California-based brand Better Booch has raised $2.5 million in a series seed round to support the expansion of its team, the company announced today, including the hiring of GT’s Living Foods vet Scott Presnall as its EVP of sales and a new VP of sales, John Weaver.
The fundraise is the company’s first since 2019, when it raised $2.5 million in a round led by Crush Ventures. This new financing included investment from Michael J. Silverstein, whose investing experience includes over 40 years with The Boston Consulting Group. Silverstein has since joined Better Booch’s board of directors and also helped to attract additional investors to the cap table including Springdale Ventures, H Ventures, Outbound Ventures, and Mindset Ventures, CEO Trey Lockerbie told BevNET.
“He’s a dreamer, and that’s what I love about him,” Lockerbie said about Silverstein’s involvement. “He has no limitations that he sets for himself or ourselves, and he challenges us to think bigger and go bigger. And that’s why we love working with him.”
Founded in 2012 by Lockerbie and his wife, CMO Ashleigh Lockerbie, Better Booch produces a line of canned kombuchas available in nine flavors, as well as rotating seasonal varieties. The brand is now available in over 3,000 retail stores nationwide – including 500 Walmart stores – and according to Trey Lockerbie reported over 100% growth year-over-year in 2021.
According to Trey Lockerbie, the company’s growth is arriving as segmentation between canned kombuchas and bottled kombucha drinks increases, noting that sales of cans was up roughly 100% in 2020 and about 70% in 2021, citing NielsenIQ and IRI data, while glass bottles grew 11% in 2020 and just 0.3% last year.
“The whole story is that the adoption of canned kombucha is massive and Better Booch has been leading that,” he said. “And that’s one of the primary reasons we hired Scott Presnall. Scott saw the opportunity with canned kombucha and he jumped at the chance to come do it with us.”
Presnall is a food and beverage industry veteran who began his career as a retail and key account manager for Kraft General Foods in 1978 and later held roles at The J.M. Smucker Company, Advantage Sales & Marketing and McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams, according to LinkedIn. In 2009, Presnall joined kombucha pioneer GT’s Living Foods as its EVP of sales, where he helped lead the brand’s nationwide expansion and mainstream breakout which has (for now) cemented the company as the category leader.
In September, Presnall announced his retirement from GT’s with the intent to move into consulting, but Trey Lockerbie said that after a meeting he was drawn to Better Booch’s small family culture and the rapid growth of canned kombucha.
“The bottom line is we’ve just never had someone as experienced as Scott in the role, period,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think you can find someone more experienced than him for the role. So, it’s an order of magnitude of difference for the company.”
Joining Presnall is incoming VP of sales John Weaver, who previously worked with him at GT’s as a regional sales manager from 2016 to 2019 and more recently held sales roles at Lemon Perfect and Pressed.
Weaver fills the title left by Jordan Shulman, who left Better Booch in July to join fellow canned kombucha maker Remedy Drinks. Shulman helped scale the brand to its current footprint, but since his departure the company has worked with independent consultant Gavin Linde.
Now, Better Booch aims to use the new financing to grow its overall team, including at least 10 open sales positions alongside expanding its marketing team. Trey Lockerbie noted that Presnall is already working on a new comprehensive plan for the company’s sales strategy, including a revised pricing structure and regional expansion plan; currently, the brand is primarily distributed in the Southern half of the country and parts of the Midwest with relatively few accounts in the North.
Ashleigh Lockerbie added that the marketing team has been “small and mighty” and has developed an ongoing campaign called the “Better Booch Challenge” encouraging consumers to challenge their kombucha-hating friends to try the drink. But team expansion is vital to support the company’s growth and she now wants to increase both field and digital marketing efforts, with an emphasis on returning to live events as spring arrives and, ideally, the pandemic tempers down. An omnichannel photo campaign is expected to launch in the coming months as well.
Looking ahead, Ashleigh Lockerbie noted there are additional innovations planned to roll out this year with a planned announcement at Natural Products Expo West 2022. But for now, the brand’s core focus is simply to continue to drive sales, both in retail and online.