A Mythical Queen, a Failed Juice Venture, and an Accidental Empire

Dave Knox: Califia Farms was founded in 2010 and has become a major brand in plant-based beverages. Take me back to the founding story—and where the name came from.

Dave Ritterbush: Our history shows the amazing pivot that businesses can take when faced with a crisis. Califia actually started as a juice company. It was an outcrop of the Little Cuties—those easy-to-peel tangerines—and began as the Little Cuties juice company. Then, through a series of events, it became clear there wouldn’t be enough fruit to make the business viable. Our co-founder, Greg Steltenpohl, was based right in the Central Valley of California and noticed an increased demand for almond milk, which was starting to replace soy milk as the go-to plant-based dairy alternative. He pivoted the company and created the name Califia in honor of Queen Calafia, the mythical goddess who inspired the state’s name. We added “Farms” to celebrate the origins of our flagship product—almost all of the world’s almonds are grown here in California. That was really the start of the company you know as Califia Farms, three years after what began as a juice company.

Knox: Is Little Cuties still in the family?

Ritterbush: It exists as a produce brand, but not as a juice. That’s all legacy business. Everything we do today is under our own name, Califia Farms. We’ve expanded well beyond almond milk into a whole variety of plant-based beverages—coffees, creamers, refreshers—so the portfolio has grown significantly since those re-pivoting days.

The Carafe That Consumers Describe With Their Hands

Knox: One of the most distinctive things about Califia is the bottle design—it’s instantly recognizable on the shelf. Was that intentional?

Ritterbush: The bottle is central to our brand identity. We talk to consumers who actually use their hands to show the curvature of the bottle. We call it the carafe, and technically it was originally created for our juice business—to evoke the idea of a beautiful pitcher sitting on a breakfast table. When we looked at packaging for the almond milks, it served two purposes. First, it enhanced that imagery of freshness. Second, we were entering the milk space, which is dominated by jugs and square cartons, so the carafe gave us a very unique visual point of difference. It made our shelf space work harder in terms of noticeability—signaling to the consumer that something was different.

“You Own the Future, but You Also Own the Past”

Knox: You came into a founder-led brand as CEO. How do you honor that founding vision while putting your own stamp on the growth strategy?

Ritterbush: I’ve been fortunate to come into founder-led businesses during early-stage transitions, and I think the key is that you have to respect the past. I tell my team: when you come into a company, you own the future, but you also own the past. That gives you an open perspective to understand why decisions were made. Many times, those decisions were exactly right for that moment—but with scale and additional complexity, you might need to make a different decision today. We honor it by making sure we’re incredibly knowledgeable and tell the story consistently. We want to keep the lore of our company and brand alive. It’s a requirement here to respect the past. Whether you’ve been here one year or since the beginning, you own the full history of the company—and your job is to understand why it evolved the way it did, then figure out how to make your mark and progress it.

Knox: What’s the biggest bet you’ve made since taking the role that’s starting to pay off?

Ritterbush: I’d put those in two categories. The first is expanding our supply chain network. When you come into a business that’s been scaling rapidly, you have to make bold moves in your network to get products to consumers as efficiently as possible. We moved from manufacturing our carafe with 100 percent of production in our Bakersfield facility to developing partnerships on the eastern United States—saving on shipping, lowering our environmental footprint, and delivering the product much more efficiently. The second, from a brand standpoint, is the development of our Simple and Organic line. We were already known as a well-established natural brand, and we successfully launched an organic line in addition to our very clean-labeled products. That has driven explosive growth. We launched it about three years ago, bet a lot on it, and it’s been greatly rewarding in terms of both sales growth and consumer satisfaction.

If You Don’t Eat Your Own Lunch, Somebody Else Will

Knox: The brand now has a huge range of plant milk options. What’s been the strategy behind that portfolio expansion?

Ritterbush: Step all the way back and look at dairy. An average consumer uses over four different types of dairy products. We may use the term milk generically, but think about it: you might put half-and-half in your coffee, skim milk for someone more calorie conscious, and so on. Plant milks allow us to play a similar occasion-based strategy with different benefits depending on the plant. When we make a coconut milk, we offer consumers a very indulgent, rich product with natural fats. With almond milk, we have an incredibly lean product—very low calories, no sugar. So someone in a Califia household might use almond milk on cereal and in smoothies, then reach for our oat milk or coconut milk in their coffees and matchas. We’re matching product design and inherent plant benefits to the occasions that exist for consumers.

Knox: You’ve gone beyond plant milks into creamers, cold brews, and refreshers. How have you thought about expanding beyond the traditional morning coffee occasion to being present throughout the day?

Ritterbush: What we’re doing with our brand is trying to meet consumers’ needs across all of their beverage occasions in a day. While much of our portfolio centers around coffee—from our creamer line to our actual coffee line—we also know there are plenty of refreshment occasions. Our refreshers line, for example, gives you a fruity refreshment product designed with substantially less sugar and calories than a traditional juice drink. We do that by combining coconut water and milk with fruits to create a slightly more indulgent but still highly refreshing beverage. We take our core philosophy—nutritionally superior—and match it with delicious products. And coffee, especially iced and refrigerated, is very much an afternoon occasion as well, driven by energy and refreshment.

Knox: Over the last 15 years, the category has enjoyed amazing tailwinds—but that’s also attracted a lot of new entrants. As one of the innovators in the space, how do you think about an increasingly competitive grocery aisle?

Ritterbush: In one way, you always want to be in an attractive category, and by definition, an attractive category attracts people into it. We’re okay with that, because it means we’re in the right place. But you have to be sharp. I talk to my team a lot about not suffering from the innovator’s dilemma—you can’t be afraid to evolve your products, even if it means cannibalizing another product within your line. I always say, if you don’t eat your own lunch, somebody else will. That comfort with innovation and risk allows us to be where the consumer is going, rather than relying solely on legacy products. The best example: our Simple and Organic almond milk is our number-one SKU. It’s been in the portfolio three years. It’s very unusual to launch a product and have it become your top seller that fast in a company that’s scaled as much as ours. We’re not afraid of innovating against our own products.

Knox: Every successful category has to deal with retail partners competing on price with private label. How have you defended Califia’s premium positioning?

Ritterbush: We’re a premium brand, and we have to create value beyond just price. We’ve done that through product formulations and ingredient selections—constantly making sure the total value, price plus all the benefits, is greater for the consumer than something that costs less. Especially where we compete in categories where nutrition and functionality matter, that promise of higher nutrition, greater functionality—if you’re talking about our barista line of products, foaming and frothing to make a great latte—those are critical. At the end of the day, consumers still see high value in Califia, even if they’ve paid more per fluid ounce.

From “Got Milk” to Branded Beverage: Why No Category Is Truly a Commodity

Knox: Before brands like Califia entered the dairy case, the best marketing that aisle ever produced came from a trade association with “Got Milk.” How do you think about brand marketing for both growing a category and selling a premium brand?

Ritterbush: I always think of it this way. Earlier in my career, I watched brands like Evian and San Pellegrino emerge. If you ever wanted to find a “commodity” category, wouldn’t it be water? And yet, those brands created differentiation and added value in one of the most simplistic categories imaginable. The dairy case used to be driven by a trade association because the benefits of individual brands weren’t fully expressed yet. Today, there are more household brands in that case, and that’s the value you have to bring as a branded player. I don’t believe categories get commoditized. There can be lulls in innovation, but the continued redefinition of your product earns the credentials to distinguish yourself from the most basic form in that category.

A Grammy Commercial and an In-House Content Studio

Knox: What does your marketing mix look like? How do you blend traditional media with social and creator content?

Ritterbush: I remember early in my career flying to New York to choose between three networks to figure out how to spend your money. It’s gotten much more sophisticated. We run complex marketing mix analyses to understand the quantitative return on investment of different vehicles, but the market’s evolving, so there’s always constant experimentation. We believe we need to be across a number of touchpoints with consumers—but not so many that we don’t build scale on any one of them. We’re on the Meta platforms, we’re engaging in social content. We literally built a studio in our office because we know we need to be creating content—through our own social channels, through our influencer network. Yet we’re also running our commercial on the Grammys. It’s a mix, and each channel offers a different balance between scale, reach, intimacy, and refined targeting. For a company of our size, that blended portfolio is what allows us to be seen by our core consumer.

Knox: You have a large away-from-home business—coffee shops and other partnerships. How have you thought about those channels and the role they play in brand building?

Ritterbush: Strategically, we know that more than 50 percent of coffee occasions—which today are as much a dairy occasion as a coffee occasion, with consumers moving toward lattes, cold foam toppers, and blended products—occur outside the home. We need to meet the consumer there. Our strategy was to form a partnership with baristas, the frontline people who ultimately determine your experience at that away-from-home environment. We give them products and support to make that the best experience possible. Our products are specifically designed for foaming and frothing, so baristas can make beautiful latte art. And what’s unique about us is that while most foodservice products end up in the back of the house, ours are front and center—right on the countertop, right where consumers are interacting. That visibility creates a very positive brand halo.

Knox: Selling to grocery, you can make one sale and end up in thousands of doors. Selling to individual coffee shops is a very different go-to-market. How did you build that sales channel?

Ritterbush: It’s complicated on two fronts. No single operator has the kind of scale of a Walmart, so it takes more people out in the community, more partnerships. And equally complex, we need to make it easy for these operators. They have enough challenges to be successful on their own, so we have to set up distribution and route-to-market so that whoever you are, it’s very easy to buy Califia through an existing supplier. Building out that infrastructure—all of those route-to-market points—is as important as building out the sales engagement side. We didn’t build it overnight. It’s been a multi-year journey, and we continue to invest and expand every year. The rewards are wonderful, and we love being in the space, but it’s probably the most complicated sales transaction we have in the company.

Knox: What’s next for Califia Farms?

Ritterbush: So many places. We’re focused on beverage right now. Some companies have gone into other form factors, and we evaluate that, but we think there’s still so much left to do in beverage. We’ve just touched on refreshment, which constitutes the majority of your beverage consumption in a day—you drink roughly ten beverages a day, and only one or two of those are around a coffee occasion. And I think the other growing trend we’re entering is further enhancing nutritional benefits. People are looking for more nutrient-dense foods, looking to get more out of every product nutritionally. There’s a lot of white space for our company in that area. We talk about bringing the irresistible goodness of plants to people. “Irresistible” covers making it delicious, and “goodness” covers quality nutrition. There’s a lot left in that nutrition space.