America Is Drinking Less. This Bootstrapped Vodka Iced-Tea Company Grew Into a $360 Million Business Anyway

The company behind Surfside rode a wave of Philly fandom to create one of America’s fastest-growing businesses.

BY ISSIE LAPOWSKY @ISSIELAPOWSKY

It’s the Thursday before Memorial Day, and the weekend is already looking like a washout. We’re inside an unremarkable office building on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and rain that shows no signs of relenting is cascading in beads down the windows. “I’m not thrilled on multiple levels,” Clem Pappas tells me, glancing at the dreary view.

It’s not just that the forecast will put a damper on Pappas’s family plans to visit the Jersey Shore—to go “down the shore,” as the local folk say. The rain is also lousy for business. Memorial Day weekend is always big in the alcohol industry, right up there with the Fourth of July, and just behind the holiday season in December. But bad weather portends fewer backyard barbecues, emptier beachside bars, and a holiday weekend........

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