Sanzo founder and CEO Alessandro Roco '05 is the recipient of two BevNET Best of 2022 awards: The Rising Star Award and the Best New Product Award for the company's Yuzu with Ginger, which rolled out nationally at Whole Foods locations in March.
In all possible ways, Sanzo has taken a refreshing approach. At its heart, the New York-based sparkling water brand is a celebration of long-overlooked Asian fruit flavors like yuzu, lychee, calamansi and alphonso mango. In a category where flavor innovation has at times been relatively weak, Sanzo offers a welcome injection of fresh energy, and has been rewarded for its efforts with rapid expansion across channels (DSD, foodservice and online) and critical growth capital ($10 million from CircleUp in February). But founder Sandro Roco’s vision for the company is clearly bigger: thanks in part to the support of investor Gold House Partners, an AAPI advocacy group with deep ties to artists and athletes, Sanzo has emerged as one of the bold leaders of a new generation of Asian-American CPG entrepreneurs, working with notable names like Pixar, Panda Express and former NBA star Jeremy Lin on various partnerships that both promote the brand and highlight the influence and impact of Asian culture. “Our ability to partner with creatives I think helps educate maybe the buyers, retailers, distribution partners that this is what’s happening in American culture and hopefully, as a beverage, we’re able to operate as that bridge,” Roco told BevNET earlier this year. We have a feeling that traffic is going to be steady.