Shop Talk: Social Media Creates Roadmap for Pop & Bottle Brand

As early-stage brands look for digital tools to build and grow their following, Pop & Bottle has seen social media point the way forward for its geographic expansion.

In an interview with PYMNTS for the Shop Talk series, Jash Mehta, co-founder of the latte brand, explained how these platforms laid the groundwork for the company as it established a presence new areas.

“In the early days of Pop & Bottle, it was, because we didn’t have national distribution, the only consumers who could find … encounter the brand at all were those who were in our local geographies, and social media allowed us to have a broader brand reach before we had the physical distribution,” Mehta said. “Building a voice online through social media allowed us to understand what consumers in other geographies were interested in or what they were resonating with before we even had a presence there.”

She underscored that these platforms served as both “a microphone” expanding the number of consumers who could discover the brand as well as a way to do market research.

In the years since, the brand’s social strategy has evolved. Where once it was mainly focused on Instagram, now the company also integrates other platforms, leaning into their strengths. For instance, TikTok enables the brand to “experiment with recipes and flavors” and “highlight what is possible with our products,” while Instagram is effective for direct communication with customers and for watching trends.

Certainly, many consumers look to social media platforms to inspire their purchasing choices. The 2023 PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media” reveals that 43% of consumers use social media to discover goods and services. For Gen Z, that figure increases to 68%, while for millennials, it rises to 64%.

In recent years, inflation has also played a role in shaping consumer behavior. Pop & Bottle faced the challenge of absorbing manufacturing cost increases while minimizing price hikes for customers.

Mehta pointed out that while they tried to keep prices stable, “we saw price inflation across the entire category.” This period highlighted the delicate balance brands had to strike between maintaining profitability and retaining customer loyalty.

For premium brands, these trends can pose significant challenges. PYMNTS Intelligence data revealed that finds that 56% of high-income, 66% of middle-income and 69% of low-income shoppers reported having cut down on nonessential spending in the last year due to retail product price increases.

Building the Brand

“We started in a very small, grassroots way in San Francisco,” Mehta recalled.

The brand’s inception was rooted in the founders’ frustration with the lack of clean, organic coffee products in grocery stores. This gap in the market led them to experiment with recipes in their kitchen and eventually scale up production in a small commercial kitchen in Berkeley.

The initial phase of Pop & Bottle’s journey involved significant multitasking. Mehta and her co-founder took on many roles, from production to sales, reaching out to independent retailers that tended to champion emerging brands. This hands-on approach helped them understand the market and refine their product based on direct feedback.

A major milestone came with their entry into Whole Foods in Northern California. This move required scaling up their supply chain and production capabilities, marking a critical turning point for the brand.

While retail has been the primary channel for Pop & Bottle, the brand has also ventured into direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales. Initially, their perishable product line made D2C logistics challenging. However, as they expanded their product range to include items that did not require refrigeration, they began to explore this channel more seriously.

Mehta highlighted the value of the D2C model: “Having a direct channel with the consumer is really valuable, where we get feedback, we’re able to test innovation.”

This direct line of communication allows brands to gather insights and adjust their strategies quickly, a crucial advantage in the fast-evolving consumer market.

Looking ahead, Mehta is excited about expanding into more conventional grocery channels and continuing to innovate within the coffee and tea categories. A key aspect of their future strategy involves supporting female-owned and operated farmers, aligning with their mission to build a more equitable supply chain — a priority for many shoppers, especially younger ones, per PYMNTS Intelligence research.

Now, the brand is ready to go mainstream.

“We’re at this interesting stage of the business now, where we started as a very natural-[retailer]-focused brand, because we’re a slightly higher price point, because of all the ingredients and clean label, the organic,” Mehta said. “… The next step was to go into more conventional grocery channels, and the last few years have been really focused on bridging to those channels and those consumers … which has been really exciting and one of the big growth drivers of our brand.”