Hi everyone. I hope you all enjoyed your lunch. We're excited to welcome Zevia back to our Global Staples Conference this year. Joining us on stage today is Amy Taylor, President and CEO, and Girish Satya, CFO. As many of you know, Zevia is an emerging non-alcoholic beverage company that went public about four years ago. Zevia's portfolio of products includes a variety of flavors that are zero sugar, zero calorie, and naturally sweetened with stevia across soda, energy drinks, and organic tea beverages. The company, I think, is in an exciting crossroads, just recently announcing national distribution with Walmart, expanding upon their initial DSD rollout, and so much more, which we're going to get into. Zevia also just reported very strong Q1 results that drove the stock much higher. We're very excited to hear more about the company's strategic initiative today.
Welcome both Amy and Girish. Thanks, everyone. Come on up on stage. Sit here.
[audio distortion]
Oh yeah. Thank you.
Hi everybody.
Thank you. It's fun. I think you guys have been here a few years.
Yeah.
Didn't you know?
Yeah.
Okay.
Good to be back. Thanks for having me.
I know. Thanks for joining us. I kind of wanted to kick things off with your results last week. Your Q1 top line growth was down, but better than street expectations. Your guidance, you maintained it for FY25, the top line guidance of just, I guess, a modest 2%-5% growth. First, could you highlight for us what drove the better top line results? Second, maybe highlight growth drivers for the rest of the year and how much contribution you expect from velocity, increased shelf space, and new distribution channels.
Sure. You mentioned in the intro Walmart piece, we have expanded from an initial 800 Walmart stores now to 4,300 nationwide. As a part of a new initiative they have taken to the market called Modern Soda. It is an exciting location in the store that features better-for-you beverages for brands and features 11 SKUs of Zevia, 10 flavors, and a variety pack, which is a top seller. That is obviously not only a driver of growth for us, both from a distribution perspective, but also in reaching new households and driving trial. Walmart decisions are also indicative of where the market is going. We have seen now Albertsons move to a new set. Albertsons has just recently reset to what they are calling next-gen beverage. That has happened just over the last few weeks.
That can inform to a degree the growth expectations that we see for the back half of the year. I think this is sort of a bellwether for where grocery is going, moving toward better-for-you soda, starting to define it as a set, driving distribution. We will expect to see other grocers follow. The other thing I think I ought to mention is just our pipeline. We have picked up our pace of innovation. I am sure we will talk about this later. When we think about reasons to believe in growth for the back half of the year, you are trying our new Strawberry Lemon Burst soda . We will talk a little bit about why it is so good. There is a number of other flavors that both are on-trend flavors or sort of core soda flavors that will continue to support our growth.
A mix of velocity and distribution and a bright outlook on the year ahead despite some of the macroeconomic headwinds.
Okay, that's helpful. When you take into account your Q2 guidance, when you talked about net sales growth, expectation of flat to up 5%, your full year guidance does imply a healthy acceleration in the back half to about 7%. I know you're investing in the brand, investing in velocity, but what else gives you the comfort that guidance this year is achievable, especially as I think about that second half of the equation?
Yeah, I mean, I think as Amy alluded to, a lot of 2025 is about expanded distribution. I think in addition to Walmart, we've obviously gained, as we shared, significant distribution expansion at Albertsons. That's a part of a wide array of our broader retail base where we've gained distribution, including new channels like Walgreens, which is also 8,000 doors hitting in Q2. Between all the new distribution and the initial reads on the new innovation, we're pretty optimistic that we're going to be able to achieve that back half growth. Obviously there's macro uncertainty, and so visibility is obviously low, as many people have commented on. I think generally speaking, between the distribution gains and the velocity improvements that we're beginning to see on shelf today, it gives us confidence that we'll be able to achieve the target.
To be clear, with the distribution, you're fully in some of these retail locations that you talked about gaining the distribution, or is that still on the come?
It's still a little bit on the come. Q2 you'll begin to see that, and you'll see that reflected in the results as you will in Q3. I think as we've alluded to, Q4 is where it gets a little wonky because of the pipeline fill for Walmart on a year-over-year basis. Really Q2 and Q3 are going to be where you see the impact of that, most notably.
Funny, for us, resets, spring resets, usually centered around February, March, with some version of pipeline fill in Q1, were significantly delayed this year. Some of them are happening now. That is in part, we believe anyway, because of the Walmart news. It really caused folks to pause, caused retailers to pause and consider how do they want to set these shelves around better for you. Some delayed decisions and some are actually mirroring some of what Walmart and Albertsons are doing. We will see that, as Girish alluded to, in the back half of Q2 and through the balance of the year.
You have pretty good visibility already, whether or not it's happened on the shelves. Do you have a sense of?
We have good visibility. We have photos of planograms, yes, but also photos in store. We also have early reads on the performance around innovation and some initial velocity results that are very encouraging.
In the context of that, it sounds like you feel pretty confident, which is good to hear. Where do you see the biggest risk then to your guidance, especially on the top line? Then we can talk about those.
Yeah, I mean, again, I think as we alluded to, it's really the macro. Given limited visibility, potential recessionary chances, that is one thing we can't control, but that obviously gives us a little bit of pause. Generally speaking, as Amy alluded to, the distribution gains are sort of locked in. The velocity is encouraging. I think generally it's really going to come down to macro. I think there's opportunity to potentially outperform to the extent that we can get back into Club in a more meaningful way. As we alluded to last year, we lost a lot of Club distribution. To the extent we can overperform, it's going to be driven by Club.
Speaking of that, maybe update us on that as it relates to that channel. Maybe remind everyone the loss last year and then kind of the opportunity to regain some events.
Yeah, so maybe just to ground us in this, we have mid-single-digit household penetration. We have a small, very passionate, loyal user base. Our greatest opportunity is to grow top line awareness, top funnel, drive trial, et cetera. Expansion of distribution is helpful to us in so much that it drives trial. In Club, potentially we got over our skis a couple of years back with full national Club distribution. Now Club, typically, especially for growth brands, operates on a rotational basis. They'll take you in, they test you in a number of regions, et cetera. We had some of that activity in 2023. We lost a good bit of that distribution in 2024. We are now kind of, as we speak, cycling that on the very tail end.
Any incremental rotational business that we get in Club this year would be upside. Club represents upside for us across the board, both the two major operators as well as some of the smaller ones. When we get a slot dedicated to Zevia in Club, we do well. We are now really focused on driving Club business in the geographical regions where we have the strongest Brand Development Index to sustain that distribution and drive proof points to then build scale from there across multiple regions.
You're regaining in Club, but not to the extent where you were.
That we had it in 2023.
Okay, that's the potential.
That is the potential.
That's your point. As you get on shelves and it's seen, then you can continue to gain.
The upside in distribution for us is filling out the rest of mass, right? So we're in Walmart, but we're not on their primary competitor. It's Club, and then it's the long-tail of convenience, which I'm sure we'll talk about, as well as food service. All of these are greenfields still for Zevia.
Great. Maybe before we get into some of that, one of the things that you and I have talked about, Amy, over the years is your strategic shift to prioritize profitable growth. Talk to us about what does the longer-term top line growth outlook look like for Zevia as you kind of contemplate making sure it's actually profitable growth?
Girish has been with us just over a year. What I will say is sort of the mark of his work, among many other things, is accelerating the path to profitability with tremendous clarity while investing in top line growth. We've been able to do a little bit of both. Maybe you could talk about that as well as the outlook on top line growth, Girish.
Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately there's a massive opportunity, right? We've seen the consumer preferences shift towards better-for-you soda. It's growing faster than CSD and arguably driving most of the growth in the category. Behind that, we found an opportunity to really sort of not only improve our unit economics, but really invest in the brand to drive what we believe will be long-term revenue growth. As we've been investing in promotion and as we've been investing in brand while dropping savings to the bottom line, I think we're really creating sort of a really long-term path to really step-changing growth. I think it's been a bit of a reset as we've lost some distribution, regained a lot of that distribution this year.
I think as we look forward, we're very bullish on the combination of brand, product innovation, and then continuing to drive distribution expansion to meaningfully step-change growth for the business in 2026 and beyond.
Yeah. And so that's the goal, to essentially become EBITDA profitable by the end of 2026.
Within 2026.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Switching to the current environment, legislation, secular trends, et cetera, can you touch on how Zevia is well positioned to capitalize on some of these trends? How's your business possibly advantaged relative to soda peers? Ultimately, how can these trends maybe help you drive faster growth over the medium to long term?
Yeah. You know, a lot of the trends right now and the chatter right now is very much sort of in our wheelhouse. We know and we have known for quite some time that people are moving away from sugar in droves, and that is here to stay, and that is global. I would say over the last five or six years, there's an increased interest, especially among younger consumers and the up-and-coming very desirable shopper, for a clean label product, right? Simpler ingredients, ingredients you can trust or pronounce. Zevia is indeed the soda on the market with the fewest ingredients. Our sweetener is a natural one, as are all of our flavor components. We have a very simple product that's clear in color and clear and transparent in its ingredients.
A lot of these macro trends are very much in our favor. In the last couple of years, there has been tremendous change within the category. The biggest change of which is there's been an onslaught in sort of self-identifying better-for-you sodas. Some of those are functional, and I'll mention higher priced, sold often in singles. I guess I'll highlight another advantage around our position in the marketplace at Zevia, not just as a better-for-you product, but as an affordable one. We are a couple cents per ounce price premium to carbonated soft drinks, to traditional soda, a category which has struggled over the last couple of decades to get to growth and is now growing on the back of zero and diet. For those who want a clean label product, they're willing to pay a couple cents per ounce more for Zevia.
Now that we're sitting in the better-for-you set, now that we're sitting in Modern Soda, we are by far the most affordable option. We're kind of a soda that tastes like a soda that's priced like a soda versus a higher-priced, single-serve, limited-use education, functional beverage, which is often our neighbor on the shelf. Going into an environment where people care more about health than ever before, going into an environment where ingredients are scrutinized, going into an environment where there are macroeconomic headwinds, the most affordably priced better-for-you soda is a pretty good place to be. We really think this is a critical moment for us right now at Zevia. Good news that we've got our stride in marketing, which I hope we'll talk about, that we have a strong innovation pipeline and that we're expanding distribution in this moment.
Okay. Quick follow-up on all of this is because that all makes sense to me, but I have to ask GLP-1s.
Yeah.
I know.
We can talk about it.
I know. If you have any data on this and how that might impact your business, either in a positive or negative.
Sure. Yeah, I mean, early to cite data as it relates to our brand. What I can tell you is, again, the macro move away from sugar is supportive for those that choose to go the medical route or not. As a category that represents sort of indulgence, we can allow that the person who's diet conscious, whether they're taking medication or not, and are seeking to avoid calories, don't have to burn those calories in soda. Unlike maybe snacks and some of the other challenged categories, as a zero-sugar soda, we actually can be a partner for somebody who's either medically directed in trying to manage weight or just motivated to reduce sugar consumption and save the calories for food and for nutritional additive, right? Generally speaking, taking in your calories through beverage is not nutritionally additive.
We have the health profile of sparkling water, but the taste profile of something more indulgent, we think it's really a strong kind of complement to the macro trend.
Okay. Can make sense. Innovation pipeline. On your Q1 call, you mentioned that it's stronger than ever. Can you touch on maybe the evolution of your pipeline and your approach towards innovation? Yes, the Strawberry Lemon Burst is very good. Any other updates on some of the innovation?
Bonnie will not lie about taste.
I won't.
This I promise you. I've known just about you for a while now. Yeah, I think what's changed about our innovation, one is the pace of innovation. So we're bringing more new products to market. There's a relationship between that and my next point, which is we've also had somewhat of a breakthrough in a more sugar-like taste experience. Historically, given our blend of stevia as a sweetener and natural sweeteners, we've done really well in creamy products like Creamy Root Beer and some of these other faster growers for us. The challenge has been translating that taste profile into lighter and fruitier and some of those big commercial subsets of soda flavors like orange and lemon lime, et cetera, and then the new on-trend flavors like Strawberry Lemon Burst.
Now with this breakthrough that we've had with a blend that really sort of shows up well in this fruitier and lighter taste profile, we've really unlocked a whole new avenue for innovation. Finally, just organizational maturity and getting some reps under our belt with innovation, we're able to bring them faster. You'll expect Strawberry Lemon Burst will be in 75-80% of grocery stores in the next several weeks. We've launched a variety pack. We're bringing a new fruity variety pack to Walmart. We have a number of additional flavors we haven't announced yet that will either be seasonal or early launches with strategic retail partners. Each of those then explores what could be bigger launches in 2026. A much more rapid innovation pace than we've had in the past.
Something you and I talked about, I think it was post your call, was that last week? Anyway, about the variety packs, maybe talk to us a little bit about how you're using them strategically also to try and whether it's drive trial to some extent, but also the ability for the consumer to try different flavors and then go back and.
Yeah, we're very much a variety brand. An initial insight that we were able to garner is when we were selling rainbow packs and variety packs in e-commerce, we saw through the data pattern that folks were coming back to grocery and buying a higher margin straight flavor pack as like a pantry builder, right? We said, okay, we're onto something here. We need to continue to drive trial across flavors and not make presumption that a cola drinker doesn't like grape or orange, right? We're doing exactly that. It's been really, I guess, validating that the number one selling SKU for Zevia in Walmart is indeed the variety pack.
It's early days in tracking that data back, but what will be interesting to see is can we draw when news is with the variety pack and then get that pantry-loaded behavior from largely a multi-pack brand out of our straight flavor. That's what we expect to then manifest in grocery. For the first time ever, we're rolling out variety packs in grocery as we speak in a 12-pack, which should keep that kind of virtuous cycle.
Is that for the summer when you just mentioned the grocery pack?
It is. It's rolling now. It'll be sort of fully to bright. The goal is anyway by Memorial Day, and the summer campaign will really support Strawberry Lemon Burst and the availability of variety pack.
Remind us the update or the margin impact from variety packs and the multi-packs. How does that change the margin profile?
Yeah, Girish has kept us honest on this. We have been able to achieve either automation or semi-automation in the variety packs to get the margin profile as close to the multi-packs as possible.
Okay. So that's key as well.
Yeah.
All right. Switching to DSD. I guess it's been about a year since the initial phase of your DSD rollout in the Pacific Northwest. Curious if you could just touch on some of the learnings from this and essentially what's been working well and maybe where there's opportunities to kind of tweak things or improve things.
Yeah, absolutely. Driving trial, driving singles distribution is critical for us. That is best enabled through DSD or direct store delivery partners that help us to deliver singles into grocery and help us to unlock new distribution and convenience. As you mentioned, we launched our first DSD partners in the Northwest. In the Northwest, it took a little while to get our footing, but now that our partners are really adept at selling our brand and increasingly competitive, we are seeing overperformance versus rest of market in grocery. We are rolling out some, let's call them test market regional convenience chains. Convenience has been slower going for better-for-you soda than imagined. For those of you who do not know, I am a 20-year veteran from Red Bull, so I know my convenience business.
I remember these early days of convincing a convenience operator that energy drinks had a place. The same thing is happening with convenience now for better-for-you. In our regional play in both the Pacific Northwest and now the Southwest, where we newly have DSD partners, we will be rolling out a number of regional convenience chains in order to test merchandising, pricing, and flavor combinations to see really what works. Hopefully for the category, we will start to unlock some learnings and seek to scale that regionally and then nationally.
Maybe frame for us the DSD opportunity because I know again, you and I talked about this most recently, roughly how big it is today as a percentage or a mix and where do you expect DSD to be?
It's less than 10% of our business today. Why? Because it's only in two regions and it only services a portion of the channels within those regions. I think we'll be really thoughtful about making sure those two regions are successful before taking steps beyond that geographically.
Ultimately, just based on your C store comments, you still see that as an important driver of distribution?
Yeah, I mean, there's 110,000 convenience stores in America. We, yeah, it's a challenging environment right now. We want to drive thoughtful, sustainable distribution. Let's see what we can learn and probably more to talk about it after the next quarter.
Okay. Let's see it next. Okay. Marketing. What's the right level of marketing spend as a percentage of sales for your business to ultimately drive accelerating profitable top-line growth from the brand, whether it's, yes, from the brand, new channels, new innovation, new distribution in the coming years?
Talk a little bit about spend mix?
I mean, I think ultimately, CSD is a heavily branded category. I think you could argue historically that business has been underinvested in from a brand perspective. I think we're very big believers that brand can be a moat. It is an important part of how we can really drive breakout growth here. We have doubled marketing spend or will double marketing spend in 2025 as a percentage of revenue versus where we were in 2023. I think you're beginning to see that both in terms of how we deploy national campaigns, whether that's on television or digital, or how we sort of support our teams on the ground at retail. I think generally speaking, low double digits, mid double digits is kind of the right level of spend.
We're going to continue to drive efficiencies out of the P&L to plow that back into brand and retail activation.
Is there going to be a balance between what you just touched on, the efficiencies and what you're hoping to achieve, the idea is that you're going to reinvest? Is it all of it or is there a balance between letting some flow to the bottom line?
Yeah, I think it's an ever-evolving equation. Generally speaking, given what we see right now as a huge opportunity to drive share, capitalize on the distribution gains we've already made, and capitalize on what we believe to be a very exciting innovation pipeline, we are going to bias a little bit of it towards investing to grow. That being said, and I'm sure we'll touch on this in a bit, I think the team has done an incredible job of pulling out costs out of the P&L to date.
We believe we've identified incremental dollars that can be material that we'll continue to sort of prioritize doing both, really driving superior unit economics and reinvesting that into the business so that we can sort of meet both our goals, right, which is really accelerating top-line growth while also hitting profitability in 2026, which is why we've given ourselves the leeway to invest this year because we know it's an important year for us to sort of demonstrate that.
That makes sense.
Probably what's the most important about marketing is, yes, we're going to get the spend levels right. I would say generally we've been underinvested and now we're kind of right-sizing that. What's most exciting for us is for us to be distinctive. What is the distinguishing reason to pick the Zevia brand? We haven't given that to the consumer before. I think we've really hit stride specifically in the last six months to continue to stand for being the anti-artificial brand. We are anti-artificial in ingredients. We are anti-artificial in claims. We are anti-artificial having some fun with AI. If some of you saw our holiday campaign in our most recent campaign featuring a crossover artist called Jelly Roll, who's a super authentic guy. We had some fun poking at artificiality in celebrity endorsements, ironically with a celebrity endorser.
He is a guy that he lost 100 pounds. He just encourages people to get up off the couch and go run a 5K. They do not even time the 5Ks that he runs. It is just about finishing them. What is the message? It is really a message around authenticity and inviting really everyone across America and North America for today and the globe eventually to be a little bit better version of yourself, right? To sort of withstand all the artificiality out of the world, be it AI or social media or influencers or all the messaging of marketing. We have a bit of a parody sense as a brand now and a twinkle in our eye poking fun at artificiality as sort of the radically real people's champion in being a simple and real soda.
This is what I'm really excited about, investing in brand and bringing this distinctiveness within the category.
That is great. Timing is good heading into the summer too.
For sure.
Great, right? You mentioned also on your Q1 call that there might be some room for future price increases. Remind us when you took your last price increase. I know we talked earlier about the affordability still, but given the environment, do you also see outside in the form of mix as you think about your package evolution?
Briefly, we took price last year and we've always been a bit of a fast follower. Given we're just a couple cents per ounce more than conventional soda, but we're still significantly value proposition within better-for-you. We do see room in price. We haven't announced any plans to take a price increase per se, but you're right. We have price pack architecture opportunities. Ultimately, we do have pricing opportunity and price has been a part of our growth in the last year or so as well.
Okay. All right. Let's pivot to gross margins. Q1, record 50.1%, right? I'll give you the 10 basis points. Driven largely by lower inventory write-downs and favorable unit costs. Now you expect margins in the high 40% for the rest of the year. I think it's the tariff. 200 basis points, I believe you called out the impact from tariffs.
That's right.
Remind us or update us on that situation, how you're impacted from tariffs, and then just mitigation efforts ultimately.
As you alluded to, we hit a record in Q1 at 50.1%. We do see about 200 basis points of risk with tariffs under the current rates, primarily from aluminum. That is the majority of the expense that will be hit with, i.e., the aluminum tariffs. We expect that to begin to hit the P&L in Q2, with a more fulsome impact in Q3 and beyond. We do have a number of opportunities to continue to tweak our COGS and tweak our mix in order to offset that. Various price could be an element, but I think ultimately we have opportunities with our product formulation, with how we manufacture. We have talked about some of the automation that we are running with regard to variety packs. There is a variety of levers at our disposal that we will have to accelerate in order to offset that.
You may see a little bit of choppiness in the next quarter, but that being said, I think we're pretty confident we'll still be able to deliver in the upper 40%. Long run, though, there's no reason that we can't be in the low 50%. It's just going to take us a little time. It's going to take us a little time.
Okay. That was going to be my follow-up question. What's the long term? Yeah, so low 50s is maybe an achievable goal, but it might take a little time. Okay. Let's talk about some of the productivity initiatives. You've made a lot of progress on some of these initiatives. I think you're recognizing it's at $15 million in annualized cost savings. It's a bit ahead of your initial expectations, if I'm not mistaken. Remind us where these cost savings are coming from and then update us on the savings you're generating from the supply chain transformation and how that's driving ultimately improved unit economics.
No, yeah, I appreciate that. I think we rolled out the productivity initiative exactly one year ago on the Q1 earnings call last year. At the time, I had set a target of $8 million-$12 million that would take six to eight quarters to realize in the P&L. Today we are at about $15 million. It is still going to take about eight quarters to fully realize all of the savings. We have begun to see that in the P&L today. I think I am really proud of the work the team has done and able to do that. At the time, we said it would be about a third, a third, a third, a third out of COGS, a third out of sort of selling and warehousing expenses, and a third out of G&A.
We have largely gotten most of the G&A and the remaining is really going to come out of COGS and selling and warehousing expenses. We have been able to continue to sort of step change and rationalize and make the supply chain network efficient while maintaining near record service levels. We are doing this in a very measured way. That being said, I think we are really encouraged by the cost that we have taken out to date. It will continue to flow through the P&L over the coming quarters. We think we have identified incremental opportunity that will allow us, as we alluded to earlier, not only to continue to reinvest, but also get to our profitability targets in 2026.
Sooner possibly?
Again, we want to be biased.
It makes us feel confident that we can get there, but we also want to give ourselves the flexibility to invest because, again, the real goal is to drive profitable long-term growth. We could get to profitability, right? If you looked at our Q1 results, if you simply stripped away the investment and marketing, we would be EBITDA positive. That is not the right long-term. That is not the right long-term view.
As we stick with some of what you just talked about, where are you at with these productivity initiatives, the realization? What inning are you in as I think about this journey?
Yeah. So I'm more of a basketball guy. I'll tell you we're at halftime. We're basically.
Oh, golf. We can switch to basketball.
Yeah. We're starting the third quarter right now. I think we're about 50% of the way through in terms of having realized it through the P&L. As I mentioned earlier, there's still more to come. That'll more fully sort of bleed into the P&L over the next four-ish quarters.
There is no doubt that this is a huge priority at your company and the focus. Okay, encouraging to hear that there are incremental opportunities that you've identified.
Yeah. I think it's really in the pursuit of investing for growth because that's really.
Priority.
That's really the priority.
Okay. I want to kind of go back to just the environment and the consumer, which has been challenging. I am curious from your perspective and your business, what are you seeing in terms of any changed behavior? What are consumers looking for? Like you mentioned, health and wellness trend. I do believe, I do not care if we call it GLP-1s, it is just an overarching acceleration of that trend. Also, just in this tough environment, what are you seeing that the consumers are doing and how they are shopping?
It's really early to say, to be honest, in terms of what are we literally seeing. I can tell you what we expect a little bit. We're a multi-brand, a multi-pack brand, and inherently a home stocking brand. Consumers that are more health conscious are willing to continue to invest in a way, don't consider these foods and beverages to be discretionary, but rather a part of their routines. We do expect some resilience just based upon the shopper that is attracted to Zevia. I think finally the pricing dynamic that we're mentioning. We're sitting in a new and exciting category and we're the most affordable option. It's early.
We're not seeing a lot of consumer behavior shifts yet, but we do expect some home stocking and we expect that if there is trade down within better for you, that we could or should benefit from that.
Okay. That's interesting. All right. And we've got just a few minutes left. I did want to ask you a couple of questions about your stock. I know we just talked, the stock has actually been doing quite well recently, but in general, what do you think investors are missing about this story?
Maybe I'll just talk a minute about our opportunity and then Girish could kind of bring us home on this. I would imagine that investors look at our stock or our valuation and think it's small. Here's how I think about this business and its both immediate and long-term opportunity. We're in single-digit household penetration of a category that is in over 90% of American households. People are increasingly drinking diet and zero sugar soda, but they actually don't want to be. There are massive business opportunities for us, for people that are moving away from conventional diet to a clean label product and for a generation and really two generations coming up who have always rejected soda.
Because of massive investments and new entrants in better-for-you soda across the board, many consider soda for the first time under this umbrella of better-for-you or modern soda. On the back of these category tailwinds, with our exciting new distribution, with our breakthrough taste profile, our rapid innovation, and then our ability to invest in marketing through the productivity that Girish has outlined for us, all the while continuing not just to maintain, but improve margins, I think there's a pretty compelling story as to why we're just getting started within a massive opportunity.
Yeah. No, I mean, I think you hit a lot of it. I mean, ultimately, I think there's a huge opportunity. I think we've finally sort of hit our stride vis-à-vis sort of that strategic and operational fit where we've hit on a marketing message that resonates. We have hit on a sort of product and whether it's packaging or the actual product itself that is really differentiated. We are developing a compelling financial profile that will allow us to grow. I think we're making all of the right long-term investments to accelerate future growth. I think that's really what gives us, that gives us confidence that we'll be able to achieve the things we've talked about. I think it's really, I think it's a great place to get in right now.
Okay. Bonnie, maybe just one other quick thing. I'm just really proud of the team, if I may say this, because I know this is webcast. I'm really pleased. I think you can probably see with the progress that Girish has made in leading a large portion of our organization, has been with us just a year. I think his both capability and ability to execute and do what we say we're going to do is reflective of the spirit of the whole Zevia organization these days. I'm really pleased that we executed the plan in Q1 and I can really see the path to do exactly that for the rest of this year. That's how we realize the full upside of this thing, to execute exactly what we say we'll do.
That's great. I wish you all the best.
Thank you, Bonnie.
Thank you. I think that's all the time we have.
All right. I'm glad you like Strawberry Lemon Burst.
Yes. Thank you.
Appreciate it, everybody. Thank you.