Premium pickle brand Grillo’s is entering the beverage set with a line of cold-pressed pickle vinegar drinks launching next week at Natural Products Expo West 2020.
Speaking with BevNET last week, Grillo’s founder Travis Grillo said the expansion into beverage is part of a larger effort to build a cross-category platform brand, which also includes changing its name from Grillo’s Pickles to Grillo’s Fresh.
“The beverage industry is a different animal, so I don’t want to collapse our lights on beverage,” Grillo said. “I just want to prove that Grillo’s is more than a pickle and we were always more than a pickle. But as a creative it’s been hard for 10 years to only sell pickles and finally I have the opportunity and this is me saying to the world I’m more than a pickle company and here it is.”
According to Grillo, the drinks are positioned as health beverages and as pre- and post-workout alternatives to sports drinks. As well, the high electrolyte content makes the drink a potential hangover recovery beverage, he said.
The line features two flavors, pickle and lemon, and will retail for $4.49 per 12 oz. bottle. Each SKU uses cold-pressed pickles as a base and includes fresh cucumber to cut the flavor, Grillo said. The pickle flavor contains zero sugar while lemon contains 5 grams of added sugar from lemon juice. The drinks are distributed cold chain and have a 90 day shelf life.
“We knew vinegar drinks were trending, especially kombucha, and we didn’t want to have something that was too overpowering,” said Grillo’s brand manager Eddie Andre. “It’s tough to introduce that drink to a lot of people. We felt pickle flavor was already unique enough to the palate that you needed it to be drinkable.”
The beverages will be available for retail sales nationwide and will launch in four Whole Foods regions next month, including Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, North Atlantic and Rocky Mountain stores. Andre told BevNET that the company will focus on in-store marketing to promote the launch and is also emphasizing trade channels before launching a more aggressive consumer-facing campaign which will include a social media push and influencer push.
The brand expansion comes as Grillo’s has seen sustained double digit year-over-year growth, Andre said, and as it seeks to broaden its marketing efforts through clothing and brand partnerships. The company partnered with Urban Outfitters to produce a clothing line which was sold at New York Fashion Week this month and is working on a collaboration with Nickelodeon to produce clothing and food labels featuring characters from the cartoon “Rugrats” (the main character is named Tommy Pickles).
In addition to beverage innovations, Grillo’s will also launch two new food lines in April: single serve cups of pickle chips and a line of pickle-based salsas called Pickle De Gallo. The single serve cups will retail for $2.29-2.49 per unit. Pickle De Gallo will retail for $4.49 per tub in Sweet, Mild and Hot varieties.
According to Grillo, the company anticipates the salsa line will have strong early performance in retail and will roll out primarily in conventional grocery accounts.
“All the stores are going to take it eventually. They’re going to have to,” Grillo said. “This is a home run for us.”