Meet Isabella Hoag, co-founder of Osia, a modern mood beverage company built on fruit juice, herbs, and the idea that drinking should be intentional.
She didn’t start with a co-packer or a pitch deck. She started with $50, a friend’s art show, and drinks priced at $13-15 a glass. Within a year, Isabella had done 500+ events and put her product in thousands of hands. Then, she decided to build a brand.
No MBA. No beverage experience. Just the conviction that sober doesn’t have to be sidelined, and that daily ritual will outsell occasional indulgence. Osia is now in 100+ doors and just landed its first national retailer.
$50: Initial investment for the first event
500+ events: In one year before launching cans
100 doors → 1,500 projected: Retail growth in under two years
No contacts? Ask anyway. Isabella had no industry contacts and no idea how to manufacture a beverage. When she didn’t know, she Googled. When she couldn’t Google it, she asked strangers. “The worst someone’s gonna say is no, so you might as well just put yourself out there.”
Get proof before production. Isabella did 500+ events before a single can was produced, from intimate gatherings to 10,000-person crowds. Events are the cheapest R&D you’ll ever do. They gave her live validation and cash flow to fund her first production run.
Mistakes are fine. Surprises aren’t. Osia’s first production run over-extracted its sage. The batch shipped. They had to explain, reformulate, and then re-explain again. “We had to win over those customers again, whether it was our B2B or D2C customers.” Early customers forgive mistakes. They don’t forgive being kept in the dark.
Your pitch changes depending on the room. Same product, different language, every account. Liquor stores care about occasion. Wellness shops care about ingredients. Bars care about margin. Isabella pitched to all and adjusted in real time.
Don’t hire to grow a team. Hire to close gaps. Years of doing everything themselves taught the founders exactly where they needed help. So when it was time to hire, they knew what roles to fill. “If we didn’t bootstrap, maybe I would have hired a different person,” says Isabella.
Market insight → What began as a nighttime substitute is becoming an anytime drink. NA isn’t just cutting into alcohol; it’s creating entirely new drinking occasions. More frequency. More repeat.
From mood to market
Read the room
Same product, different doors. Before you walk in, answer three questions: What problem does this buyer actually have? What language do they respond to? What’s the one thing they need to remember?
Liquor Store / Specialty Retail
- Problem: Their NA shelf is lacking or underperforming.
- Language: Occasion, customers cutting back.
- The 1 Thing: This is what todays customers are reaching for and you don’t have it yet.
Wellness / Natural Grocery
- Problem: Functional fatigue. Too many brands. Too many additives.
- Language: Clean label, sourcing, clear benefit.
- The 1 Thing: Real inputs. No fillers. It does what it says.
Restaurant / Bar
- Problem: NA options are forgettable and hard to sell.
- Language: Margin, menu story, ease of explanation.
- The 1 Thing: It’s easy to describe, margins cleanly, and gives the table something worth ordering.
National Retail
- Problem: Shelf space is scarce, velocity decides survival.
- Language: Reorder rate, customer profile, proof of demand.
- The 1 Thing: It moves. It reorders. It earns its space.