Spice, Story, and Staying Power 🇮🇳
Last December, an e-mail from a local, start-up beverage company made its way to the Revolution marketing team, asking if our Taproom would be interested in carrying them as non-alcoholic guest option. Solicitation e-mails were a dime a dozen, most feeling automated and not warranting a response, but this one felt different. We wrote back and explained that because our NA menu is so limited, a rare addition to the menu usually happens through personal relationships. I assumed that would be the end of it, but like I said, something felt different here.
That Friday evening, my former colleague John and I organized a diaper drive at the Taproom, promoting it on our social media. Anyone who brought a package of diapers would be treated to a free pour of any beer on the menu. Guess who showed up? The co-founders behind that original e-mail, along with a generous supply of diapers and a case of their Salted Lemonade, inspired by Nimbu Pani (also called Shikanji), a centuries-old recipe from India combining citrus, salt, and spices.
Ever since that night, I’ve been discovering more and more Indian-inspired brands competing in today’s beverage market. While there are approximately 5.1 million Indian Americans, making up only about 1.6% of the US population, the broader American palate has become significantly more sophisticated and tolerant of spice over the last 10-20 years. And in general, consumers are more open than ever to trying something new that doesn’t play it safe, especially if it comes with a point of view.
So it should be no surprise that a new generation of founders has emerged, using traditions and stories that they either grew up around or were inspired by along the way. They’re building brands that treat Indian influence as the hero ingredient.
Each of the four below are doing so in different ways, but all of them signal that Indian-inspired drinks are finally starting to get the attention and execution they’ve long deserved.
Five Corners Beverages - Salted Lemonade
The name of the company whose co-founders came to the Rev Taproom’s that night is Five Corners Beverages, named after their focus on merging the five building blocks of flavor into their products: salty, sour, savory, bitter, and sweet, all in one. Not only was their Salted Lemonade packaged in the 250ml cans that I gawk over, but they tasted fantastic.
There’s a tartness from the lemon juice, with a touch of bitterness from lime. Himalayan black salt adds salinity, cumin and coriander for that savory backbone, a bit of cane sugar to sweeten it up, and just enough chili to leave a slow, satisfying burn. It’s interesting, balanced, and completely unlike anything else in the cooler. While the founders themselves are not Indian, their experience with its beverage culture made an impact to the point that it inspired the first of hopefully many recipes on their young company’s beverage journey.
Rupee Beer
Before brothers Van and Sumit Sharma launched the beer brand Rupee in 2021, they already had a head start getting to know their first customers. After growing up in Maine during the 90s, their paths took them abroad, to London and Australia respectively, but the early days of the pandemic brought them back home to help run the family’s Indian restaurant.
In addition to supply chain challenges impacting the availability of brands from India, that experience helped shape their belief that something was missing from the US dining scene: a go-to beer that could pair with spicy, global cuisine while paying tribute to Indian heritage. Four years in, Rupee now hangs its hat on three core styles: a Rice Lager, an IPA, and a Mango Wheat, each with its own connection to India.
The Rice Lager leans on traditional Indian recipes with lower carbonation, which helps keep the heat in check. Their IPA brings the India back to India Pale Ale, sticking closer to its 19th-century British roots than most. And for the Mango Wheat, they drew from both culture and category. Mango is India’s national fruit and a symbol of prosperity, but it’s also proven itself in the U.S. beer market, most notably in Golden Road’s Mango Cart.
Unlike the prototypical craft beer strategy of being local and running one or more taprooms, Rupee beer has reached wide in its early days. They currently have distribution in 16 states plus DC, up and down the East Coast, recently adding Texas as well. Rather than investing behind their own production and taprooms, they’re eyeing the thousands of Indian restaurants across the country to serve that role.
More Brewing - Patel Premium & Patel Light
Chicagoland’s More Brewing, which opened its doors in 2017, is known to some for their track record of winning medals at the Festival of Barrel-aged Beers, and occasionally having cable news helicopters circling their grounds during hyped stout releases.
In reality, they have one of the more diversified business models in the state, operating three modern Brewpubs now, a fourth on the way in Fort Wayne, IN, and a balanced attack between contemporary and classic styles represented through distribution.
Sunny and Perry Patel, founders of More Brewing, tapped into their deep ties within the local Indian business community to launch a pair of lifestyle lagers under the Patel name. Leveraging their existing brand, infrastructure, and the growing demand for easy-drinking craft lagers, they introduced Patel Premium, a 7.9% ABV Indian-style lager, and Patel Light, a 4.9% light lager in 16oz cans.
Both are already sold at a number of Indian restaurants around Chicago and they believe that with their recent move to cans year-round, there is a lot of growth potential for the brand. The hope being that their communities will reach for a much fresher, locally made beer, rather than an imported one.
To further build a connection, this Spring, the brewery hosted their first-ever Holi Festival of Colors, an ancient tradition marking the end of winter and honoring the triumph of good over evil. The success of the first event led to the commitment to making the community-building event an annual tradition, giving More a strong way to activate Patel Premium and Patel Light each year with their biggest supporters.
Unlike Rupee, whose strategy appears to be more wide-reaching, More Brewing is digging deep within their smaller, local footprint.
Junglee - Indian Craft Cocktails
One trend my BrightBev partner Jeff and I have been tracking is the rise of wine- and spirit-based canned cocktails with international roots. With brands like High Noon, Cutwater, Surfside, and Carbliss dominating shelves, it's only natural that more premium, ingredient-focused options are starting to break through. We think the best way to raise the bar is by telling ingredient and flavor stories that come from outside the U.S., and Junglee is a strong example of that approach.
The mission of their founders, Vishal Patel and Parit Pathak, is to transport everyone to their happy place, whether it’s somewhere they’ve been before or somewhere they’ve yet to explore. For them, that includes honoring the delicious Indian drinks their moms made for them as kids, carefully choosing each ingredient and flavor component to pay tribute to their South Asia heritage.
Similar to Rupee, Junglee has three flavors, as well as a variety pack SKU. And similar to Five Corners, their lead flavor is Shikanji-inspired, but with vodka, referring to it more intuitively as an Indian Spiced Lemonade. The second flavor, Green Mango Smash, is also vodka-based, and includes unripe green mango, which are commonly enjoyed in India for their tart acidity.
The last flavor features tarmaind, whose origin is technically in tropical Africa, but the spice has been naturalized and widely cultivated in India. Its tangy, sweet-sour flavor, is joined with Agave tequila from Mexico, triple sec, and lime, leaning on the term Margarita, giving it more universal appeal.
From following Junglee’s entertaining social media feeds, its apparent that they’re hard at work developing new combinations. They’ve even showed the behind the scenes while tasting flavors and bemoaning how the cost is going to wreck their COGS. Reminds me of me at my old job.
Spice, Story, and Staying Power
The emergence of Indian-inspired beverage brands reflects a larger movement in consumer taste by rewarding flavor, originality, and cultural perspective. Whether rooted in heritage or shaped by personal experiences, each of these founders is introducing something distinct to a category that’s leaned for a little too long on familiar formulas and is poised to evolve. As the market continues to open up to new ideas and blurred lines, these founders are helping show what’s possible, and how the American beverage aisle is beginning to evolve.