Leisure Hydration’s story isn’t a fairy tale funded by celebrity checks. It’s a staircase: one gritty step at a time. Co-founders Alex and Steve started in 2022 with 75 LA doors, hand-delivering cases and running 200+ demos to collect real-world feedback. The big unlock? Lead with taste and refreshment first. Functional callouts matter, but consumers buy beverages that are delicious and easy to understand. Packaging evolved to highlight hydration, flavor, electrolytes — then everything else.
Build Leverage, Then Squeeze It
- Food service first for scale. Corporate accounts (Meta, LinkedIn, Uber, Chase Sapphire lounges) created truckload-level volume, lowered COGS, and bought time to learn — without chasing thousands of retail doors too early. Aluminum cans also fit a growing “no single-use plastic by 2026” mandate.
- Data as a weapon. Leisure focused on velocity vs. category, not vanity distribution. When you can say “we’re 3–4× category average” or “12.5 units/SKU/store/week,” you earn the next meeting.
Whole Foods: Plan, Launch, Sustain
- Plan & set up. Learn the org (regions, review cycles), pressure-test P&L (Prime vs. non-Prime promos, EDLP/SPDA), and assemble the right partners (UNFI, brokers, merchandisers). Go deep, not wide — prioritize your backyard so execution stays best-in-class.
- Speed to shelf. Treat day one like a campaign. Align weekly (even daily) internally, use field teams, verify shelf tags, and fight for cold placement near the hot bar, where trial happens. Leisure hit ~98% distribution in 21 days across ~515 stores by owning what others assume someone else will do.
- Execute & grow. Pull every portal report, spot under-ordering, prevent OOS, and tell the story back to your buyer (“Promoted weeks drove +200%, Southwest is on fire: here’s why”). Demos still win: liquid to lips beats clever funnels.
Founder Notes You’ll Actually Use
- Iterate relentlessly. You will not launch perfectly. Fix flavor, format, and message in the market.
- Create momentum loops. Each win (corporate account, velocity chart, seasonal feature) should unlock the next.
- Protect IP. In CPG, your trademark is the asset.
- Finance realistically. Beverage is capital-intense; plan staged raises tied to real velocity and margin milestones.
- Be scrappy, analog, human. Call store managers. DM on LinkedIn. Ask for the discount.
Why Glimpse Mattered
As deductions rolled in, 90% were valid, but 10% weren’t. Offloading dispute recovery (and the PDF swamp) to Glimpse kept leadership on growth activities and supported scale without ballooning finance headcount. That’s operational oxygen for an emerging brand.
Bottom line: Learn faster than everyone else, measure what matters, and convert every spark into your next rung up the staircase.
