Bai poised to become a national brand
“The past year we saw incredible growth without distribution in a national chain and we’re expecting similar growth in the coming year—around 400%,” Bai CEO and founder Ben Weiss told FoodNavigator-USA.
“We’re familiar with growing pains—from sales and production to distribution—in every way, growth is a challenge, but it’s at a different level now that we’re establishing a national footprint.”
Bai’s growth strategy since its 2009 launch has been to grow distribution organically by winning at retail. The brand’s initial launch in Costco (and subsequent aggressive sampling and demo strategy) paved the way for early grocery chain distribution.
“At the start, our strategy was to achieve equity in the Northeast region, from Maine to Virginia. We then opened up in Southern California and a little less than eight months later in northern California—our goal was to grow ACVs, look at our successes and win at retail,” Weiss said.
“We’ve been able to make healthy so mainstream with the halo of a great superfruit (antioxidant-rich coffeefruit). It’s no mystery. We know what the brand can do and are excited by what it can do.”
'Incredible growth'
Bai launched in Jewel-Osco supermarkets in Chicagoland last month, with support from Midwest beverage distributor Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
In addition to the Midwest launch, retailers including Target, Stop & Shop, Hannaford Supermarkets and Raley’s, and more than 100 West Coast Costco stores have added Bai to their beverage mix in recent months. Bai is also aiming to introduce the products more formally to the convenience store channel in the coming months.
To support this expansion, Bai opened a corporate office and 27,000-sq.-ft. warehouse facility in Corona, CA, which will streamline operations on the West Coast and facilitate nationwide distribution.
The difference between the coming year and those previous, Weiss said, is now the brand has a national footprint.
“We’re staffing up everywhere—marketing, sales, operations and we’re pipeline filling all systems around the country. This is really like the coming out of the brand. We’re pretty excited.”
