Stateside's Matt Quigley on Super Lyte Summer as Hard Sports Drinks Explode

How do you balance two brands that are runaway successes? Stateside Brands president Matthew Quigley explained on the latest edition of the Brewbound Podcast how the maker of vodka iced tea brand Surfside is juggling the addition of Super Lyte, a non-carbonated hard sports drink (vodka + ade). From a marketing perspective, Stateside has created dedicated teams for each brand, he explained. On the sales side, the company has built a national accounts team and stable of state managers who, after two years, finally have the bandwidth to take on another brand. The result is another brand in Super Lyte that is being dubbed the drink of the summer, while Surfside is on pace to sell 13 million cases this year, Quigley shared. Meanwhile, Super Lyte is expected to sell four million cases by year's end, making it the largest spirits-based ready-to-drink (RTD) launch of all time, he added. "It shot the lights out in our core in Pennsylvania, Jersey, New York," he said. "It just went gangbusters and it's still doing incredibly, incredibly well."