Craft soda maker Wild Bill’s is adding some new innovations to its wagon through a business model expansion and growing product portfolio which includes seasonal soda launches, a low sugar line, and a variety of new snacks and sauces. Prior to the pandemic, the events-based, veteran-owned and operated business sold its sodas from a western-style wagon stand which is now being steered in a new direction toward on-premise partnerships that build off its existing brand equity.
What is Wild Bill’s?
The Millington, New Jersey-based company had been peddling ‘olde fashioned soda pop’ on tap for two decades at festivals and events around the country ranging from bike rallies to Comic-Con and county fairs. After building a following from those events, the brand began to experiment with an RTD format and launched a line of four of its most popular flavors — Root Beer, Vanilla Cream, Orange Cream and Black Cherry — on Amazon in 2018, said Wild Bill’s CEO Mike Merseburg.
“The event business was around for 20 years and customers were always asking where can I get this again,” said Merseburg. “We would respond and direct them to our next event but then we started collecting data on these customers at our shows and emailing them when we were in their region. What was really interesting is we were starting to drive traffic to shows… so we thought about getting our most popular flavors into cans and just seeing what happens.”
They received a high volume of positive feedback from these consumers and found many were drinking the soda in place of alcohol, treating it as a specialty item or alcohol alternative. However, the pandemic hit soon after the expansion into cans, bringing Wild Bill’s event wagon to a screeching halt and forcing Merseburg and his team to think strategically about how they could harness their existing consumer base to keep the company alive.
“During COVID we had to lay off about 40 people and veterans are already often underemployed based on their skill sets because we don’t do a good job of translating our skills,” Merseburg said, who served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. “We knew we needed to find a way to keep the lights on and keep excitement around the brand and the immediate thought was people know us from these events.”
What’s new?
Having recently launched a three SKU line of low sugar sodas, Wild Bill’s is now officially in full expansion mode with today’s introduction of three limited-time seasonal sodas flavors: Pumpkin Spice, Apple Pie and Hot Toddy. The company has also canned its full original, heritage line with 13 flavors ranging from Birch Beer to Butterscotch that contain between 170 to 190 calories, 36-47 grams of gugar (flavor dependent) and are available online in 12-packs for $30.
In addition to beverages, Wild Bill’s also recently launched a variety of food items — each developed from feedback from consumers on their favorite soda pairings — including crunchy peanuts and a variety of barbecue and hot sauce varieties. The peanuts are available in Garlic, Coconut, Spicy Chili and Original flavors for $8 per 6 oz. bag while the sauces come in a variety of flavors ranging from Sundrenched Habanero Hot Sauce to Carolina Mustard BBQ Sauce which also retail for $8.
“Innovating on new products is our wheelhouse,” Merseburg stated. “We don’t lose money launching new products because we have this profitable sampling [at events] so it is kind of a no brainer. We feather those in and if the customer doesn’t like it, they don’t like it and we pull back. At events people get our soda on tap, try it, and if they don’t like it, they dump it out and try another.”
According to Merseburg, almost all of Wild Bill’s latest product launches were driven by the pandemic and steered by consumer feedback that encouraged them to innovate around the idea that these sodas were for specialty-use. However, Merseburg explained that in order to sustain this newfound momentum Wild Bill’s needed to introduce a product for everyday consumption, which led to the launch of its 25 calorie, naturally-flavored, low-sugar line in Orange Cream, Root Beer and Vanilla Cream flavors.
“We weren’t sure when events were going to come back and we had traction with the online business so we said to ourselves — realistically we really need to come up with an everyday beverage if we want to keep this flywheel going for regular orders,” he said. “Internally, we wanted to hedge against the events and show business not coming back for a longer period of time than expected and develop beverages with an everyday use.”
What’s next?
Currently, Wild Bill’s is available online and in about 30 small retail stores, bars and restaurants around the country. Next year, the company aims to expand its on-premise presence to places where “soda is not seen as a commodity item,” Merseburg said. He emphasized that the brand’s events-only background gave the soda an inherent, special-use occasion and he intends to maintain that as one of the brand’s core pillars as it looks toward further retail expansion.
“There has been this iterative customer journey from event to eatery and back,” Merseburg explained. “I think that the most unique aspect is how you find and experience Wild Bill’s. The flavors are definitely a piece of that but I wouldn’t hang my hat on flavor being our main point of differentiation.”
Looking to the future, Merseburg foreshadowed a variety of upcoming on-the-go snack innovations ranging from astronaut ice cream to apple pie balls. In terms of positioning within beverage, he said Wild Bill’s will focus on its premium, craft alcohol-alternative brand attributes and already has plans to launch an official mocktail line in support of this position in the near future.
“At these events we are the non-alcoholic option of choice for people celebrating… which is obviously a growing trend and we think we play a role in it,” Merseburg stated. “It’s exciting where we are right now because we have somewhat reinvigorated sugar water, which is soda, into something that folks are over the moon about. Now, we are trying to find the path of least resistance to getting more people to discover Wild Bills.”