Liquid Death’s energy drinks entry might be just what the doctor ordered to pump up sales in the otherwise saturated soft beverages category.

When Liquid Death launched on the market in 2019, it was with a single category in canned water. A quirky punk-style design, a better-for-you focus and the catchy punchline to “murder your thirst” were expected to pull in consumers.

Canned water is still the group’s core product but it has also ventured into flavoured sparkling waters and iced teas. And the business has now announced another expansion into energy drinks.

The Sparkling Energy line will launch in the US in January. The drinks will not have any sugar or the alternative sucralose aspartame sweetener, along with an “unextreme” level of caffeine, founder and CEO Mike Cessario said in a statement on LinkedIn last week.

In March last year, the business raised $67m in an investment round, which it said valued the group at $1.4bn. Retail sales reached $263m in 2024.

Speaking to Just Drinks later that year, then-CFO Karim Sadik-Khan said that outside the US, the business was present in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Australia.

Early in 2025, however, the company’s growth momentum appeared to be decelerating, with reports detailing Liquid Death’s pause in its international operations.

As the business focuses on its domestic market for now, a move into energy makes sense given it’s an area the company says its customers are already playing in. As Cessario said in his statement: “Energy drinks are the number one item purchased with Liquid Death in a basket.”

The company’s chief clearly sees an opportunity to lock in loyal consumers through one of their regular drinks purchases and perhaps gain some sales momentum.

Nevertheless, in an already saturated market with heavy competition, can Liquid Death stand out from the dominant brands in the segment, and will the move give the business a sustainable boost long term?

Expanding audience

As Cessario said last week, the business sees its current range of products being bought most frequently alongside energy drinks, so a move into an area where they know customers are already playing makes sense.   

As well as attracting already loyal consumers, Brent Vrdoljak, the founder of FMCG marketing firm Mind Control, also sees energy as a way for Liquid Death to expand its audience to drinkers who may be aware of the brand but just haven’t seen an appeal in its current line-up.

“This probably opens them up to a whole new audience set who like their brand, like what they do, but just wouldn’t really drink regularly, like drink sparkling water on a regular occasion,” he explains.

“That ability to activate their audience better gives them an advantage to enter this market because they’ve already established such high awareness. And now it’s probably a better opportunity to convert audiences.”

This probably opens them up to a whole new audience set who like their brand, like what they do, but just wouldn’t really drink regularly, like drink sparkling water on a regular occasion

Brent Vrdoljak, founder, Mind Control

Liquid Death’s energy entrance marks another attempt by the group in expanding into multiple non-alcoholic drinks categories under a single brand. And it’s a move that is quite unique within the non-alcoholic category, according to Richard Wyborn, a partner at UK-based food-and-drinks consultancy Food Strategy Associates.

“To what extent do you find brands that play across non-alcoholic beverage types? You don’t see that very often,” he says. “Coke’s not playing with a single brand across multiple types. Monster’s not playing outside of its space. Red Bull, likewise, they’re staying in their lanes.”

Liquid Death is working to prove it can play in multiple areas, with the support of one brand and a better-for you and more environmentally friendly USP. The mountain water product pushes itself as a product containing water “from real American mountain ranges” in “infinitely recyclable cans”.

The group’s soda-flavoured sparkling waters and iced teas, meanwhile, also highlight having much lower sugar than other competitors, but still having the flavour that consumers are looking for.

Fighting competition

While Liquid Death’s one-brand approach for multiple drinks categories is distinctive compared to other players in soft drinks or energy, whether its prospective energy drink is unique enough to grab consumers in a competitive category is less clear.

According to Vrdoljak, the group’s brand positioning could do a lot to help carry the Sparkling Energy product.

“That type of positioning is kind of unique in energy. You’ve got Red Bull about extreme sports and, lots of different spaces there. But is anyone a bit satirical, playing on capitalism in the way that Liquid Death do? I don’t think so. And the category is really controlled by most of the big [drinks] giants, right? So being independent and breaking through, it’s interesting.”

Liquid Death will certainly need a strong differentiator to make it stand out, especially given the energy category has had some brands playing there for several decades (e.g. Red Bull).

“The one observation and the one caveat is that whilst water is a tired space that is ripe for disruption, that’s not the case in energy drinks,” explains Wyborn at Food Strategy Associates.

“Monster and Red Bull are absolute trains. Celsius is flying. Alani Nu is flying. You know, you’ve got a lot of brands that are really taking off… and therefore, the question is, what is Liquid Death bringing that is new to the party?”

The one observation and the one caveat is that whilst water is a tired space that is ripe for disruption, that’s not the case in energy drinks.

Richard Wyborn, partner, Food Strategy Associates

From the initial details provided by CEO Cessario, one of the key features of the Sparkling Energy products is a lower caffeine level (100mg), which he said was an “unextreme” amount and “equal to a cup of coffee”.

The energy line also won’t contain any sugar or aspartame sweetener, nor artificial colours or dyes, but will contain vitamins B and C, L-Theanine and magnesium. It positions the Sparkling Energy drinks in the better-for-you segment of energy, where the likes of Celsius’ Alani Nu and Keurig Dr Pepper’s Ghost also sit.

When it comes to the liquid itself, Wyborn says it is “undifferentiated” from other better-for-you players already in energy. The “unextreme” caffeine level is not exactly novel, he argues, with a 250ml can of Red Bull containing 80mg.

He also points out that while the business may be looking to offer a healthier proposition within energy and a more moderate caffeine level, it might not be enough to grasp consumers when the category in the US is seeing levels of caffeine “pushing higher and higher and higher”.

Ivan Izus Torossian, a consulting director at Just Drink’s parent company GlobalData, also notes the group’s energy product is “a smart move”, but he admits the business may need to eventually feed that demand for a greater buzz.

“I feel at some point, very soon people will be asking if you want to convert people from Monster or from Red Bull to Liquid Death, they will need to have a higher caffeine option, in my opinion. That will happen sooner rather than later,” he says.

Global opportunity

In comparison to its other drinks categories, “energy is a different sort of beast”, says Vrdoljak at Mind Control.

“If you look at more global markets, I think it’s probably a more likely winner for them given the consumption behaviour and growth in those segments. I think on that lens, it makes sense.”

While the group’s focus for now is on the US, a shift into energy could provide Liquid Death with a new way back into international markets, according to some.

For Vrdoljak, the move into energy won’t have much impact on the group’s overall brand positioning because it is one that already has some global recognition. But the energy move itself, he says, could mean the brand performs better internationally.

 “I don’t think they’ll change at all. I think they’ll just keep hammering down, doing it the way they’re doing it, because it seems to work,” he says. “They have this platform, with a global social audience, it makes sense to me that they’re trying to find products that are more globally appealing.”

Energy could also be a slightly easier sell for Liquid Death globally than canned water, given consumers are more likely to pay slightly more for energy than water products, he explains.

“Price points are more acceptable where there’s more margin in the category. Like canned water or even bottled water is in other markets, it’s just not as established, so the price point plays so different,” Vrdoljak says. “Whereas people are used to paying a premium for a can of energy drink, and that’s why there’s more margin in it.

“They could probably afford, better go-to-market plans. I think they’ll be back in the UK. They took more of a soft exit, like ‘we’re pausing sales’, so I’ll be interested to see how the energy rollout goes in the US.”

GlobalData’s Torossian agrees with Vrdoljak, noting the launch “could actually be their bridge to global markets”.

Some issues the company faced in the UK, he explains, were retail and distribution hurdles, and a “cultural disconnect” over the brand tone that didn’t resonate in the same way as it did in the US. Another hurdle it faced was “a can confusion”, with the taller cans being seen by consumers more as “craft beer or [a] prank product”, which the company is less likely to experience with an energy drink, he says.

“It’s always great, not just with this example, but in most industries or categories to make the most out of your current local market before expanding, unless you have distribution networks, which in this case, did not happen,” Torossian added.

Not everyone agrees that a move into energy makes it easier for a business to scale internationally.

“Everyone thinks it’s super easy to grow international. It’s not,” says Wyborn. “There are a thousand energy drinks that have launched in the US and failed. Someone pops, but that doesn’t mean that that pop is replicable internationally. Having said that, you’ve got Monster, which is one of the most phenomenal cases for possibly working. But, I mean, Monster did all of this 20 years ago. Energy didn’t.”

What about the core business?

Liquid Death’s move into energy can be seen as a positive expansion of the company’s non-alcoholic beverages line-up, giving the group new avenues for customer onboarding in its home market. And, potentially, the chance to try again with more success in global markets down the line.

As Torossian notes, the entry can be seen “as a form of risk management” by “diversifying beyond your current revenue stream… so it becomes less vulnerable to the market fluctuations”.

But while diversification is healthy for drinks brands, some also wonder whether bringing in another product could divert the business away from its core product in canned waters.  

As Wyborn says, “I guess a question for me is, to what extent the existing core product, the canned water, to what extent are they reaching headroom?”