# Hoop Tea Take A Sip, Enjoy The Trip ## Elevator pitch Hoop Tea is a spiked iced tea brand that was created at Backshore Brewing Co on the beach of Ocean City, MD in the summer of 2016. Hoop Tea products are 'better for you' alcoholic beverages for modern consumers who prefer products with 'clean labels' and thoughtful ingredients. - Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/hoop.tea - Entity ID: wefunder:company:47474 - Last updated: 2026-06-11T05:00:12Z - Generated at: 2026-06-12T03:03:55Z ## Quick facts - The demand for Hoop Tea is spreading faster than we can keep up with it. Every dollar invested translates to increased sales. - The Flavored Malt Beverage category is booming, surpassing craft beer. We are one of the only craft brands pioneering the category. - In a single summer, (as a division of SB1 Inc.) we achieved $1.3mm with only one full time employee and no outside investment! - Hoop Tea's organic growth and demand from our loyal tribe of fans has landed our brand in the country's top bars and chain stores. - We've assembled a leadership team of industry superstars bringing experience from established companies such as Heineken and Molson. ## Active fundraises - wefunder:fundraise:28392: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) ## Story Born in a tiny brewery on the beach of Ocean City MD, Hoop Tea is a brand of tea-based alcoholic beverages for modern consumers who prefer products with ‘clean labels’, low calories, and thoughtful ingredients. Hoop Tea was started by free spirited individuals who decided to quit their jobs and move to the beach. While simply "creating things they wished existed", the Hoop Tea team quickly became pioneers of the exploding "beyond beer" alcohol category.Our purposeAccording to Danny, the founder of Hoop Tea;"I've always been careful about what goes into my body, but I grew frustrated that I couldn't find any clean-label or organic options when I joined my friends for drinks. I watched the change in grocery and convenience stores as they focused on better-for-you options when consumers began to seek alternatives to artificial, sugary, and high calorie foods. Unfortunately liquor stores and bars have shelves that look the same as they have for the past 40 years. We believe there is a better way. Using thoughtful ingredients, we've created a beverage to be enjoyed without great sacrifice to your health or compromising on flavor. We create options for people, like me, who are concerned with their wellness, but still want to enjoy a vibrant social life." How it all startedI’ve been in the hospitality business my whole life. I began by parking cars, washing dishes, and eventually bootstrapped my way up to owning my own bars and restaurants. In 2013 I fulfilled my dream of opening a brewery on the beach of Ocean City MD. We brew our beer with our toes in the sand and the sun on our faces, so it’s fitting that this is where Hoop Tea was born. In Ocean City we spend our mornings surfing or practicing yoga, then re-fuel at a local fresh juice shop or organic market. After a day's work at the brewery we'll usually meet up with friends at a local beach bar to watch the sun set. I noticed that my healthy habits had to be left at the door, and I heard the same complaint from many of my friends. I couldn't help but think there was a glaring need for something different and, since I owned a brewery, I thought there was no one better suited to craft a concoction to make all my juice drinking, yoga practicing, surf riding friends have a happier happy-hour.We launched the first iteration of Hoop Tea a few years ago after making some small batches in the brewery. We immediately got bombarded with inquiries from customers as well as bars and retail stores asking where to purchase our product. The following year we decided to package our alcoholic tea in eco-friendly 3 liter pouches and distribute them to local bars. We made 4 flavors including White Mango, Watermelon Mint Green Tea, Peach Tea Lemonade, and Sweet Lemon. In no time our little brand gained a cult-like tribe of loyal followers and the demand is spreading faster than we can keep up with it. Our products are created with natural ingredients, purified water, organic cane sugar, and a thousands of years old process of fermenting natural sugars to create alcohol.Today's consumers are increasingly turning towards emerging brands. They place importance on authentic brand stories and distrust the advertising of large companies. This trend has helped Hoop Tea achieve remarkable sales growth and a cult-like following in the Mid-Atlantic region. While the "beyond beer" or "flavored malt beverage" category has dwarfed the growth of almost all alcohol categories, including craft beer, Hoop Tea remains one of the only craft brands achieving success against the larger competitors. Note: the above shows sales of Southbound One, Inc., who have conducted all historic sales for Hoop Tea.  Hoop Tea, Inc., the company conducting this raise, is a new entity.While the Hoop Tea brand has shown remarkable traction with limited resources and almost no employees, we've decided it's time to 'pour fuel on the fire' by hiring a team of superstars to handle sales, marketing, production, and finance. We have the unfair advantage of being an exciting, free spirited, and authentic brand which no big competitor can recreate. Raising capital is our last hurdle to becoming an unstoppable brand. ## FAQ 1. **Hello Mr. Robinson, I have a couple of questions: - Having in consideration the shortage in production caused by the change in facilities, are there any business partnerships that were lost? Any major accounts? Best regards, Miguel Costa** - Hi Miguel, it's great to hear from you. The relationships with our distributors and accounts took us a lot of time and work to establish. Fortunately, the effort we put into building their trust paid off when we ran into the supply issues last season. We have not lost a single distributor. It also helped that production challenges are quite common in this industry. We were surprised when distributors told us stories of similar complications experienced by brands of all sizes. The individual r... 2. **Cool product. What were revenue for 2018? 2019? Thanks!** - Hi Dillon, thanks for the compliment. You can find detailed revenue info in the attached pitch deck file. Basically in 2018 about $1.3mm of product was sold, and 2019 was approximately $500k. While we had grown in orders for 2019, we had an interruption in production which prevented us from keeping up with demand. We've moved to a new production facility to handle the growth of 2020. Thanks for reaching out! 3. **This is effectively a licensing agreement with another distributor then? However it seems like you are also selling? Who is responsible for what exactly? Do you have any guarantees in place that SB1 will sell X amount of product with contingencies in place if they do not? If y...** - Hey Justin, good to hear from you. SB1 is not a distributor, it has a brewery license. Here's why there is a licensing agreement in place, and this should clear up the relationship: - I own SB1, which operates restaurants and a brewery. Hoop Tea products were created and sold through that brewery. When we decided to take investors in the Hoop Tea brand, we understood that investors did not want to be involved with the brick & mortar establishments. Therefore, we created a new entity, Hoop... 4. **Hi Justin, Why raise equity vs debt? Who would buy you to pay out shareholders/get you your hard earned windfall? What's an exit look like in this space? Thanks! Wes** - Hey Wesley, thanks for the question. Yes, we could have taken on debt instead, but that would have affected our cash flow, therefore slowing growth a little. We may still use the debt option in the future. Typically a buy out / exit for a company like this would happen when a larger brand in the same industry sees us as an acquisition target. Larger brands are not very good at creating and cultivating new brands or products, but they are experts at scaling products that are proven in the mark... 5. **Hey Danny, Love the product and the Promo video! I get that you want the locals to feel that they have part ownership in your brand, but what will be the true ROI for a large investor? I understand there is always risk involved. I guess the bottom line is what will an investor...** - Hi Joe, glad to hear you love the product! It sounds like you're asking how and when you will see a return from your investment. You said you understand the risk, but I just want to reiterate that start-up companies have a high rate of failure. We have no intention of going out of business, but you have to keep in mind that statistic. Investors will see a return in the event of an exit for our company. This is typically when a larger brand acquires Hoop Tea and makes the brand a part of their... ## Team - Danny Robinson (Founder & CEO of Hoop Tea) ## Q&A - Q: Hi Danny - I am an OCMD resident and love the product. When this first launched, I saw the presentation including some financials for the past years. Are there any updates to show for 2020? - A: Hi Eric, glad to hear from a local! Yes, in a nutshell, 2020 was a real challenge for obvious reasons, but by the end of this month we'll have doubled last year's sales. That's even after pulling out of a couple of states temporarily because our production facilities were not allowed to operate during the height of the pandemic. The demand is still growing and we're just now catching up to our full operational potential. We're in talks with distributors in FL and TN to launch those territories soon. Feel free to shoot me an email for more details. Cheers! - Q: Hey Danny, Love the product and the Promo video! I get that you want the locals to feel that they have part ownership in your brand, but what will be the true ROI for a large investor? I understand there is always risk involved. I guess the bottom line is what will an investor get out of it in the long and short game? - A: Hi Joe, glad to hear you love the product! It sounds like you're asking how and when you will see a return from your investment. You said you understand the risk, but I just want to reiterate that start-up companies have a high rate of failure. We have no intention of going out of business, but you have to keep in mind that statistic. Investors will see a return in the event of an exit for our company. This is typically when a larger brand acquires Hoop Tea and makes the brand a part of their own portfolio. This happens a lot in the beer industry. We could also decide to pay out dividends to investors if an exit seems too far away. I hope this helps and please feel free to send any more questions. Thanks! - Q: I invested $5,000 in May of 2020. I just saw the deal with AB. When will the investors start to see a return on their money or at least some communication from the company? - Q: Hey I was wondering about any updates? - Q: Hi! I saw notice today on FB that you are now working with Anheuser Busch! awesome news,any words on how it effects our investments? - Q: Any updates? - Q: Hey Danny. Hope 2021 has started well for you. Was trying to remember, but weren't there some perks for free attire with certain size investments. Would love to be a walking advertisement for you. - A: Hey Douglas. Yup, shoot me an email with your address and shirt size to Danny@hooptea.com Thanks!​ - Q: Hi Danny, The product looks great and very marketable to the non-craft beer loving crowd. What is the strategy towards the international market and would you drop "tea" from the name for European/Oceana markets that are seeing a seltzer boom right now? Thanks, Bib - A: Hey Bib, thanks for reaching out. We still have some work to do to drill deeper into our current territories before extending our resources overseas, but it's definitely on our long term calendar. We don't plan on dropping the 'tea' to pretend we're a seltzer. That market is saturated and there isn't much room for differentiation. We see the potential in the hard tea category growing to the size of the seltzer market, and we're in a great position to lead the trend. Good to hear from you and don't hesitate to shoot over more questions. Cheers! - Q: Hi Danny, We made an investment last winter, but I don't think we ever received anything acknowledging the investment. Should we have gotten something via email? Dave and Chatham Barnett - A: Hey Dave, you should have received an email regarding your investment this week. Please let me know if you did not. Thanks! - Q: Hey Danny, Like most on here I really enjoy the product and I know tomorrow is the deadline to invest. One question is why do you not list incredients, calories etc.. on the cans? Thank you Steve - A: Hey Steve! Not many beer based products list ingredients unless they are specifically targeting consumers who use that criteria in their purchasing decisions. This is why we do actually put all the nutrition info on our AIRE line of flavors (90 calories, 2g carbohydrates, gluten free, etc). Let me know if you have any other questions! - Q: What's different than peace tea AMD arizona they have a low price point - A: Hi William. Those are non-alcoholic brands. We are a spiked iced tea.  - Q: Was there really that significant of a drop from 2018 to 2019 revenue or is it just an artifact of when the document was prepared (partial year)? - A: Hey Douglas, thanks for the question. We called 2019 the "Great Hoop Tea Shortage of 2019". We were anticipating significantly growing that year, and therefore entered a contract with a new production brewery to fix some quality control issues. Unfortunately, when it came time to produce our product, that facility ran into some major problems and couldn't fulfill our needs. It was frustrating because the demand for our product huge among our distributors and consumers. We immediately scrambled and searched the country to find two new facilities to handle our volume. By the time we had them set up we had missed most of the summer, which is when the bulk of most beverages are sold. Things are going very well with our new facilities and we have implemented production and contractual redundancies to prevent this from happening again. Feel free to reach out again if you'd like to chat more about it.Thanks! - Q: I invested $2,000.00 back in the spring and just recently recieved my full funds back. What was the reason for this return? - A: Hey Eric, thanks so much for investing. A few months back, WeFunder sent out an email asking investors to respond if they still wished to remain as an investor. Anyone who didn't respond had their investment returned to them recently. If you missed that email, I apologize and we'd love to have you back on board. You can go through the same steps to re-invest. I apologize for the confusion and hope you choose to jump back on board with us. Thanks!! - Q: How do I get return once I invested - A: Hi Ignacio. When investing in a startup, generally investors see a return when the startup sells their company to another company or they do an IPO. In cases where neither of those options is attractive, they use company profits to pay shareholders back by distributing dividends or by purchasing their shares back.Hope this helps and feel free to shoot me any more questions.Thanks! - Q: It seems your raise has stalled. As a CF raise you may want to lower your minimum investment to $100.00 because the $1000.00 minimum excludes many of the participants in CF raises. I have already invested and just wanted to offer an opinion. Will you be able to continue to grow without raising the full amount you set out to? - A: Hey Alan, thanks so much for investing and welcome aboard! Yes, we've raised less than our maximum raise but we're able to keep growing going forward. We've increased our margins substantially, mostly through better pricing on packaging. We've also moved into new production contracts which are lower priced and higher quality, which also affects our profitability. We're able to reinvest these profits to fund new growth. Thanks for reaching out and let me know if there's anything else I can answer for you. Thanks!