Seventeen years ago, Bossa Nova helped create the market for acai juices in the U.S. Now, its founder Alton Johnson – working alongside beverage industry veteran Neil Kimberely, himself fresh off a nine-year stint as Chief Strategy Officer at premium water brand Essentia – is bringing the defunct brand back, although this time it will be dancing to a different beat.
Bossa Nova is relaunching this month online and in California retailers with a line of functional sparkling waters made with plant-based ingredients like acerola, acai berry, dragonfruit, yerba mate and lotus flower. The seven-SKU line is built around various functional benefits including Immunity (Orange Acerola), Thrive (Raspberry Acai), Recover (Limelyte), Protect (Mango Dragonfruit), Energy (Lime Yerba Mate), Renew (Pinot Grape) and Relax (Pineapple Hop). Each 12 oz. can contains 5% fruit juice and sells for $29.99 per 24-pack online.
Johnson, who is serving as CEO, recruited Kimberely to serve as Bossa Nova’s president earlier this year, after the former Snapple exec bowed out of his role with Essentia in July, having helped build the company into a category leader and guided its exit to Nestle Waters North America in last year.
“I’ve been fascinated by the sparkling water space for a while,” Kimberley told BevNET in a call last week. “I came from Snapple, which is a flavor-oriented business, and then ended up at Essentia, which is very much about package, pricing and location in store. So I was always really intrigued by how you can merge together water concepts with the flavor experience that I’ve had. And so as I’m talking through some of these things with Alton and the rest of the team, it just becomes an ever more fascinating space in terms of how do you connect with consumers, and how do you carve out a niche for what we think is a really interesting business?”
Johnson originally founded Bossa Nova Beverage Group in 2001 after learning about the health benefits of the acai berry; a bottled juice line didn’t hit stores until 2005 but made waves as the first RTD acai beverage in the U.S. The brand was later acquired by Beverage Holdings LLC in 2009 and placed in the same portfolio as Sunny D. Two years later, Johnson left the brand and the beverage industry altogether, making a career move into real estate. Without him steering the ship, Bossa Nova struggled under a mismatched brand management strategy and ultimately was taken off the market.
For several years it seemed that Bossa Nova would remain a relic of the past, but in 2017 Johnson said he was approached with an opportunity to repurchase the IP and, inspired by the growth in the sparkling water category, he began working on the new product lineup with plans to relaunch the brand as a whole new company.
Johnson told BevNET in a separate interview that he has been working full-time on the new Bossa Nova for about four years, attempting to fill what he sees as a white space for low calorie, plant-based sparkling beverages. While there have been a number of functional sparkling water entrants over the past few years – including brands like Recess, Good Idea, Limitless and Soulboost, among others – Johnson said he believes Bossa Nova provides “a more elegant,” plant-based solution for consumers.
In particular, Johnson said Bossa Nova will be a more affordable option with a focus on breaking out into mainstream channels; “The plants have the ability to shine without it being a $2.99 premium single-serve,” he added.
While recent years have seen several relaunches of nostalgic legacy brands like Slice and Clearly Canadian, Johnson said he isn’t aiming to invoke the memories of the old Bossa Nova acai juice so much as he’s bringing the brand into the present day while remaining true to its platform of plant-based nutrition.
Beyond Kimberley, Bossa Nova has also hired another Essentia veteran: Patrick Katchak, formerly the director of national accounts – Central Division for the premium water brand, as its new VP of national accounts. The company has also hired a CMO with beverage industry experience, Johnson said. Zolezzi Enterprises CEO and founder Anthony Zolezzi has also joined as a co-founder and board member. The company is currently raising a friends and family funding round.
According to Johnson, Kimberley will play a vital role by overseeing much of the operational strategy and he is currently working to establish a distribution network for the brand as it rolls out to stores this month.
“I’m not a beverage industry guru, I’m more of a plants kind of guy – I love working with nature and solving solutions with plants,” Johnson said. “But Neil Kimberley, he is who he is and I thought he was the ideal partner to be the yin to my yang. I’m the product guy and I want to connect with consumers with this culture of plants with benefits.”
Kimberley said he is targeting small tastemaker retail chains to seed the brand’s brick-and-mortar presence, eyeing stores like Erewhon, Fresh Thyme, Earth Fare, Harmons and Molly Stones. Currently, he said Bossa Nova is in its “tweak process,” where the company will closely monitor early performance to ensure the packaging, formulation and communications are resonating with shoppers, before making a strong push into conventional channel outlets.
“I often say it’s very difficult to open up on Broadway, you’re much better off starting off in Sheboygan at a dinner theater making sure that your script works,” Kimberley said. “So from our standpoint, we really want to make sure that we have our script right, that the product is ready to go and that we can be a large scale business.”
This new venture also places Kimberley in unfamiliar territory – startup culture. Although he played a pivotal role steering Essentia to its exit to Nestlé last year, the brand was already 15 years old when he joined the company. Now, Kimberley said he hopes the team’s broad beverage industry experience will help shorten the growth curve for Bossa Nova. But despite starting from the ground up, he said he’s looking forward to confronting the challenge.
“We used to say at Essentia that every year you stood at the bottom of the mountain and looked at the peak and wondered if you could get there. This is that, but I guess 10x right now,” Kimberley said. “So we’re standing at the bottom of the hill, looking at the top of the mountain trying to figure out ‘Okay, how are we going to get up there?’ And that’s the exciting part at the end of the day.”