Watermelon water maker Mela has partnered with independent California distributor Stone Distributing Co., making it one of the first non-alcoholic beverage brands in the DSD house’s portfolio of beer, hard kombucha and spirits brands.
Founded in 2021 by CEO Dominic Purpura, Mela produces a line of canned watermelon drinks available in original, Ginger, Passionfruit and Pineapple flavors. The brand’s products are sold in single-serve 16.9 oz. cans in about 3,000 stores total across 10 states, including 1,500 accounts in California, and 12-packs of 11.15 oz. cans are available online direct-to-consumer and through Amazon. Through Stone, Mela will expand its presence in the Southern California market.
“Mela embodies the spirit of what [Stone] has been supporting for many years, great people building boundary-pushing brands,” said Anthony Trento, VP of sales at Stone, in a press release. “As category creators, they offer an exciting and quality beverage that aligns with our customer’s tastes. We’re more than excited to enter a fast-emerging category with a truly innovative brand that is Mela.”
Purpura credited the brand’s existing distribution partners – including Los Angeles Distributing, Shoreline and Seacoast Distributing – with helping grow Mela to a place where a larger independent such as Stone became interested in the startup brand.
“Stone has been the most incredible distribution company to work with ever,” Purpura told BevNET. “They respected that I respected those distributors, and they understood that relationships are important to me, and I wanted to keep them…. They were open to not being the only one and working with the relationships that we’ve had. I’m an old school Italian kid from Chicago so that meant a lot to me.”
Mela is coming on board Stone trucks as the brand quickly expands its retail presence around the country, with accounts such as Fresh Thyme, Albertsons/Safeway South Division, Stater Bros, SaveMart/Lucky’s, Fred Meyer and QFC.
Outside of California, the brand works with Rainforest in New York. Purpura said the company is currently in discussions with several other large DSD distributors across the country, and is likely to confirm several new partnerships this summer.
Citing SPINS data for the 24-weeks ending March 26, 2023, the brand said it has grown sales by 33.4% in natural, 23.3% in conventional and 62.6% in convenience stores. Purpura said the company has a full time team of 11 employees right now, of which eight are in the sales department, and is on average hiring one new team member every month, depending on revenue.
The brand, he added, is projecting year-end revenue of around $10 million, dependent on the performance of several upcoming launches in new accounts.
Through Stone, Purpura hopes to expand Mela into new on-premise accounts including restaurants, bars and entertainment and sports venues, alongside conventional channel, convenience and liquor accounts in California. Among the accounts Stone services are major stadiums such as San Diego Padre’s home field Petco Park and L.A. sports hub Crypto.com Arena.
“Mela, by nature, has been a really big cocktail mixer in bars and clubs,” Purpura noted. “One thing Stone provides, which most other distribution companies don’t, is [on premise]. So we’re in a lot of bars and restaurants already in San Diego and as we just launched in L.A. and Orange County and all these other areas of SoCal, Stone is going to be able to really give us an on-prem look.”