Entrepreneur

I have a long marketing background mostly in ecommerce and both B2B and B2C. I have started several decent ecom businesses in the past and very comfortable with that.

But now, I am starting a beverage company. CPG is new to me and I am learning a ton. Have a family history of diabetes, trying to cut out soda and HATE the taste of diet soda. Started heavily researching 2 years ago and discovered a natural sugar alternative called allulose. Decided to go down the path of developing a soda using allulose. In January, started work with a professional formulation company to formulate 3 flavors ($15k).

That finished in Aug and had some legal review stuff and search for cans, ingredients and co-packer. Low volume can options are basically shrink wrap or digital printing. Going with digital printed cans.

Pilot run of about 5000 cans of each flavor in Nov or Dec once all ingredients arrive. This pilot run and other setup costs is another $35k.

Starting with Amazon (FBA Brand Registry and trademark approved) and own website. With actual product, will focus on distribution, DSD’s and retailers.

I was able to find a great consultant that I like and trust that is very knowledgeable in this space and pay him a monthly retainer. He is aware of distributors, margins, supply chain, etc.

This business is crazy expensive at low volume and I don’t expect profitability for a few years.

After the pilot run, I am assuming some D2C velocity and hopefully some distribution into retail. Then next production run likely around April for 50-75k cans. (You don’t get good efficiency with things like regular offset print cans until about 200k volume per flavor! I’ll be putting in another $100k at this point.

Then assuming some traction with retailers and distributors, plan is to sell a rental property and fund another $200k-$300k in summer. Beyond that, we would likely need to take on investment. Nervous about that and never had a business that required investment. Maybe I can bootstrap but hard to get profitable margins without much larger volume.

Heavily debated the brand. Had more generic options like “Zen Soda” and settled on “AlluSoda” I am leaning heavily into allulose and believe it will only get more and more popular. I’ve read pretty much every study and feel confident in the benefits. By connecting the brand, I establish my brand as an authority with allulose. Even now, if you search “soda with allulose” I rank #1. Plus, I was able to get domains, trademark, etc. another really cool thing with allulose is you can bake with it. For instance Magic Spoon cereal has taken off and uses allulose. I have a ton of brand variants such as AlluTea, AlluEnergy, AlluBrew, AlluMixers, etc. plus beyond beverage AlluBars, AlluSnacks, AlluCandy, AlluCookies, AlluVites.

The value prop connecting all this together is “zero sugar that truly tastes great.”

Anyone here start a beverage before? It’s crazy competitive. Any suggestions? Is RangeMe worth it? Advice in sales and distribution?

Happy to share experience and answer questions that I can as well.

TL;DR - Starting a zero sugar beverage company called AlluSoda using allulose. Formulated product and starting pilot run soon. Any advice for a new beverage start-up? Also, happy to answer any questions.