Like many during the pandemic, childhood friends Jeremy Kim, John Dalsey and Brando decided to turn their COVID layoffs into an opportunity to pursue their passion. For the friends, that passion was a new take on hard seltzer by incorporating Asian-inspired flavors, with minimal ingredients and zero grams of sugar. As a small alcoholic beverage startup without the backing and name recognition of behemoth brands in the industry, Nectar had to prove to distributors that stocking their shelves with Nectar’s divinely different beverage would be financially beneficial to them. In October of 2020, the Nectar team visited over 200 stores in Los Angeles and were rejected by all.

To prove the distributors wrong, Nectar posted a TikTok video with their phone number asking for anyone who wanted to try their drink to text them and ask them to come to their city. The video went viral (300,000 views in 3 days) and Nectar received hundreds of messages. Nectar used this feedback to convince select stores in L.A. to carry their drink and texted their fans about the impromptu drop. Within an hour, they sold 300 boxes! They used the overwhelming positive response to do the same in a liquor store one town over, where they sold over 300 boxes in 30 minutes.

Today, Nectar is one of the top selling hard seltzers with a retail footprint of 1,600 stores including Target, Whole Foods, Total Wine, BevMo, Safeway, QFC (Kroger), Wal-Mart, 7-11 and H-Mart with a confirmed 764 new locations by Spring 2023.