2024 was a banner year for Surfside, the spirits-based RTD from Philadelphia’s Stateside Brands. The brand grew 274% to 4.66 million cases, continuing a run of exponential growth that began when the vodka and iced tea cocktail launched in 2022. Surfside is now the second-ranked spirits-based RTD brand in the U.S. after High Noon, and the 12th-largest spirits brand overall, according to Impact Databank. The portfolio includes non-carbonated iced teas, lemonades, and iced-tea-lemonades in a variety of fruit flavors, all at 4.5% abv and 100 calories per 12-ounce can.
Surfside is forecasted to see continued growth in 2025, with Stateside Brands CEO Clement Pappas telling SND that, in hindsight, there was potentially even more room to grow last year. “The Lemonade Variety Pack was a big new launch last year and that took off to a degree that we didn’t foresee,” he said. “We missed probably a couple hundred thousand cases if we would’ve had the inventory.”
“No one could have envisioned that the lemonade would’ve gone haywire so fast,” added Matt Quigley, president and co-founder. “It makes us realize that consumers are not just here for iced tea. They can identify us in a different lane as well.”
Surfside’s variety packs are among its bestsellers. Available in three varieties—Green Tea Pack, Iced Tea Pack, and Lemonade Pack—the trio is line-priced at $20 an 8-pack. Among individual flavors, Pappas says the original iced tea, half and half, lemonade, and strawberry lemonade are leaders. Individual flavors are available in 4-packs for a suggested price of $10. Additionally, the brand recently launched The Longboard, a new 700-ml. can.
Surfside’s newest releases—its green teas—came about as a desire to be the market innovator for spirits and tea RTDs. “We started to see competition come into the marketplace behind us,” said Quigley. (High Noon unveiled its own line of vodka and tea RTDs last year.) “We saw that people were going to follow us into lemonade and we said, let’s take one more step in another direction.”
While the brand’s strongest markets are in the Northeast, Quigley pointed to the Midwest—specifically Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan—as a high priority for the company. Pappas added that markets like North Dakota, Mississippi, and South Carolina exceeded expectations last year. In support of the brand’s growth, Stateside Brands has expanded its headcount rapidly, adding around 100 new employees over the course of 2024.
In addition to the Surfside brand, the company portfolio also includes Stateside Vodka Sodas, which have likewise been on a tear. Last year, the vodka soda lineup surged 50% to above 600,000 cases, according to Impact Databank, up from 26,000 cases in 2021.—Shane English
