4 - PADDY SPENCE, CEO, Zevia: Diet soda in a funk? Not ours…
As Coke and Pepsi watch their diet soda sales stagnate, the arrows on the sales growth chart on Zevia CEO Paddy Spence’s wall are going in the opposite direction, with growth of his zero-calorie sodas up in the triple digits.
The Zevia brand - historically sweetened with stevia and erythritol and now with some monk fruit as well to round off the taste (in the US) - is now worth about $60m at retail from a standing start in 2007.
Stocked in 16,000 stores from Kroger to Safeway, Target, HEB, Whole Foods and Meijer, it’s also performing very strongly on Amazon, says Spence.
But he’s still barely scratching the surface: “I think Zevia could be a $1bn brand. When we’re on the shelf next to these billion dollar brands we’re outselling them. We’ve only got a 0.4% share of the diet soda category so there is a lot of upside. The brand is really resonating with consumers.”
So where's the growth coming from?
“Growth is coming from adding new distribution points/stores, expanding the space allocation in existing stores and achieving higher sales velocity - we’ve made significant gains here," he says.
Click here to read our interview with Paddy.