Vive Organic has closed a $13 million series B funding round led by Monogram Capital, the company announced today. Existing investors Cambridge SPG and PowerPlant Ventures also took part in the round.
Venice, Calif.-based Vive produces a range of refrigerated functional 2 oz. juice shots offering immunity and wellness benefits. The brand’s three Immunity Boost SKUs, plus Wellness Rescue, are sold nationwide, with additional varieties — including Antioxidant Detox, Electro Restore, Pure Calm and Energy & Focus — sold mainly in Whole Foods and some select retailers.
The brand previously closed a $7 million series A funding round led by PowerPlant Ventures in 2018.
Speaking with BevNET, Vive Organic co-founder and CEO Wyatt Taubman said the funding will be used to expand sales and marketing, fuel innovation and help the company meet rising working capital requirements.
“We’re selective with the partners that we want to work with long-term,” Taubman said. “It comes down to expertise and value-add at the board level, but also really integrity and partnership and trust is so important as well. As we got to know each other, I felt we were lucky to find a partner like Monogram.”
Los Angeles-based Monogram is also an investor in CPG brands including Koia, Olipop, Ellenos and Country Archer. The firm’s co-founder and partner Jared Stein will join the board at Vive, joining existing members Mark Rampolla, Bill Moses, Candace Crawford, Chuck Muth and Arif Fazal.
The firm’s co-founder and partner Jared Stein said that, while still a relatively small category, refrigerated shots are showing strong momentum across retail channels and use occasions, with plenty of runway still left ahead. Furthermore, he noted that increased consumer sensitivity to calorie and sugar content have made 16 oz. drink formats more challenging to work within.
“We saw shots as a format, and particularly Vive’s offering, [as one] where you can kind of get the best of both worlds,” said Stein. “You get a really concentrated, quality dose of efficacious immunity boosting ingredients in a much smaller format, and therefore you are not consuming all your calories via an RTD drink.”
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the country, Vive has found itself in the strong position of both meeting consumer demand for immunity boosting products and working well as a direct-to-consumer model. To capitalize on this, in February, the company introduced subscriptions through its existing online store, allowing customers to order 12-packs delivered to their door in refrigerated packaging. Taubman said that Vive’s next ecommerce focus is to improve the sustainability of its packaging materials.
Meanwhile, Vive continues to grow within multiple channels in brick-and-mortar retail, where it is sold in over 8,000 stores nationwide. After spending “the first couple years” trying to find the best place to merchandise the shots within grocery stores, Vive found the strongest velocities within the functional cold box. Despite the limitations that location presents in terms of foot traffic and impulse purchasing — particularly in comparison to shelf-stable shots merchandised near registers — Taubman said the approach has worked thus far.
“We are seeing our retail partners building out dedicated wellness shot sets within the cold box,” he said. “At this point, it’s really working for us and for our retail partners. We’re excited that we found this home.”
Speaking about placement close to checkout, Stein added: “I think longer term that’s absolutely a really exciting growth platform for the company. This tends to be, I think, a more deliberate purchase in general, so it is a little less impulse oriented. But it’s also one that consumers are really just getting educated [about].”