How Drink Hippie kept up with runaway demand without selling out (or selling itself short)

Meet the brand

Some brands are born in a lab. Drink Hippie was born out of a 12-year friendship and a mutual love of dogs and desire for truly clean living. Over the years, four friends turned that bond into a business: Sasha Pieterse, an actress with a knack for building an audience; Taylor Sewell, a food scientist who could turn a big idea into a better-for-you formula; Alex, Taylor’s husband, who brought the tech and product-design chops; and Sai Svoboda, who left a career behind to become the brand’s first full-time operator and co-CEO alongside Sasha.

Their first act was Hippie Water, a THC-infused beverage that found real traction before shifting regulations forced the team to wind it down. For a lot of founders, that’s where the story ends. For the Hippie team, it was a pivot point. They took everything they’d learned about formulation, community, and clean ingredients and poured it into a new flagship product. Enter Hippie Energy: a better-for-you energy drink for people who want a lift without the junk. Today, co-CEOs Sai and Sasha run the company out of Los Angeles, and Drink Hippie has become one of the fastest-moving clean-energy brands in the country.

The challenge: The demand conundrum

Hypergrowth brings with it some good problems and some hard ones. Spoiler alert: they’re the same problem. It all comes down to demand.

Hippie Energy officially launched in April 2026 and took off, landing in roughly 400 independent retailers and earning that 83% reorder rate. But in CPG, demand shows up long before the cash does. As Drink Hippie grew from one stage to the next, accounts receivable gaps started to appear. Cash was tied up waiting on retailers to pay, even as demand outran what the team could produce. On top of that came a Costco Roadshow—the kind of opportunity that can define a brand, but one that carries big upfront costs an early-stage company has to cover long before they see any revenue.

Sai knew the math. The team had opened a pre-seed raise, but fundraising in beverage is slow. Plus, the big launches weren’t going to wait. As Sai puts it:

“

Equity isn’t really the right tool for funding inventory anyway.

— Sai Svoboda, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Drink Hippie

What Drink Hippie needed was capital that matched the rhythm of retail, so they could afford to say yes to all of the incredible opportunities at their feet.

The turning point

Sai did what most founders do: she went looking for capital—and proceeded to hit walls. Traditional merchant cash advances (MCAs) were a struggle to qualify for, and the terms were unachievable. The whole experience felt like a transactional loan from a lender that didn’t care much about what she was building.

Traditional PO and AR financing looked promising on paper, but for a small brand selling through hundreds of independent locations, bringing a third party into the process created more disruption than help. There were some alternative lenders she considered, but she struggled to get a human on the phone.

What Sai needed was a funder who understood the nuances of CPG: the timing of POs and receivables from major retailers, the reorder cycles, the difference between a beverage brand and a software company. She also wanted to build a long-term relationship with the team, not just talk to an AI bot any time she needed assistance.

That’s when she found Kickfurther. And it’s why Drink Hippie keeps coming back.

How Kickfurther helped

Since Kickfurther can fund up to 100% of a brand’s inventory costs and payments are tied to how the product actually sells, Drink Hippie could order the inventory they needed to meet their rising demand without draining the bank account or waiting on a raise to close.

But what turned Kickfurther from a vendor into a partner was the people. Their AE stuck with Sai long before Drink Hippie even qualified for its first Co-Op. The team never once stopped giving her the time of day, helping them prepare until they were ready to launch.

“

My AE asked the right questions and learned about our unique situation, checking in without ever making it feel salesy.

— Sai Svoboda, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Drink Hippie

And when Drink Hippie ran into a misunderstanding around a payment-terms situation with a major national retailer, Kickfurther worked through it with them rather than leaving them to figure it out alone. The flexibility is one of the big things that keeps them coming back—that, and knowing there’s a community of Co-Op Buyers who actively chose to be part of their journey.

The results: Full shelves & happy customers

The results speak for themselves:

• $1.5M in revenue for Hippie Water in 14 months, built on early Kickfurther Co-Op support
• $300K in organic revenue for Hippie Energy since its April launch
• ~400 independent retailers nationwide, with national distribution via KeHe launching in September
• An 83% reorder rate the team could actually keep up with
• 3 Co-Ops funded, totalling $212,198 through Kickfurther

“

With a traditional MCA, it felt like a loan from someone who isn’t fully invested in what you were building. Kickfurther is the opposite. They understand CPG, including the POs, the receivables, the timing. And my Kickfurther funding experts made us feel like they were on our team long before we qualified for our first Co-Op. That and the flexibility is why we keep coming back.

— Sai Svoboda, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Drink Hippie

Where Kickfurther fits in Drink Hippie’s capital stack

There are many types of funding, and each source fits a different area of the business. As Sai learned, raising equity isn’t the right way to fund inventory; a seed round is better spent on team, marketing, and long-term bets. Drink Hippie is a great example of a healthy, layered capital stack, with each tool doing what it does best:

• Kickfurther — funds inventory production on the retail timeline, so the brand can say yes to big orders
• Invoice financing — turns unpaid invoices into working capital while receivables catch up
• Pre-seed raise — fuels long-term bets like team and marketing
• Longer-term facilities — for operational runway

What’s next: Maintain momentum and expand

Drink Hippie is just getting started. With national distribution through a global retailer rolling out in September, a possible Costco Roadshow on the horizon, and expansion into new channels, the team is scaling fast.

And with Kickfurther ready to fund inventory every step of the way, Sai and Sasha can keep their focus where it belongs: building a brand people come back to.