Inside Four Loko’s plan to reinvent itself for Gen Z
It’s been 15 years since Four Loko reintroduced a new recipe sans caffeine, and the company is on a mission to reestablish itself as the flavored malt beverage of choice.
Four Loko launched in 2005 as a caffeine-infused alcoholic drink. The original formula was pulled from shelves in 2010, with the brand removing caffeine, guarana and taurine from the recipe. In recent years, Four Loko has focused on expanding its product line with unique flavors and expanding its convenience distribution. For instance, 2025 marks the first year 7-Eleven began carrying a new Four Loko flavor upon its launch. It also comes on the heels of Walmart expanding Four Loko’s distribution in 2024, as the big-box retailer builds out its single-serve beverage business. As a result of these efforts, Four Loko’s annual revenue is up about 64% compared to five years ago.
According to Four Loko, its marketing strategy, along with the new flavor releases, is helping fuel the category’s resurgence. With the launch of its newest flavor in February called Camo — a sour citrus flavor that’s an homage to Four Loko’s camo print branding — the brand says it is seeing 20% international sales growth year-over-year. Data from July 204 by NielsenIQ tracking sales over 52 weeks shows that Four Loko was the top-selling new single-serve FMB in the U.S. In 2025, Four Loko plans to build out its product line and invest heavily in digital advertising to reach the sought-after Gen Z cohort.
Four Loko’s investment in growth comes at a time when beer sales are declining, which shows a growing interest in alternative canned alcohol. At the same time, flavored malt beverages are on the rise, with sales reaching $4.4 billion in 2023, a 16.1% year-over-year increase.
Samantha Catalina, the global CMO at Four Loko parent company Phusion Projects, said, “We’re spending more than we ever had on the brand.” She added, “We’re excited to get who we are and what we’re doing back on people’s minds.”
Catalina said over the past four years, what has worked for Four Loko is making one major flavor announcement at the beginning of each year for maximum impact. Four Loko aims to create “wild and inventive” combinations with unique names that stand out from the typical canned beverage lineup. Last year’s new flavor was Jungle Juice, preceded by Galactic Punch in 2023.
Catalina said the variety of flavors help attract more customers with different tastes. “It also has that billboard effect on the shelf, so as we distribute more SKUs, we see sales go up.”
In the past two years, Four Loko has also done its first major brand refresh, with new packaging. Some changes made to the cans included brightening the colors and adding a larger logo that’s front and center.
“We know consumers don’t spend a lot of time at convenience shelves,” Catalina said, so much of the effort is about grabbing people’s attention as quickly as possible. While Four Loko’s grocery sales are growing, Catalina said the product’s single-serve format lends itself best to the convenience channel, which is the brand’s biggest. The brand is increasingly investing ad dollars in retail media to help customers better find Four Loko at convenience stores.
Jaisen Freeman, co-founder and CEO of Phusion Projects, added that the company has a unique positioning among canned alcoholic beverages.
“The market is packed with RTDs, and our goal isn’t to position ourselves uniquely as a malt drink,” Freeman said. An exciting experience is part of that. “Holding a Loko can means being wild, sharing insane moments with friends and really creating your own epic story,” he said.
One of the takeaways from selling over the past 15 years, Freeman explained, is that flavor is the top draw in this category. “People want what’s new, what’s different and what keeps things exciting,” he said. “Four Loko doesn’t do standard or boring. We create flavors as concepts that give people something to discover and talk about.”
As for leveraging the nostalgia around Four Loko, Catalina said the brand will continue to lean into its off-the-wall voice it cultivated over the years. “We love to push buttons by doing things that are culturally relevant while having fun,” she said. One example of this was the brand’s post-pandemic lockdowns campaign in 2021, in which it gave away 250 at-home STD kits in partnership with a provider. The idea behind the campaign was to prep young customers for socializing again, complete with the tagline, “You’re about to get back out there. Do it safely.”
Phusion Projects has other long-term partnerships that reflect this focus on thinking outside the box. They include sponsoring Live Nation festivals like Rolling Loud and EDC, as well as Barstool Sports and NASCAR. The company just announced it’s extending its sponsorship of NASCAR driver Ryan Ellis for the fourth consecutive year. “We do a lot of creator integrations across Instagram, TikTok and other networks,” Catalina said. “And we’re working on a large influencer partnership this year.”
Minesh Parikh, vp of consumer brand and insights at PERLab, the product redesign practice at Kearney, said brands like Four Loko can also leverage the Y2K craze that’s currently happening.
“As with fashion, the same concept applies to other products and categories including food and beverage, which are making their comeback or are being made relevant for a younger audience,” Parikh said. But these types of products have to be constantly refashioned to be relevant to the upcoming generation, not just the fans that grew up on them. In this case, Four Loko is trying to court young Gen-Z drinkers as opposed to the older millennials that helped make it popular in the 2000s.
Parikh said partners like influencers and creators make sense given that social media is where the average Four Loko drinker spends time consuming media. “Many of these creators have a huge following, and as long as they are not targeting an underage audience, these channels can provide a tremendous lift.”
The key is to get people to try Four Loko to begin with, which Freeman said helps the brand lean into its claim of being bold. “A lot of people still don’t realize the formula changed years ago by removing caffeine, but what hasn’t changed is that high-energy, unforgettable experience that comes with every can.”
“Caffeine is not something we would or could ever do again,” Catalina said. “We’ve definitely tweaked the formula so it’s the best tasting it’s ever been. It’s the cleanest it has been.”
Freeman said it helps that Four Loko has leaned into creative partnerships long before social media and influencer marketing became standard. He said that, while “everyone else is trying to figure out their place in a crowded market,” Four Loko has the advantage of having an established brand identity. “Now just feels like the right time to tell our story as a brand that’s been able to cement itself in culture and history,” he said.