The backstory of Surfside, this summer’s most popular ready-to-drink spirits beverage, starts with trash, and particularly what vodka entrepreneur Matt Quigley noticed on the streets of Philadelphia—a lot of discarded bottles of iced tea.

“People just don't naturally digest their surroundings enough,” says Quigley, the 41-year-old president of Pennsylvania-based Stateside Brands. “If you look at what is smashed on the curb and the street, it'll tell you a lot about what the people of your city are actually drinking. And, in Philadelphia, that means it's a ridiculous amount of iced tea. You'll find Twisted Tea, yes, but you'll also find Snapples, and a lot of other brands.”

Quigley brought the idea to his business partner Clement Pappas, Stateside’s 51-year-old CEO, and they set out to produce alcoholic iced teas and lemonades to compete with hard seltzers and other canned drinks, as better-for-you versions of the classic Twisted Tea or Mike’s Hard Lemonade. And now with Surfside in its third summer on the market, customers are crushing Surfside after Surfside, especially along the beaches of the Northeast coast. So far this summer, Surfside cans were the fastest-growing of any beer or ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktail, with an increase of $70 million in retail sales year-to-date. This month, Surfside hit the milestone of topping 5 million cases sold in 2025, besting what sold for all of last year.

“I've been on a flat-out sprint for three-plus years now, trying to keep pace with it,” Pappas tells Forbes.

Surfside is expected to sell as many as 12 million cases this year, which would mean hitting revenue of as much as $300 million. The RTD cocktail brand ended 2024 with $100 million in estimated revenue, and as the fastest-growing brand across all alcoholic beverages, according to NielsenIQ, hitting more than 360% sales growth compared to a year prior.

Those financials have made Surfside and its parent company Stateside Brands a hot acquisition target. Pappas and Quigley, along with their brothers Zach Pappas (a board member) and Bryan Quigley (Surfside’s chief sales officer), are the company’s four cofounders, and they have already turned down several acquisition offers this year and last. Pappas and Quigley tell Forbes they have no intention of selling.

“We're masters of our own destiny at this point,” says Pappas.

He says they have bootstrapped the business this long and continue to be well-capitalized. The four cofounders together own 90% of the business, with the Pappas brothers as the primary investors, though no cofounder owns an outright majority. A few friends and family who invested early on make up the remainder.

Thanks to Surfside’s runaway success, Stateside is quite profitable,........

© Forbes