Creating a drink designed to keep the party going all night would seem a vocation straight out of Animal House. So it’s no surprise that Four Loko began with an idea first hatched by these three former college buds when they were still in their 20s. Long before they imagined launching their own brand, Wright, Freeman and Hunter had in fact been serious consumers of caffeine mixed with alcohol—at frat parties and club nights at Ohio State University. “We were our own target market,” Freeman says.
In the late ‘90s, when they were still in college, Red Bull and vodka was the hot new concoction on campus. But before the distinctive silver-and-blue can’s ubiquity, Hunter and Wright, who lived together at the Kappa Sigma house, tried to sell an original Thai version of bottled caffeine to other guys in the house. “We told everyone we were importing the stuff from abroad,” recalls Wright, still amused by the deceit. “But we were buying it at the Asian grocery store down the street and selling it to our fraternity brothers at five dollars a pop.”
In 2005, four years out of school, the ruse came full circle when Hunter approached his old buddy Freeman with an entrepreneurial scheme. “What do you think?” he asked one evening, as they sat around downing cans of Sparks—a blend of brew and caffeine. Launched by a tiny San Francisco brewery in 2002, Sparks was America's first alcoholic energy drink. Despite minimal promotion, the concoction proved to be a big hit on college campuses across the country. The beer was quickly acquired by Miller Brewing Company a few years later. By then, Hunter, a successful club promoter at O.S.U., had landed a plum job in the booze business—working for a Chicago startup that produced Blavod and Players Club vodkas. He came across Sparks for the first time during a California sales blitz. If people enjoy Red Bull and vodka, he wondered, why wouldn't they enjoy this, too? “This is a great idea,” he said, sounding like a Mark Zuckerberg mixologist. “This is the evolution—but we can do it better.”
That simple realization encouraged him to build a legitimate business, recruiting his friends for their particular skills. When Hunter called, Freeman, a star hockey player at O.S.U., was working in the Chicago office of the international banking firm A.B.N. Amro. Wright, who’d been the vice president of their frat, had settled in Scottsdale, where he was selling industrial gases to aerospace and food-and-beverage clients. But eager for independence, they each agreed to take a role in the business, devoting evenings, weekends, and vacations to the new venture. Freeman would handle finance, Wright manufacturing, Hunter marketing and sales. But what, exactly, did they intend to produce?
Like Sparks, the drink would capitalize on the nationwide mania for energy drinks, driven by Red Bull and a flurry of new competitors—a business then worth an estimated $2.5 billion. They agreed on a name—the new drink would be simply called Four—and on a concept, adding a fourth ingredient to the Sparks recipe. Along with taurine, guarana and caffeine, their new drink would also contain wormwood—the supposed psychoactive ingredient in absinthe, which was just making a comeback on the American market. While these “energy beers,” were already coming under attack for targeting entry-level drinkers, Four's founders were undaunted. Where public health advocates saw trouble, Hunter, Freeman, and Wright saw a potential goldmine. “We couldn't go wrong with this thing,” Freeman recalls. “This was our billion-dollar idea.”
by Jay Cheshes, The Fix | Read more:
In the late ‘90s, when they were still in college, Red Bull and vodka was the hot new concoction on campus. But before the distinctive silver-and-blue can’s ubiquity, Hunter and Wright, who lived together at the Kappa Sigma house, tried to sell an original Thai version of bottled caffeine to other guys in the house. “We told everyone we were importing the stuff from abroad,” recalls Wright, still amused by the deceit. “But we were buying it at the Asian grocery store down the street and selling it to our fraternity brothers at five dollars a pop.”In 2005, four years out of school, the ruse came full circle when Hunter approached his old buddy Freeman with an entrepreneurial scheme. “What do you think?” he asked one evening, as they sat around downing cans of Sparks—a blend of brew and caffeine. Launched by a tiny San Francisco brewery in 2002, Sparks was America's first alcoholic energy drink. Despite minimal promotion, the concoction proved to be a big hit on college campuses across the country. The beer was quickly acquired by Miller Brewing Company a few years later. By then, Hunter, a successful club promoter at O.S.U., had landed a plum job in the booze business—working for a Chicago startup that produced Blavod and Players Club vodkas. He came across Sparks for the first time during a California sales blitz. If people enjoy Red Bull and vodka, he wondered, why wouldn't they enjoy this, too? “This is a great idea,” he said, sounding like a Mark Zuckerberg mixologist. “This is the evolution—but we can do it better.”
That simple realization encouraged him to build a legitimate business, recruiting his friends for their particular skills. When Hunter called, Freeman, a star hockey player at O.S.U., was working in the Chicago office of the international banking firm A.B.N. Amro. Wright, who’d been the vice president of their frat, had settled in Scottsdale, where he was selling industrial gases to aerospace and food-and-beverage clients. But eager for independence, they each agreed to take a role in the business, devoting evenings, weekends, and vacations to the new venture. Freeman would handle finance, Wright manufacturing, Hunter marketing and sales. But what, exactly, did they intend to produce?
Like Sparks, the drink would capitalize on the nationwide mania for energy drinks, driven by Red Bull and a flurry of new competitors—a business then worth an estimated $2.5 billion. They agreed on a name—the new drink would be simply called Four—and on a concept, adding a fourth ingredient to the Sparks recipe. Along with taurine, guarana and caffeine, their new drink would also contain wormwood—the supposed psychoactive ingredient in absinthe, which was just making a comeback on the American market. While these “energy beers,” were already coming under attack for targeting entry-level drinkers, Four's founders were undaunted. Where public health advocates saw trouble, Hunter, Freeman, and Wright saw a potential goldmine. “We couldn't go wrong with this thing,” Freeman recalls. “This was our billion-dollar idea.”
by Jay Cheshes, The Fix | Read more:
