Yes, They Canned: Leisure Hydration’s Unique Playbook for CPG Success

How does a brand stand out in the crowded multibillion-dollar electrolyte drink market without a big-name backer? The answer is right in the name.

BY ALI DONALDSON, STAFF REPORTER @ALICDONALDSON

Over the past six years, brothers Alex and Steve Michaelsen have kept a running tally of all the celebrity-backed electrolyte drinks that have launched to great fanfare and then quickly fizzled into zombie brands, getting sold off for parts or shuttering completely. Their count is up to at least four.

The brothers didn’t name names, but they didn’t need to. Scour through enough press releases, and the contents of that growing graveyard of once-buzzy, now-departed brands will become clear: Barcode, the plant-based sports drink co-founded by NBA player Kyle Kuzma in 2021 and backed by Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama, disappeared from shelves and even its own social media before being sold to private equity; Local Weather, the nootropics sports drink co-founded in 2022 by former NFL quarterback Russell Wilson and AJ Vaynerchuk, the serial entrepreneur and brother of Gary, vanished from Whole Foods before being scooped up by Blue Monkey Beverage earlier this year; Lionel Messi’s Más by Messi ceased operations ahead of the World Cup after two years of lawsuits and struggling sales. The latest ready-to-drink casualty: Alex Cooper’s Unwell, the buzzy beverage brand that shut down last month, less than two years after coming to market. 

That shelf space will be ceded to the Michaelsens and their cans of Leisure Hydration. The Los Angeles-based startup, which began on their mom’s couchduring the summer of 2020 without any A-listers, backing, or marketing budget, has quietly and methodically edged its way into more than 5,000 stores, another thousand cafes, and legions of corporate offices across the country. The cans—which are stamped with anthropomorphic fruits, sporting sunglasses and surfing—are stocked at Erewhon, Whole Foods, Sprouts, H-E-B, Kroger, Chase Sapphire Reserve’s network of airport lounges, and in the corporate fridges at Meta, Google, LinkedIn, Tesla, and Stripe.

In the increasingly crowded space of drink options, Leisure Hydration has managed to stand out with a unique playbook: eschewing the caffeine count of energy drinks and the age-old athlete-centric marketing playbook of sports drinks. Instead, the startup pitches its cans as an anytime drink, targeting customers just about everywhere but the gym. It’s a strategy that has sent revenue growth soaring by about 1,300 percent over the past two years and given the co-founders a long-term vision to take on the massive electrolyte incumbents. 

“This could build toward a billion-dollar brand,” says Alex. “The first goal, though, is: How do we get to $100 million in sales?”

Removing the sports from sports drinks  

There may be a long list........

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