Surfside has taken the region by storm since its 2022 launch, and the Philly-based canned cocktail brand hopes to continue making waves in the beverage industry following the line's cross-country expansion.
The colorfully striped can with cursive font might be recognizable from Jersey Shore bars, Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park or the Eagles championship parade on South Broad Street. But the company's reach is now far beyond the Philadelphia area. Just two years after its debut, Surfside was named the No. 1 fastest-growing brand across all alcohol beverages by Nielsen ratings, selling an average of nine cases per minute. It's also expanded distribution to all 50 states after being available in just seven at the beginning of 2023.
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"We're obviously thrilled, but never in our wildest dreams did we think it would go this crazy, this fast," Surfside CEO and co-founder Clement Pappas said about the meteoric rise of the non-carbonated, 100 calorie, 4.5% ABV iced tea and lemonade canned cocktails. "… We didn't realize that people wanted something like this, this bad."
Pappas has been involved in the beverage industry a long time. He and his brother, Zach, grew up in Vineland and worked for their family business, a drink manufacturing company named after their grandfather that was called Clement Pappas & Co. The business later sold (it's now Lassonde Pappas), and Clement recalls thinking, "OK, what am I going to do next?" In 2016, he and Zach teamed up with another pair of local brothers, Matt and Bryan Quigley from Montgomery County, to launch the vodka brand Stateside.
Five years later, they added canned vodka sodas — partly to put their own spin on the success of other canned alcoholic drinks that were popping up on the market.
"One of the things that's important to understand here is that (Surfside) started out as a vodka brand, and I think they very quickly understood that they potentially need to pivot, or to have a unique value proposition," said Ernest Baskin, a Saint Joseph's University professor and expert in consumer behavior and marketing research. "I think that shows that they're very much paying attention to what the consumer is looking for in the market."
While hard seltzers like White Claw found success as a flavored malt beverage, the Stateside crew followed in the vein of vodka-based canned cocktails like High Noon.
"We were vodka guys," Clement Pappas said. "We started as a vodka company, and we were never going to come out with a Stateside product and make it malt because that's just not what we're about."
Once the Stateside canned vodka sodas were out in the world, the idea for a non-fizzy ready-to-drink beverage soon came about.
'Big iced tea town'
Pappas credits Matt Quigley for coming up with the idea for Surfside. As Pappas puts it, Philadelphia is a "big iced tea town," and they hoped to create a "good hard iced tea that we would actually drink ourselves and enjoy."
In other words, they wanted to make something that they didn't yet see on the market: a canned iced tea cocktail made, not with malt, but with vodka. This distinction could be one reason for the drink's success.
"The alcohol business is super competitive," Baskin said. "And it's not just competitive in terms of what you see on the shelf. You're also competing with people going into restaurants and going into bars and also ordering alcohol there. And this is in a world where a bunch of people are saying, 'Maybe I want to cut down on my alcohol consumption.' So this makes this business incredibly competitive. … You get around that by standing out and giving people something that's different from the norm."
The idea for the beverage line's beachy aesthetic was also Quigley's brainchild.
"(Matt) was like, 'Everybody in our company is wearing this style of retro surf clothing," Pappas recalls. "We should put that on a can. It's really cool, and it goes with the tea."
To complement the surfer-chic vibes, the taste, calorie content and sugar levels were also imperative to getting Surfside right.
"We had to be 100 calories, two grams of sugar and it had to taste awesome," Pappas said. "Otherwise, it might only be 100 calories, but no one was gonna drink it if it didn't taste great. So we spent over a year perfecting the formula and getting everything how we wanted it. Then when we rolled it out, it just went bonkers."
Two pairs of brothers from the Philly region — Matt and Bryan Quigley, and Clement and Zach Pappas — teamed up to launch Surfside in 2022, and the canned cocktail line has since skyrocketed in popularity.
How it took off
In the face of the brand's quick success, Pappas gives props to "two places where people really discovered the brand in a big way" — Citizens Bank Park and the Jersey Shore.
Phillies fans love to slurp their Surfsides, and it became the No. 1 selling spirits brand at Citizens Bank Park in 2023, according Aramark data.
"They're really good with working with local partners," Pappas said of the Phillies. "If you go to the game, there's (Manco & Manco) pizza and Chickie's & Pete's. … They're trying to bring all the local brands that people love into the stadium experience."
As for the Jersey Shore, Pappas said Cape May and Atlantic counties in particular have embraced the beverage.
"That was a good market that we had already been pretty well established with our vodka," Pappas said. "So we were able to get a lot of distribution pretty quickly with the Surfside."
While some drinks benefit from viral social media moments — like "splitting the G" with Guinness or "no laws when you're drinking Claws" with White Claw — Pappas believes Surfside's product has been enough to boost the brand.
"Stuff like that kind of happens and it makes brands viral," Pappas said. "I don't think that's what's happening with Surfside. What's happening is it's just a newer kind of product that didn't exist before. And once people try it, they like it. So it's not necessarily like, 'Oh, we have to make this catchy TikTok video' or something. It's just more about getting it out there and in front of people."
The fact that there's been growth in the mixed cocktail industry, and that Surfside offers a range of flavors, are other factors that may be contributing to its popularity, Baskin said.
"I think people are moving away from just drinking a straight product," he said. "They like interesting flavors. They like interesting mixes. And part of this is a move toward alcohol consumption being more experiential."
Pappas said Surfside engages in "traditional" marketing tactics like airplane banners, billboards and advertising on sports talk radio stations like Philly's 94WIP.
Something else that has pushed the brand's success even farther is a Pennsylvania law passed in July that allows grocery and convenience stores to sell ready-to-drink cocktails. Spirits-based canned cocktails were previously prohibited from being sold there. Pappas said that since the law passed, Surfside sales are up over 100% in Pennsylvania, which was already one of their most successful states.
"It's big," Pappas said of the new law. "If you think about it, every week people go to the grocery store and buy groceries. Most people, if they have a car, every week they go to the gas station or the convenience store. The liquor store, you don't go to every week. … So we're now available to people where they shop every day. Availability is huge."
'(It's) about winning in those 50 states'
Surfside is now available in every state, but the company is still working to strengthen its presence. It's especially strong in the "core" Philly region and up and down the East Coast, all the way to Florida, but Pappas said the brand's reach is lighter in some areas, such as in the Midwest and the West.
Surfside is rolling out new green tea variety packs, with flavors like mango and peach.
"We got to 50 states, so that was huge," he said. "Now it's really about winning in those 50 states. … I think the single biggest goal that we have in front of us is just to continue to win throughout the rest of this country. If we get it half as good as we get Philadelphia, we'll have a really major national brand on our hands."
Surfside hopes to bolster its nationwide presence by "rerunning the playbook" that worked in its most popular areas. For example, Pappas said the company hopes to replicate the success with Phillies fans by partnering with more MLB teams. Last season, they teamed up with the Atlanta Braves, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Guardians, Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies.
The company is also continuing to expand outside the United States. Surfside is already available in the Bahamas, Grand Cayman and St. Thomas, with distribution coming soon in Antigua and Honduras, and Pappas said it has its sights set on Canada and the Caribbean.
Along with geographic growth, Surfside is also adding to its drink line. New offerings are rolling out early this year, including the green tea variety pack — which has original green tea, half and half (half lemonade, half green tea), mango green tea, and peach green tea — and tall, 700 mL cans nicknamed "The Longboard."