Bloom Nutrition, Sparkling Energy Drink.

Courtesy of Bloom Nutrition

On a Tuesday afternoon in Austin, a line wraps around a pink-soaked pop-up called The Dream Diner. Inside, young women clutch root beer float cans like trophies, phones up, filming every booth. The diner isn’t a new restaurant, it’s a Bloom Nutrition experiential launch for its new Root Beer Float flavor. Seven years ago, Bloom was a PDF workout guide and today it’s scaling to become a $1 billion brand with a multi-category platform with 6,000+ creators, a top-five national energy drink, a soda that hit number in its set in its first six months, and a 90% female in-house team driving the whole engine.

Co-founder and President Mari Llewellyn traces the success back to one post. "When I shared my personal transformation in 2019, it really resonated," she said. "A community began to form, and Bloom was born from listening to those people and giving them what they were asking for. It started with PDF workout guides, then booty bands, supplements, and now beverages."

The mechanics behind the growth are deceptively simple according to co-founder and CEO Greg Lavecchia. He attributes it to three things: quality product, attention to community, and the ability to move at the speed of culture. "We don't reinvent the wheel. We take something people already know and make it ten times better," he said. "Our greens, energy drinks, and sodas were not new categories. But our approach to flavor, quality, and branding is entirely ours."

Bloom's counterintuitive edge is timing. The company waits until a category is proven, then ships a better version to an audience that competitors ignore. "I like being late to the party," Lavecchia said. "By the time we show up, the category is proven, and we can focus entirely on making a better product. Saturation tells you the demand is there. Our job is just to out-execute everyone else. We've only ever made products that don't require education. Everyone already knows what greens, energy drinks, and soda are. We didn't have to convince anyone of a new concept; the brands before us did that work. I like being late to the party for that reason. By the time we show up, the category is proven, and we can focus entirely on making a better product. Saturation tells you the demand is there. Our job is just to out-execute everyone else with better flavor, better branding, and stronger community, which leads to major growth at scale for Bloom,” he told me.

When Bloom Sparkling Energy debuted in July 2024, the category was crowded, masculine, and loud. Llewellyn saw a community that wanted something cleaner, prettier, and genuinely delicious. That launch went from zero to eight figures in six months, 35 million cans sold in under a year, and 155 million beverages sold in 2025 alone. Bloom is now the #5 energy brand at Walmart and Target and #2 on Amazon, a ladder climb that typically takes competitors a decade. Bloom Pop followed the same template. The soda line launched in over 4,000 Walmart stores, moved two million cans and $2.7 million in its first few weeks, and locked into the #3 slot in the modern soda set. Lavecchia's personal favorite, a low-sugar Shirley Temple.

By the time Bloom launched beverage, they were already well-known in retail, like number one in nutrition at Target, and had built strong relationships with buyers over the years. That brand equity meant Bloom could move into a new category with credibility. “We took our marketing playbook from growing our supplements business and refined it further, executing a full 360 launch with influencer partnerships, social, brand communications, PR mailers and more,” the co-founders shared. “A big part of that was getting cans in hands: sampling at events, gifting, seeding products with creators, and making sure people could taste it before they ever saw it on shelf.”

Most importantly, community is the moat at Bloom. Bloom treats its customers like its most valuable influencers, because at scale, they are. "We prioritize treating our community like our most important influencers, because they are," says SVP of Brand Erica Tam. "That means extending experiences typically reserved for creators to our customers, whether it’s giving away PR mailers or creating memorable IRL moments." When a super fan finds a new flavor on a Target shelf before it is officially announced, the Bloom team often DMs them and ships product as a thank-you.

Llewellyn built a parallel universe around the brand to deepen the loop. Her podcast, Pursuit of Wellness, launched in 2023 and has since grown into the Pursuit Network, a roster of wellness creators in categories she saw. "I felt there was a gap in honest, approachable conversations in the space," she says. "I wanted to create a platform where we could bring in experts, share real experiences, and empower people to make informed decisions. “The physical extensions are equally considered. Tam points to Bloom's Treat Shoppe in New York and The Dream Diner in Austin, where customers sampled unreleased SKUs and gave live feedback. "These activations let people taste, see and feel Bloom in person in a way that sticks," she says. "That's what building a brand really looks like."

What makes Bloom hard to copy is the repeatability. Every new category engages in community signal, white-space read, product that overdelivers on flavor, and a 360 launch anchored in creators, PR, sampling, and in-store content that bridges digital hype with retail traffic. "We were one of the first brands filming TikToks inside retail stores," Lavecchia shared. “That’s standard practice now. We were doing it before anyone else.” It is also a bet on women. The entire operating system is designed for a female consumer who felt invisible in the energy and functional beverage aisles. "A lot of our decisions come from wanting to create products that feel approachable and tailored for women, with better-for-you ingredients that actually taste delicious," Llewellyn said. "Because let's be real, if it doesn't taste good, no one's going to reach for it."

With the brand hitting $500 million in annual revenue, the beverage business is on track to surpass its supplement arm this year. "The next chapter for us is to become a household name," Lavecchia shared. "Continuing to scale inside existing categories, stacking new ones, and doing it all with what Llewellyn calls "a 90% female in-house team, community-first mindset, and products that deliver on flavor and function."

In May, Bloom will introduce two fun, limited-time flavors: Summer Splash Sparkling Energy, a crisp strawberry lemon drink with 180mg of natural caffeine, zero sugar, and only 10 calories, and Rocket Blast, a nostalgic red, white, and blue soda that brings back the flavor of childhood rocket pops. Plus, their Bloom Pop packs just 3–4 grams of sugar, 20 calories, and zero artificial ingredients or sweeteners for a healthier, tasty beverage.

As Bloom continues its international expansion, putting its community first will always be at the center of growth.