Venture capital fund AccelFoods has re-upped on its initial investment in carton water company Rethink Brands, leading a $6.7 million round announced in a press release Monday.
Speaking with BevNET by phone, Rethink co-founder and CEO Matt Swanson said the investment comes roughly a year after AccelFoods became the brand’s first institutional investor. As part of this funding round, AccelFoods general counsel Chris Konieczny and early investor and Safety 1st founder Michael Lerner will join the Rethink board of directors.
The financing will support the brand’s growth, which has risen to more than 11,000 stores nationwide, including Walmart, Target, Kroger, Safeway/Albertsons, Meijer, CVS, Wegmans, and Giant Food, as well as online via Amazon.
“All the money for the most part will be used to drive awareness, trial, retention, repeat, all of those types of things,” Swanson told BevNET. “It’s going to be all about building the brand and being the healthiest, tastiest beverage out there for children.”
Rethink has also partnered with Presence Marketing and will focus on using social media campaigns and influencers to grow awareness around the brand.
Swanson said the funding will also go towards building out the company’s regional sales team and marketing team in key markets. Rethink has also reshuffled its executive management: CMO Todd Fletcher, who Swanson said was “instrumental” in overseeing the rebrand, has been promoted to President and former Tessemae’s All Natural executive Michael Dean has joined as CFO and COO.
“When you look at innovation over the last five years, all of the innovation in beverage for the most part has been geared at adults,” Swanson said. “The aseptic juice category for children has been seeing declines, we think it’s the same thing that’s happening in [carbonated soft drinks] as far as sugar and sodium and calories. We’re the first ones that are really kind of capturing it so it’s our job to build a brand, drive awareness, and we look at it almost like building out a category within juice.”
Launched in 2016, Rethink has been growing since it pivoted from a beverage targeted at adults to focusing on a new kids line aimed at disrupting the aseptic juice box market. Rethink currently offers four USDA certified organic flavored water varieties, including Organic Apple, Organic Berry, Organic Fruit Punch, and Organic Orange Mango flavors, which are packaged in 6.75 oz Tetra Pak containers.
As the brand looks forward for the next year, Swanson said he sees online sales playing a larger role in building the brand and driving volume, noting the target “millennial mom” consumer is increasingly making purchasing decisions online. In conventional retail, he said the goal is to go deeper within current accounts by creating regionalized plans to focus on “meaningful markets” which will drive velocity.
“This money is obviously going to be used to build what we have and grow it,” he said. “But ultimately we’re taking some of the money to continue to drive innovation and find other places where we can continue to deliver against our mission of healthy kids hydration.”