PLYMOUTH, WI — Made in Wisconsin heads back to Sheboygan County to talk with the folks behind Carbliss, ready-to-drink cocktails. You may have seen them at your favorite bar or liquor store as they’ve grown in popularity in the last five years. Just recently, a major business magazine named them number one for growth in the country.
Adam and Amanda Kroener started the company in 2019 when they were looking for a cocktail to drink while on a low-carb diet. They, like a lot of Americans, turned to flavored hard seltzer.
"We really loved the nutrition panel; it fit in with the keto diet. But we were a little underwhelmed with the flavor, and it was heavily carbonated," said Amanda.
Adam started experimenting with making different drinks at home and perfected his own vodka lemonade. Once he thought he had it right, he did some informal market research.
Amanda says, "Adam was asking as many people as he could, 'What if something existed that had no carbs and tasted really good, would you buy that instead?' And everybody always said yes."
Watch: Meet the Wisconsin couple who started Carbliss:
The feedback was crucial.
"It was our closest friends that we knew would give us feedback. We didn't invite our family because they love us too much. We knew our friends would give us honest feedback," said Adam.
The Kroeners describe Carbliss as a good, flavorful drink with a great nutritional panel: zero carbs, zero sugar, and 100 calories. Once they settled on flavors, they found a partner that could produce the drink and scale up to meet demand. They launched in 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic. The timing brought with it production challenges. They had to launch later than expected, but it didn’t take long for the demand to start.
Carbliss is now in 13 states and just recently entered the Chicago market, their largest yet. Late in 2024, Inc. Magazine named the company the fastest-growing food and beverage company in the country on the magazine’s 5000 fastest-growing companies list. Growth of over 27,000% puts them at number seven in all business categories.
Carbliss is made at several production facilities across the state and country, including at Pilot Project Brewing in downtown Milwaukee.
Facility manager at Pilot Project, Joe Wais, said, “They’ve been a great partner for the past couple of years. They were one of the first co-manufacturing partners we had when we took over the space here.”
The Carbliss name is a play on words according to the Kroeners. They say it combines Adam’s love of cars with the notion that their cocktail is carb-less and blissful. While Carbliss is in 13-15% of the country right now, the goal is to expand. They expect to start 2025 with 80 full-time employees and hundreds more in sales across the country. Carbliss is based in Plymouth, Wisconsin.
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