Beer Marketer's Insights - After Successful Pivot from Shots to Cans, Tru Preps $15M Series B Round, Revamps Graphics; BAT, Polar Among Current Investors

In its ninth year now, Boston-based Tru functional brand is laying groundwork for Series B capital round as it revamps its packs and aims finally to build out western half of US from the Houston base to which founder Jack McNamara has relocated. New look for 12-oz sleek cans of Tru Sparkling Enhanced Beverages dials up Tru brand name from modest identifier to focal point of front panel, offering greater unity to product lineup that variously emphasized functions like Power, Energy, Defend and Beauty. The new look also does more to emphasize the hero ingredients in each sku, key certifications like gluten-free and heart-healthy, and the modest 10-calorie count. So Dream entry, for instance, is described explicitly as "cherry berry flavored," with callouts to chamomile, gaba & magnesium. Gutsy is "peach flavored," with "probiotics, prebiotics & vitamin B3." Sweetening is via blend of juice, erythritol, stevia and monk fruit. "Elevate every moment," is brand mantra. The shot line with which Tru began its existence in 2015 remains in mix only as an ecomm offering as co defers challenges of that segment in favor of more DSD-friendly RTDs that launched 4 years ago.Biggest investor in co's $6.7 mil Series A round in 2021 was Btomorrow Ventures, the venture arm of British American Tobacco as that co tries to plant seeds in functional food, bev and confection sectors. Other investors include Polar Beverages, which distributes brand in New England and, as of a month ago, produces it too. Jack told us he's eying general range of $15 mil for the Series B now that product concept has been vindicated. "Nine years in, we're still likely the smallest brand in the portfolio" at some houses, reflected McNamara. "And drivers push the products that pay the bills." The raise will provide the resources to scale up enough to capture more of their attention, at time many are still trying to fill voids created by brands that exited to soft drink systems.McNamara was hockey player at Colgate Univ who went pro in Europe, encountering in every locker room from his peewee years on sports and energy drinks full of sugar and artificial ingredients. He decided he could do better. Surveying landscape, McNamara concluded - naively, he now recognizes - that shot category led by 94-share 5-Hour Energy might be easy target for disruption. So in 2015 he launched a better-for-you shot under Tru brand. In retrospect it's clear "we screwed up everything you could imagine" with glass bottle that obscured shot identity, flavor challenges, DSD distributors' difficulties handling shots, you name it. It eventually became clear that the core target for shots remains construction workers who're reasonably satisfied with 5-Hour - a recognition that other challengers have come to in past.Still, the shot misfire was valuable in several ways. It provided valuable lessons that led to the pivot to cans. It also helped McNamara pick up some key allies as he tried to navigate his way thru bev biz. Among them: Polar, the big bottler in his Boston backyard. Its owner Ralph Crowley "became my unofficial mentor," Jack recalled, and his sales chief John Wetzonis took seat on Tru board when Polar wrote its check.After several years of struggle, with advice from allies like Crowley, Tru launched the canned line in 2020, entering banners like Market Basket and Wegmans. On distribution side it was onboarded by Polar and, with Wetzonis' help, Honickman further down the East Coast, in all 3 divs spanning NY to Virginia. By now network of 30 wholesale partners include Heidelberg, McCraith, Wright, High-Grade, Fischer-Thompson, De Crescente and Long, some of them members of informal Northeast Independent Distributors Alliance (NIDA). They're augmented in white space by broadliners UNFI and KeHe and redistributor Pod Foods. So far, co has a single DSD partner on West Coast, small shop McNamara didn't name, but building out west is enough of a priority for him to have relocated from the Boston burb of Natick, where Tru remains based, to Houston. Brand has entered regional stores of Walmart and CVS and has a license to hunt within Target chain, signaling ample scale opportunity, Jack noted.Dubbed Wellness Minis, the sucralose-sweetened 2-oz shots are offered in Power, Energy, Focus and Dream versions. The shots themselves had emerged from a venture McNamara had launched in 2012 called Kickstick that offered minibottles to liquor players but proved more suited to sports energy shots. "Really nice add-on," is how McNamara describes their current role on ecomm as co stakes its growth hopes on the RTDs. Tru is exploring a sleep powder entry next.Key members of his team include former Red Bull exec Sean McDonough as vp sales, cofounder Yash Banthia as COO and ex-PepsiCo exec Matt Holzer as CFO. Sales execs bring experience from brands like Bang, Super Coffee, Celsius and Uptime.

After Successful Pivot from Shots to Cans, Tru Preps $15M Series B Round, Revamps Graphics; BAT, Polar Among Current Investors

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