Courtney O’Brien has killed more beverage projects than most founders will ever launch. As the former head of premium new brand innovation at E. & J. Gallo—following brand leadership roles at Coca-Cola and Danone—she watched products with validated consumer demand, strong liquid, and beautiful packaging die anyway, because the commercial conditions around them weren’t right.
Now, as founder of The Outlier Initiative, she pressure-tests emerging beverage brands against those conditions before they spend. We last spoke with Courtney about brand longevity; this conversation goes one layer down, to the market-readiness questions that decide whether longevity is even on the table.
Dry Atlas: You’ve said you’ve killed a lot of projects because the market wasn’t ready. Walk us through one.
Courtney O’Brien: When I was leading premium new brand innovation at Gallo, we developed a brand called Thrive. On paper, it had almost everything you would want. We were going into fast-growing super-premium Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio. We had identified a very specific consumer looking for lighter, crisp, refreshing wines. The liquid tasted great. The package was beautiful. More than 80% of consumers in research expressed purchase interest, including 87% of Millennials. The wines were also extremely low in sugar, which gave us a product difference that felt incredibly relevant to where the consumer was headed.
The problem was that in 2017 and 2018, we couldn’t communicate that low-sugar advantage the way we wanted to. We were constantly walking the line with what legal would allow us to say. That changed the commercial equation. We had built meaningful differentiation into the product, but we couldn’t get that differentiation onto the shelf. To a shopper, we risked looking like another attractive $13.99 California white wine in a very crowded set.
Eventually we discontinued it. The liquid wasn’t the issue. The market for another seemingly undifferentiated white wine simply wasn’t going to be big enough if we couldn’t clearly tell people what made this one different. Sometimes the consumer is ready for the benefit before the commercial environment is ready to let you build a brand around it.
DA: When you’re evaluating market readiness, which conditions do you check before liquid quality enters the conversation?
CO: I wouldn’t literally put liquid last. It matters enormously. Great liquid just can’t rescue weak commercial conditions. I start with consumer behavior. What are people already doing that gives this product somewhere to go? What occasion are we entering? What are they drinking today? Where will our volume actually come from?
Then I look at the path to the consumer. Where will they expect to find this thing? Does the retailer know where it belongs? Does the distributor have strength in those accounts and sets? Can we actually get cold, visible, appropriately merchandised distribution? Then the economics. What velocity does the product need to stay on shelf? How much trial do we have to buy? How much education is required before someone even understands what we’re selling? And can we communicate the reason to choose us simply and legally?
Big TAM numbers don’t answer any of those questions. You can find a huge category and still have a proposition that requires the consumer to change four behaviors before the business works.
DA: You’ve cited High Noon struggling to get into the right set despite a killer liquid. Explain what “the right set” means for a non-alc product, and why access to it is so hard to secure.
CO: “The right set” really means: are you where the consumer is actually looking for products like you? High Noon is such a useful example because the product behaves much more like beer than traditional spirits. Cold can. Portable. Sessionable. Convenience-store and on-the-go occasions. Gallo’s traditional wine and spirits distribution system didn’t always have the same power in those beer-driven cold boxes and convenience accounts. Beer distributors could walk into those accounts with enormous influence over the doors where consumers expected a product like High Noon to be. The route to market had to line up with the way people actually bought and consumed the product.
Non-alc has the same issue now because I don’t think “non-alc” is one category anymore. Increasingly, it’s a feature of a product. You still have to build a brand and figure out where that particular proposition belongs. If I’m building a functional social beverage, maybe my consumer is shopping at Sprouts and discovering it alongside other functional drinks. If I’m making a non-alc whiskey, maybe Total Wine and a spirits-adjacent set makes far more intuitive sense. Another product may belong next to sparkling water or adult refreshment. Start with the consumer proposition and work backward. Being in 2,000 doors doesn’t help much if you’re sitting somewhere the shopper never thinks to look for you.
DA: You’ve expressed some skepticism around spritzes in the U.S. Make your case against spritzes in this market, alcoholic or non-alc. What exists in the European occasion that doesn’t transfer, and what would a spritz brand have to prove for you to change your read?
CO: I don’t really have a case against bubbles. Americans clearly like bubbles. Lightness is working. Beer works. Carbonated RTDs work. There are plenty of signals pointing toward lighter, refreshing formats. I’m more skeptical of assuming that “spritz” itself is in demand here.
In Europe, spritz lives inside an established behavior: aperitivo, a particular time of day, food, outdoor socializing, hospitality, and lower-ABV drinking. Consumers already understand what role it plays. So when I see another canned spritz launch in the U.S., my question is pretty basic: what in existing consumer behavior makes you think your consumer needs another canned spritz?
There may be a very good answer. Maybe you’re plugging directly into an existing pool, patio, brunch or early-evening occasion and giving people a lighter, bubbly alternative they’re already looking for. What I wouldn’t assume is that the European ritual comes free with the word “spritz.” I’d change my read if I saw repeat beyond novelty, strong velocity outside a handful of trend-forward markets, a clear occasion consumers can articulate themselves, and evidence that the word “spritz” actually helps people understand and choose the product.
DA: Occasions do get built; many argue hard seltzer created one that didn’t exist a decade ago. How would you distinguish an occasion that can be manufactured from one that can’t?
CO: The easiest “new” occasions are usually recombinations of behaviors that already exist. Hard seltzer gave consumers something new to drink, but almost everything around it was familiar: cold can, beer occasions, portability, refreshment, sessionability, familiar fruit flavors. Consumers didn’t have to learn a new ritual, a new time of day, and a new way to shop in order to adopt it. Every additional behavior you ask someone to change makes the occasion harder and more expensive to build.
I’ve also seen what happens when the underlying occasion disappears. We launched a super-premium rosé at Gallo called Sunseeker. It had tons of consumer validation behind it: a very dry, juicy red-fruit style rather than Provence-inspired, a killer crystal bottle, the right price, the right cultural moment. Then COVID hit.
Rosé is inherently social. Patios, brunch, parties, gathering with friends. People stopped being social at exactly the moment we needed to establish a new brand. You can only be new once. Sunseeker basically died on the vine. That’s why I take occasion so seriously. It isn’t just something you put on a positioning brief. It has to exist in people’s lives.
DA: A founder is six months from launching into the current non-alc wave. Tell them the one commercial-conditions question to answer honestly before they spend another dollar.
CO: Where is my volume going to come from? What are those consumers buying and drinking today, and why will they switch to me? I would want a very concrete answer. If you’re telling me there are millions of sober-curious consumers, that’s interesting, but it still doesn’t tell me where your business comes from. Are you replacing someone’s evening wine? Their afternoon sparkling water? Their cocktail at a restaurant? Their energy drink? Their Friday-night beer? What are they doing today, and what is sufficiently better or more relevant about your proposition that they will change?
If your answer requires the consumer to learn a new product, a new occasion, a new ritual, and a new place to shop for it, you may have an interesting idea. You also have a very expensive behavior-change problem.
For more from Courtney, see her Beverage Growth Blueprint, a practical framework for pressure-testing the meaning, repeat engine, and sequencing behind a beverage brand’s growth.
