aluminum can. The change was driven partly by airline weight and breakage concerns and partly by Virgin’s push for recyclable materials.
As of the interview, Crafthouse operated as a 10-person company offering eight pre-mixed cocktails across three formats, including a 1.75-liter bag-in-box. It was nearing distribution in 40 states while remaining fully independent, without outside acquisition or major investment.
To extend its marketing reach without growing headcount, the company signed a partnership with Dolphin Entertainment, whose PR division the founders said had worked informally with Crafthouse since its early years. They framed the deal as a way to build broader recognition rather than a step toward being acquired.
Mission Cocktails: Building a Mission-Driven Brand From Zero Industry Knowledge
Two Neighbors, Real Ingredients and a 5% Revenue Pledge
Mission Cocktails co-founders Amit Singh and Marcin Malyszko met at a charity event in their California neighborhood. They became close friends after discovering they lived a block apart, despite a 20-year age gap.
When COVID-19 closed bars, the two tried recreating cocktails at home, then sampled 60 to 70 ready-to-drink products and found none that matched a freshly shaken drink.
Neither had a background in spirits procurement, bottling, distribution or licensing. By their own account, they researched the basics by searching terms like “what factory makes alcohol.”
The founders set two non-negotiable standards: real, California-sourced ingredients rather than flavor-house concentrates, and a commitment to donate 5% of all revenue, not just profit, to local food banks.
Distilleries told them fresh lime juice couldn’t work at commercial scale and pushed them toward flavor houses. Singh and Malyszko spent two and a half years finding partners willing to use real juice, including six fresh limes per bottle of their Margarita and a handmade orange liqueur for their Cadillac variation.
Their first production run totaled just 600 bottles. To validate quality, they entered the San Francisco International Wine and Spirits Competition and won double gold.
Scaling Distribution With Park Street
Early distribution was self-directed. After cold-calling grocery chain executives directly, the founders realized they needed a formal distributor and built momentum through in-store tastings, with Malyszko personally guaranteeing he’d buy back unsold inventory.
Park Street was brought on to handle back-office operations, which let the founders expand into territories like Ventura and West Hollywood beyond what they could service with a single delivery van. That helped land placements at Total Wine and BevMo.
Park Street has continued supporting warehousing and compliance as the brand scaled into a partnership with Reyes Holdings, the largest beer distributor in North America and a partner of Tito’s Handmade Vodka. The founders describe the approach as being able to “grow up with Park Street” rather than outgrow it.
Nielsen data placed Mission Cocktails fifth among RTD cocktails in the 375-milliliter format in California in 2024, despite entering major chains like Whole Foods, Gelson’s and Pavilions only in the fourth quarter of that year. The brand expanded nationally with Total Wine & More across more than 240 locations in May 2025.
On-premise placements followed organically, including a Hyatt in Orange County where Mission’s Margarita and Mai Tai became the top-selling, most profitable item on its pool menu, and Ritz-Carlton events with 300 to 500 attendees.
Two years after launch, the company has funded more than 100,000 meals through its revenue-donation model.
What These 6 Brands Have in Common
Building Demand and Distribution on Their Own Terms
Each of these brands built early demand by hand before a distributor did any of that work.
Marilee Kick promoted a receptionist to sales rep to turn around a California market where a room of 100 distributor reps had sold only 38 cases in six months. Patrick Halbert and Rocco Milano built a target account list by Googling hotel names and cold-calling front desks before any distributor stocked their product. Amit Singh and Marcin Malyszko cold-called grocery chain executives directly and personally guaranteed to buy back unsold inventory from independent liquor stores.
Joey Angelo took a related but distinct approach with SipMargs. He deliberately capped expansion to markets like New York, New Jersey, and Florida where the brand could dominate before opening new territory, rather than spreading a small team thin chasing every available account.
These brands also had to work around a wine-and-spirits distribution system not built for RTD volume and margin profiles, and several found beer distributors a better structural fit.
Surfside shifted much of its distribution to beer wholesalers after finding that wine and spirits houses lacked the cold-box space and margin tolerance for its volume. SipMargs made the same move once it recognized beer distributors already had the infrastructure that Southern Glazer’s and Breakthru did not. Mission Cocktails built toward a partnership with Reyes Holdings, the largest beer distributor in North America, after proving its retail performance through Total Wine and BevMo.
BuzzBallz sidestepped the issue differently, producing malt-based, wine-based, and spirit-based versions of the same product so it could work across whichever distributor type was available in a given state.
Anchoring to One Defensible Product Decision
Finally, each brand anchored itself to one specific, defensible product or packaging decision before trying to scale, rather than launching a generic entry into an increasingly crowded category.
BuzzBallz built its business around a spherical, see-through container unlike anything else on the shelf. On The Rocks solved for shelf stability with a 20% ABV formulation and renamed itself specifically to teach consumers they needed to pour it over ice.
Crafthouse refused to substitute fresh citrus and branded spirits for flavored malt bases or grain neutral spirits, even when it meant sourcing a bottler in Canada. Mission Cocktails applied the same discipline to ingredients, insisting on real, California-sourced juice over flavor-house concentrates even when producers told them it could not be done at scale.