Luna Bay Chief on Leveraging Wellness Brand Partnerships and More – Craft Business Daily

2/20/24, 1:43 PM

Luna Bay 's partnerships are an example that cold calling, er, messaging, still works. CEO Bridget Connelly told Craft Business Daily editors she’s “really thankful for LinkedIn” on an upcoming episode of Beernet Radio. She said it “has given us so many opportunities” through connecting with the right people at the companies they want to align their better for you, tea-based hard kombucha, tea and mocktail lines with, from Life Time Fitness to Walmart.

Building their partnerships in the wellness space comes as Luna Bay shares it is “up 57% in California,” with statewide expansion through Republic National Distributing Company and is on an expansion streak, adding Connecticut, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland and D.C. to its current 14-state footprint.

“I kind of scoured LinkedIn to find who buys product at Life Time [Fitness],” Bridget said, working alongside Luna Bay’s COO Selnika LeFever . LeFever and marketing director Julie Pappas, RD “on building that relationship” with Life Time. The gym company “trialed” Luna Bay’s hard kombucha and mocktails via “pool buckets” served at their pool and through serving their drinks at their cafes. Now Luna Bay is launching with Life Time nationally.

Then too, Bridget said, “that’s how we got in front of Walmart, was through LinkedIn, and Amazon, [too],” where Luna Bay launched its mocktail line last fall. They’ve also partnered with Five Star Parks amusement parks after connecting with them on LinkedIn. “It’s really all asking someone for ve minutes of their time and building relationships.”

OPPORTUNITY WITH WELLNESS-FOCUSED PARTNERSHIPS. A brand builder by trade, Bridget started Luna Bay not knowing “anything” about the alcohol business, but knowing their brand ethos centered on health and wellness and using “real” GMO-free ingredients without additives or added sugar.

Prior to launching Luna Bay, she worked at Lululemon, a natural t to partner with on events and brand sampling.

“They are going to be doing 10Ks [races] this year in select cities around the country, and we just saw that as a really good opportunity to come in and have a product that aligns with them,” Bridget said, noting Luna Bay has already sampled at a race in LA and will have mocktails at other Lululemon races this year. Luna Bay also sells its products at Lululemon’s Chicago store and has done mocktail sampling at yoga classes hosted by the company.

“Maybe 10, 15 years ago, you could just have your product and you go to your distributor and you sell. And I think the consumer now is looking at partnerships,” Bridget said. “You really have to think outside of just being an alcohol brand, you have to think of how the Lululemons and the Life Times, the sports arena, is how you activate those partnerships that help amplify your brand and your messaging.”

ON WHOLE FOODS OPPORTUNITY TO EXPAND TEA LINE. Beyond wellness-focused partnerships, Luna Bay has also gotten support from some heavy hitters to expand its product line. We found it interesting that Luna Bay expanded its house sparkling hard tea line with an exclusive new variety pack at Whole Foods this year, given beer buyer Mary Guiver ’s recent comments about flavor fatigue with innovation brands.

But Bridget said Mary “was the one that really presented us the opportunity to expand into hard tea,” as Whole Foods was “looking for something more flavorful” based on consumer feedback.

So Bridget worked to develop the Lakehouse line, coming up with the brand in five days and getting it in stores within two and a half months, and “opening six new states in the process with a team of less than 10."

“We’re quick, we’re nimble, we’re aggressive, and we take that feedback seriously,” Bridget said.

MOST OF LUNA BAY’S ‘24 CHAIN MANDATES ARE IN HARD KOMBUCHA. Given Luna Bay’s foray into the hard tea space, and hard kombucha’s less-than-stellar category performance in recent months (down double digits last year), we wondered if Bridget and co. are still bullish on the category.

“We have our biggest amount of chain mandates this year that are all in hard kombucha,” Bridget said, “so we’re still really doubling down on it. We really see that there’s opportunity in certain chains and certain partnerships.”

As for whether the category has legs to grow beyond “the more niche California segment,” hard kombucha has seen success in, Bridget said “we’re seeing, now, [sales in] Michigan and Ohio and Minnesota and distributors asking us for product.”

ON (MOSTLY) ALIGNING WITH RNDC. As for Luna Bay’s distribution strategy, rather than sign on with beer houses like many of their canned RTD-adjacent colleagues, Luna Bay has mostly aligned with RNDC.

Bridget said working with Republic National Distributing Company “was one of the biggest opportunities we could have had” as it meant working with one distributor in California “when we could have had 15.”

“They also open up a lot of chain opportunities,” which for an “emerging category that didn’t exist five years ago,” is important as “a lot of these chains are still being educated” on what hard kombucha is.

Then too, ”certain retailers don’t work with some of the smaller distributors that we had been previously with,” Bridget said, with their preferred distributor being RNDC. “So I think it’s a double-edged sword because some of the small craft [distributors] have been really great for us and then some of them haven’t.”

But RNDC “doesn’t make sense necessarily in every one of our markets,” which is why Bridget said they’ve also aligned with Breakthru Beverage Group in certain territories and are “diversifying ourselves within the distribution network.”

“For us as a whole to be given these opportunities when RNDC didn’t even look at brands like ours really two years ago, I think it’s an exciting opportunity to really shake up the distribution world.”

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? Craft Business Daily 2024