New Commercial Leadership
Crooked Pop, the USDA-certified organic, zero-sugar, gluten-free hard soda brand, has appointed Lee Schill as Chief Commercial Officer, tasking him with building the distributor partnerships and channel strategy required to take the brand from regional launch to national footprint. The hire signals that the company, founded by Bai creator Ben Weiss, is shifting from product development into aggressive commercial execution.
Schill arrives from Zevia, where he served as Senior Director of Distribution, bringing firsthand knowledge of scaling a zero-sugar soda through the three-tier system. Before Zevia, he spent 20 years at Diageo in sales and trade leadership roles spanning off-premise retail, convenience, club, and on-premise channels — a breadth that maps directly onto the multi-channel ambitions Crooked Pop is pursuing.
Distribution Moves
Crooked Pop rolled out across East Coast markets in April, securing shelf placement at Total Wine and Harris Teeter at launch. The brand has since added Reyes Beverage Group, the Illinois-based mega wholesaler, to its distributor network — a partnership that materially expands its reach into Midwest and national chain accounts. Simultaneously, Crooked Pop negotiated first-mover on-premise positioning as the Official Hard Soda of the Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Braves, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, anchoring high-visibility trial occasions that can drive off-premise pull-through.
"Lee has spent his career building the distributor relationships and commercial infrastructure that determine whether a beverage succeeds," said CEO Ben Weiss. "His experience across both alcohol and zero-sugar soda makes him uniquely qualified to help us build Crooked Pop into a national brand."
Schill's mandate covers sales, wholesaler partnerships, revenue growth, and channel strategy — the full commercial stack needed to convert distributor agreements into consistent depletions at retail. His dual fluency in alcohol distribution mechanics and the better-for-you soda segment is notable: hard soda sits at the intersection of both worlds, competing for planogram space against RTD seltzers and flavored malt beverages while drawing on occasion-based consumption patterns more familiar to the soda aisle.
Category & Market Context
The zero-sugar hard soda segment is still early-stage, but the RTD category broadly continues to attract supplier investment and wholesaler attention as consumers trade into sessionable, low-ABV formats with cleaner ingredient profiles. Crooked Pop's proprietary OSAVA fermentation process — which produces a neutral alcohol base from ancient grains — is positioned as a product differentiator rather than a reformulation of existing malt- or spirit-based RTD constructs.
Weiss, who built Bai into a nationally scaled better-for-you beverage before its $1.7 billion acquisition by Dr Pepper Snapple Group, is applying a similar playbook here: establish credible ingredient differentiation, then build commercial velocity through wholesaler density and strategic on-premise visibility. Schill's appointment is the clearest signal yet that Crooked Pop believes the liquid story is ready — and that execution at the distributor and retail level is now the determining variable.
For distributors evaluating the hard soda segment, Crooked Pop's Reyes partnership and stadium deals offer early depletion data points worth watching as the brand eyes channel expansion into convenience and additional on-premise accounts. Coverage of the broader RTD and hard soda distribution landscape and emerging beverage brand route-to-market strategies continues across Beverage B2B.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
