2025 Growth Brands: RTD Brands Making A Splash
Beer, wine and spirits sales are still struggling and continue to experience volume declines ever since the onslaught of Covid. However, the rapid rise in popularity of the ready-to-drink (RTD) category is a key factor in helping the industry remain afloat.
According to the Beverage Information Group’s Industry Overview for 2024, RTDs have a projected growth of 20% last year, representing a slight slowdown from 2023 but still marking the most significant growth in total distilled spirits.
The category reached 63.0 million 9-liter cases achieving a 20.5 category share, up 3.0 share points vs 2023, according to the overview, just slightly below total whiskey. This growth highlights the category’s appeal, offering convenience and variety without requiring multiple spirits, mixers or cocktail-making knowledge.
With the market now saturated with companies releasing their own versions of ready-to-drink cocktails, our 2025 RTD Growth Brands winners are managing to stand out, receiving the popular vote amongst consumers.
We spoke with each of our winners to see how they’re able to achieve such growth in an uncertain economy.
RTD Brands Getting Up Close and Personal
With RTDs taking up entire aisles at liquor stores, it’s no longer enough to launch a canned cocktail and wait and see what happens. You need a top-notch marketing plan, and for many of our winners that involves meeting the customers themselves.
Canned cocktail brand and Rising Star winner Carbliss is finding major success in the acclaimed “liquid to lips” strategy. It’s even helping Carbliss launch in new markets.
“In 2024 we continued our boots on the ground, liquid to lips strategy and we launched in two new states: Ohio and Kansas,” says Carbliss public relations and communications coordinator Casey Suttner. “In addition, we completed distribution in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Nebraska.”
Keeping a pulse on consumer trends and understanding what they’re looking for in a canned cocktail is another successful marketing strategy for Carbliss.
“Today’s consumer wants premium, convenient items that can also fit into their wellness goals,” Suttner adds. “Also, quality and range of flavor is important to our consumers and Carbliss continues to innovate. We launched five new flavors in 2025: Mango, Watermelon, Raspberry, Blood Orange and Grapefruit.”
Rising Star winner High Noon also made quite a splash in 2024 for its creative marketing.
“In 2024, we doubled down on creativity, cultural moments and strategic partnerships to keep High Noon top of mind all year long,” says Brandon Lieb, vice president of Spirit of Gallo. “We also tapped into experiential activations to drive cultural relevance and deepen consumer engagement.”
Last spring, High Noon made a historic splash with the High Noon Boston Vodka Iced Tea Party, taking over an 18th-century-style ship in Boston Harbor and presenting the city with 342 cases of High Noon Vodka Iced Tea—the exact amount of tea dumped in the harbor in 1773.
“And through football tailgating activations, we brought the High Noon spirit directly to game days,” Lieb adds. “By blending cultural relevance, strategic media and experiential moments, we continued to fuel High Noon’s momentum in 2024—cementing our place as a premium leader in the category.”
Similarly to High Noon, Rising Star winner The Finnish Long Drink also experiences success through in-person activations.
“Thankfully, the taste of our drink has kept us with a loyal fan base, but we’ve also run some great campaigns over the last year that kept our customers engaged and helped spread the word,” Kle Bradshaw, CMO, The Finnis Long Drink, mentions.
“One standout was the ‘Taste of Finland’ pop-up in New York City, where we showcased our Finnish roots,” Bradshaw continues. “We set up a storefront window where people enjoyed Long Drink while taking an ice bath and sauna, with onlookers watching the fun.”
In July of 2024, Rising Star winner FRESCA Mixed Cocktails got up close and personal with consumers by encouraging them to enter a sweepstakes for a limited time to earn a chance to win one of 100 limited-edition Fancy Ice kits, which also included cocktail glasses and a 12-pack of FRESCA Mixed.
Blending Cocktails with Cannabis
The cannabis-infused beverage space is also skyrocketing in popularity as of late, with cannabis RTDs making their way onto retail shelves across the nation.
“People continue to look for great tasting alcohol alternatives that have an effect people can enjoy,” explains David Mukpo, CEO and founder of Rising Star winner Pamos Beverage Co., a hemp-derived cannabis-infused spirits’ line. “We launched two new flavors of RTDs in 2024─our Pamos Strawberry Margarita Spritz and Pamos Lime Ranch Water─which were immediate successes.”
Since the brand’s inception, Pamos has been rapidly rising through the ranks and is now on the shelves in all Spec’s Wines, Spirits, and Foods locations in Texas, all ABC Fine Wine & Spirits in Florida and in all Total Wine & More locations in the states they are currently operating in with the category.
“We have a lot in store for 2025, with some exciting programming across retail partners,” Mukpo says. “As an emerging category, our promotions are predominantly centered around consumer education. However, there are also calendar-thematic promotions, as well.”
Rising Star winner Buddi THC-infused seltzers is another cannabis RTD that is quite popular in the alternative beverages space.
Buddi launched in 2024 as a consumer-friendly seltzer and quickly made strides in Texas, according to Kevin Carr with Buddi, building a solid consumer base. The seltzer is now expanding into Florida and several other states.
Echoing the “liquid to lips” marketing tactic is Carr, explaining that 2025 will be focused on these types of programs in select states, “as well as expanding our wholesaler network through state level distribution.”
“As we expand, this will allow us to work with our retail partners on pricing promotions to inspire trial of all our different flavors, including a special summer theme variety-pack,” adds Carr.
Educating Consumers
Many of our Growth Brands winners’ marketing campaigns focus on elevating consumer experiences. For our Fast Track winner, Cutwater Spirits, they accomplish this through education.
In 2024, the brand sharpened its focus and put emphasis on educating consumers to show them how “in just seconds, they can create a high-quality and delicious cocktail,” says a Cutwater spokesperson.
“For example, throughout the year, we tapped into a network of cocktail experts, like Julianna McIntosh (aka Join_Jules), to create premium content that demonstrated how consumers can elevate their cocktail drinking experience with simple, yet effective entertaining hacks,” they continue. “After all, a lime wedge garnish or tajin rim can easily elevate your Cutwater Lime Margarita to the next level while impressing your guests.”
RTD Cocktail Innovations
With new RTD brands constantly making their way onto shelves, there’s always something new for shoppers to try. For Rising Star winner On The Rocks cocktails, they find it crucial to regularly innovate their offerings.
Innovation is working for On The Rocks thus far, and Carol Robert, managing director, US RTD, Suntory Global Spirits, says the brand will continue to lean on this marketing strategy in 2025.
“You could say that we are obsessed with really understanding how to deliver against the trends and flavors that consumers are looking for,” she says. “This obsession around insights has been key to successful innovations in the past – we saw it with the rise of the Espresso Martini and again with Blue Hawaiian.”
New flavor innovation is a tactic that also works for Rising Star winner NÜTRL seltzers.
With a focus on growth in the category and as a brand, a NÜTRL spokesperson says the brand is doubling down on innovation in 2025 with the national launch of its newest flavor, NÜTRL Lime. This flavor was brought back for nationwide distribution after an overwhelmingly popular response from consumers in its 2024 limited release.
“NÜTRL will also continue to establish its presence in the music scene and will be activating at festivals throughout the year such as Ultra Music Festival, Lollapalooza, The Governors Ball and Country Music Association (CMA) Festival,” the spokesperson says.
Aside from new product launches, brand redesigns are another noteworthy innovative marketing tactic that can help boost sales. Fast Track winner Monaco Cocktails debuted a brand refresh in 2023 with new monochrome cans, each featuring an emblem stating “established in 2012” within a refreshed logo.
Innovation is also proving to be successful for canned cocktail brand and Rising Star winner Surfside Iced Tea + Vodka. After introducing new flavors in 2024─Black Cherry Lemonade, Raspberry Lemonade and Strawberry Lemonade, as well as their Lemonade + Vodka Variety 8-pack─the consumer response was tremendous.
“In 2024, Surfside was the #1 fastest growing brand across all alcohol beverage (beer, wine and spirits) with retail dollar sales up +360% versus a year ago across the US,” says CEO Clement Pappas. “Surfside has become the #2 sales volume spirits-RTD brand in the US, growing to 4.925 million case depletions, up +278% versus 2023. We averaged selling over nine cases per minute this past year and achieved best-in-class dollar sales velocity within the category.”
Building on the brand’s momentum from 2024, Pappas notes that Surfside is releasing a series of line extensions throughout Q1 of 2025, including a Green Tea + Vodka Variety 8-pack, new single flavor Green Tea + Vodka 4-packs and new 700-ml. “The Longboard” single cans aimed at stadium venues and convenience stores.
In 2024, Rising Star winner Absolut showcased innovation by debuting a new ready-to-serve cocktail line called Absolut Cocktails. Releasing flavors such as Vodka Mojito and Raspberry Lemonade in early February as well as Espresso Martini and Classic Cosmopolitan in early 2025, consumers are slurping up these innovations.
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