UK-based ready-to-drink brand Something & Nothing is targeting further sales in the US, having recently started production in the country for the first time.
Speaking to Just Drinks, Something & Nothing co-founder Olly Dixon said the brand was “creeping into more being a US-based company” from a revenue perspective, with 55% of its sales coming from the country.
He added he saw the greatest potential to grow the brand’s circa £3m ($3.8m) annual revenues in the US, where its non-alcoholic sodas first launched in 2020 and retail for around $3 a can.
“We’re in Berlin and Dublin and Amsterdam and Lisbon but that is sort of just dipping our toe in the water,” Dixon said of the brand’s international presence. “The US is 100% our focus because the opportunity is so big in terms of where we want to be.”
“It’s a bit of a generalisation but, if you go to an English person’s house, they’ll offer you a cup of tea. If you go to an American’s house, they’ll offer you a soft drink. It’s much more part of their culture.”
To facilitate further US growth, Something & Nothing last year took over the distribution of its own drinks in the market and has this year begun producing at a third-party facility in the state of Vermont.
“We create the natural juice compound that has the extracts and the botanicals in the UK with the flavour house we work with,” Dixon explained. “Most of the ingredients other than the yuzu are from Europe, then we freeze it and send that over to the US to be mixed over there with their water.”
Something & Nothing’s stateside growth has so far been driven by a listing with upmarket supermarket chain Erewhon, where the brand is the fifth best-selling canned soft drink by SKU. However, the brand has recently landed on-premise listings with national coffee chain Blue Bottle and Australian-inspired café chain Blue Stone Lane.
Dixon said he hopes the company will become profitable within three years, with projected revenues of £20-30m “within the next three to four years”.
Funding has so far come from friends and family, as well as venture-capital firms Angel CoFund and Rianta Capital. The latter has previously backed other UK-based drinks start-ups including MOTH and Lucky Saint.
The company has recently dropped the word seltzer from the packaging and marketing materials for its soda range, which includes Hibiscus and Rose, Yuzu and Cucumber variants.
Dixon said this was done to disassociate the brand from the seltzer category, which he said suffered from perceptions of poor flavour quality.
“That zero-calorie seltzer market …is beginning to wane a little bit,” he said. “People are getting a bit tired of the lack of flavour and there’s this kind of gap for our product… which gives that kind of fuller flavour.”
Alongside its range of non-alcoholic drinks, Something & Nothing also markets three alcoholic spritzes at 4% abv.
The drinks, which are wine and sake-based, were launched with the aim of expanding the consumer occasion for Something & Nothing’s drinks, Dixon said.
“You can see it happening a bit more in the US now interestingly, this kind of convergence of alcohol and non-alcohol from the same brand,” he said. “We’ve seen it with Coca-Cola and Topo Chico and Refresco and PepsiCo and Mountain Dew.
“We know that soda will always drive the business forward, it will probably always be at least 80% of the business. But it feels like an interesting play when people are becoming more moderate, to create a low-alcohol product that extends the customer connection and the amount of times they potentially spend with you.”
