How Super Coffee went from $0 to $400m valuation in 5 years

This episode is with Jimmy DeCicco – CEO and co-founder of Super Coffee, which launched in 2015 and is now in 40,000 stores across the US, the brand has become the fastest growing private company in food and beverage and is the 3rd most popular ready-to-drink coffee in America after Starbucks and Dunkin Doughnuts, and its revenue grew 106% to $55m in 2020, helping it reach a $400m valuation. In this episode we talk about how to launch and scale up a beverage brand.

LINKS

• Jimmy DeCicco on LinkedIn
• Super Coffee
• Super Coffee’s Instagram

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You’re listening to The Growth Manifesto Podcast, a Zoom video series brought to you by Webprofits – a digital growth consultancy that helps global and national businesses attract, acquire, and retain customers through digital marketing.

Hosted by Alex Cleanthous.

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SHOW NOTES

• 00:00:23 Jimmy DeCicco’s introduction to the Growth Manifesto Podcast
• 00:01:34 The origin of Super Coffee as a business
• 00:03:18 How the DeCicco brothers produced several hundred bottles of coffee a week from their dorm room
• 00:04:35 Jimmy talks about their hustle getting Super Coffee into Whole Foods
• 00:09:22 How did you scale production as you eventually got into more Whole Foods stores?
• 00:10:53 Jimmy explains how they promoted Super Coffee in their first eighteen months
• 00:11:45 Jimmy talks about Super Coffee’s ‘Shark Tank’ opportunity
• 00:15:31 Jimmy shares how his family’s athletic and competitive background worked to their business advantage
• 00:16:36 How did you scale the company after you got the exposure from ‘Shark Tank’?
• 00:18:34 What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from the fundraising process?
• 00:20:03 What did you do with your first big investment into the company?
• 00:21:12 What are some of the things you did to make sure that the investments you received performed?
• 00:23:31 At what point did you start expanding promotional tactics and revenue streams?
• 00:25:15 Jimmy discusses what works best for Super Coffee from a Facebook Ads perspective and how they evolved their messaging to their target audience
• 00:29:02 Jimmy talks about their experience using geo targeting Facebook ads for Super Coffee
• 00:30:24 How did you launch the tactic of getting celebrity influencers for Super Coffee?
• 00:33:25 How have celebrity influencers helped the growth of Super Coffee?
• 00:36:31 Would you have done anything differently in your strategy if you had to do it all over again?
• 00:37:50 Jimmy explains how he handles impostor syndrome
• 00:40:23 How did you handle the scale and speed of recruitment Super Coffee had to go through because of the growth and what did you learn from that?
• 00:43:07 What is the biggest piece of advice you can give to someone else who is also hustling to succeed?
• 00:45:59 What’s next for Super Coffee?
• 00:48:01 Will Super Coffee IPO?
• 00:48:57 How much is the ‘old way’ of doing business affecting decisions for Super Coffee’s future?
• 00:50:24 What is one thing you would like the listeners of this podcast to do?