RTD Workshop

As the spirits industry has evolved to reflect rapidly changing consumer preferences, the most popular alcohol products today have a completely new profile compared to years past. From hard seltzers to canned mixed drinks, the Ready-to-Drink (RTD) market has no doubt cemented its presence in the spirits industry.

Whether you're an aspiring brand owner or an established facility expanding into new product offerings, our experts developed the Alcoholic RTD Workshop to equip your team with the correct tools for success!

Attendees will begin by building a strong foundation through exploration of the current beverage landscape. As we expand from macro trends to actionable consumer insights, your team will identify unmet needs and clear market opportunities. From there, you and fellow attendees will collaborate to develop compelling product concepts and define their target consumer, positioning, and value proposition.

Our experts will take a deep dive into product formulation and technical feasibility, ensuring that flavor, alcohol base, and performance are optimized for both consumer appeal and scalable production.

This technical knowledge also encompasses regulatory compliance and commercial viability. Attendees will learn about cost structures, margin expectations, and key financial levers, followed by regulatory considerations and risk management.

Finally, the workshop will teach you how to ensure your product stands out on the shelf by examining different packaging, branding, and communication tools. Our collaborative exercises will help you build route-to-market strategies and a detailed launch roadmap, culminating in a capstone exercise that simulates a real-world product launch from end to end.

By the end of this two-day experience, you will leave our classroom with a refined product concept, high-level technical knowledge, a strong strategic framework, and an actionable launch plan. From there, your journey to market begins!

Continue reading below for the daily itinerary and coursework.

• Welcome & Course Overview: Align on goals and expectations; market context; launch framework; defining success
• Category Landscape & Trends: Understand the market and whitespace; exploring hard seltzers, RTDs, FMBs, and hybrids; growth drivers and saturation points
• Consumer Insight & Opportunity Mapping: Translate insights into opportunities; consumer needs and occasions; competitive benchmarking
• Product Concept Development: Building strong, executable concepts; positioning and target consumer; value proposition; draft product concept
• Liquid Design & Alcohol Base Selection: Flavor, base, and technical feasibility; FMB vs wine vs spirits-based; carbonation, sweetness, and mouthfeel
• R&D & Technical Feasibility: Designing for stability and scale; shelf-life, processing, quality, and co-packer considerations

• Day 1 Recap & Day 2 Objectives: Re-align and set priorities, key takeaways, and open questions.
• Costing, COGS & Margin Strategy: Understand cost drivers and profit levers; benchmark COGS; assess packaging trade-offs; set margin targets and build a COGS model.
• Regulatory, Compliance & Risk Management: Avoiding delays and costly mistakes; TTB approvals; labeling, state rules, and quality systems.
• Packaging, Branding & Shelf Communication: Ensure shelf impact and compliance; can formats, finishes, sustainability, claims, and design.
• Route-to-Market & Commercial Strategy: Align launch with channel realities; distributor strategy; on- and off-premise plans; pricing and promotion.
• Launch Planning & Execution Roadmap: Turning strategy into execution; stage-gate timelines, KPIs, owners; 90-day launch plan exercise.
• Capstone Workshop: Integrate learning across functions; end-to-end launch simulation.
• Wrap-Up & Next Steps: Reinforce outcomes and actions; risks and mitigations; post-course action planning.