California-based beverage startup ZenWTR announced today that it has appointed Bryan Crowley as CEO. Crowley joins the sustainably-packaged alkaline water brand, founded by veteran entrepreneur Lance Collins, five months after leaving the chief executive role at Soylent.
Crowley had served as a consultant on ZenWTR for the past three months, he said, before accepting the CEO position, which Collins held while launching the brand into West Coast retail accounts this spring.
Prior to ZenWTR, Crowley served as the CEO of Los Angeles-based Soylent from December 2017 to February 2020 where he oversaw the meal replacement maker’s expansion into nationwide retail with a footprint of over 20,000 doors, a packaging rebrand, several product line launches and pivoted the company’s marketing toward mainstream consumers. Prior to Soylent he served as the chief strategy officer at KeVita and has held positions at Pabst Brewing Company, Mars and VeeV Spirits.
“Bryan’s excellent track record leading both startup and legacy food and beverage brands, along with his passion and experience bringing sustainable brands to market, aligns perfectly with our vision for disrupting the $20 Billion bottled water category,” Collins said in a press release. “I’m confident that his leadership will bring tangible impact to a beverage market thirsty for change and help us restore coastal environments.”
ZenWTR’s line of 9.5 pH alkaline waters are packaged in recycled rPET bottles sourced from salvaged “ocean plastic.” The packaging was developed by CarbonLITE, a California-based sustainable plastics producer in which Collins is a partner. The brand is currently available in almost 5,000 stores, primarily in the West and Southwest regions, including retailers such as H-E-B, Whole Foods, Walmart, ampm, 7-Eleven, Kroger, Safeway and Target.
According to Crowley, ZenWTR is developing a DSD network that includes Columbia Distributing in the Pacific Northwest, Kalil Bottling Co. in Arizona and John Lenore & Co. in Southern California. The brand is also developing new innovations to roll out in the near future, he added.
“This is a growing category,” Crowley said. “So as premium water continues to grow and high pH continues to grow … we have a real advantage to be able to get in there and ride that wave, pun intended.”
According to Crowley, one particular experience from Soylent he will seek to apply to ZenWTR is that brand’s focus on the ecommerce channel. While ZenWTR has not yet launched a direct-to-consumer platform, Crowley said it will play a significant role in the brand’s omnichannel strategy.
“I truly believe that brands must be omnichannel in the future, especially food and beverage brands, if you really want to grow, if you want to be able to connect and make an impact and certainly if you’re mission-driven then it’s all the more important,” he said. “What we’re working through right now is finding when is the optimal time to show up on different platforms.”
Crowley said ZenWTR has focused on digital marketing to grow brand awareness, particularly as the company navigates the challenges of launching a new brand during the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that the brand’s messaging will lean heavily into its sustainability mission and hopes to “get out to some of the areas” where the company is making an environmental impact to create multimedia content once the crisis situation subsides and travel and production can resume.
While early sales of ZenWTR in March were strong, driven in part by consumer panic buying that particularly impacted categories such as bottled water, Crowley said brand building during the pandemic has been “a rollercoaster ride” as retailers have delayed resets. He noted, however, that the number of experienced beverage industry veterans working on the brand, including Collins and COO Jonathan Ballas (formerly Core SVP of operations), has helped the company to overcome many of the challenges.
“They’ve built up all of these great relationships over time, and some of these guys are from my past as well,” Crowley said. “That actually gives us an advantage because we can continue to drive things forward where we know some are getting completely cut off. That’s why we’ve been able to keep up momentum.”