When we founded Golden Coast Mead 10 years ago, we decided that making a positive impact was just as important as growing our brand. We also knew that quality products start with quality ingredients.

We’ve never lost sight of these simple philosophies. That’s why every step of the way, we’ve worked to incorporate regenerative farming and pollinator protectors (beekeepers) into our production process. 

Mead is one of the oldest fermented beverages. It even predates beer and wine! Now we’re in a place where we’re ready to take on the next fad, with our responsible, environmentally ethical Golden Coast twist. We’re entering the $4.4 billion global hard seltzer market with a magical new honey-based mead seltzer.

If our lifetime $2.2 million in mead sales is any indication, we think we’ll be hearing it for the bees for a long time to come. 

Catering to the healthy drinker, hard seltzers have recently become the belle of the ball, attracting legions of fans across all segments of society. 

Yet for all the billboards and streamed ads selling this version or that of hard seltzer, we believe these brands have become all but indistinguishable, all made from the same environmentally detrimental corn or cane sugar. 

For us, it’s all about the honey, honey, and our mission is to light up people's lives and regenerate the earth. Our delicious mead seltzer is gluten-free, preservative-free, cane and corn sugar-free. 

Environmentally friendly mead doesn’t require ripping up nature to produce the sugar source at the base of the alcohol. Our sugar is made by bees, and we attend to our relationship with bees with the utmost respect and care.

In 2019, hard seltzer sales grew more than 220% with the global market being valued at $4.4 billion, even as total beer sales grew less than 1% in the same year. Hard seltzer sales are expected to reach $6.5 billion by 2024.

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Source 1 and Source 2

This boom aligns with recent health-conscious trends, as well as the overall market’s desire for innovation in the alcohol industry and excitement about craft breweries.

We believe this is a meaningful opportunity for investors to not only be a part of a trend but also to treat the earth with equally opportunistic value creation through improved ecosystems.

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We have been handcrafting our meads in North County, San Diego since 2010. In that time, we’ve created 350+ new recipes and sold more than 200,000 bottles of mead. We’ve closed three separate private fundraising rounds (raised as convertible notes) with more than 38 investors.

In 2020, during the pandemic with over half our revenue streams shut down,we still saw $200,000 overall in sales. Now, after soft-launching our Hard Honey Seltzer at the end of last year, it’s already sold in more than a dozen stores across Southern California. We are confident this is the formula to take Golden Coast Mead to the next level - selling across the Western US and Internationally.

As we expand throughout the U.S., we have secured a contract for an exclusive distributor that will help us successfully launch in chain retail stores (e.g., Whole Foods). Our plan is to do this by Q3 of 2021.

With this raise, we plan to continue expanding our reach in the seltzer market, pushing our products to new accounts, regions, and people who have eagerly been awaiting our arrival!

The average lifespan of a honeybee during the work season is about six weeks. Throughout its lifetime, one bee will make just 1/12 teaspoon of honey. 

Bees work hard, of course, flying around 8 hours per day collecting nectar from 50-100 flowers. Twelve bees spending eight hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks to create just one teaspoon of this valuable golden syrup. Let’s say they work for California minimum wage, $14 per bee-hour. At 4,032 hours, that means the labor alone costs $56,448 per teaspoon.

Now, there are 27 teaspoons of honey in a 355ml can of our Hard Honey Seltzer. Delicate work in each can.

So how valuable is this delicate producer for our life as stewards of the landscapes? Priceless.

That’s why we take our work so seriously. And now we’re taking our values around protecting the environment—and the bees who serve it—even further as we work to start an organic “Honey Bee Sanctuary” in California.

Because ultimately, we believe that by building up the mead industry, we can create more demand for high-quality, ecologically responsible honey that will help regenerate the beekeeping industry. 

We intend to sell our Hard Honey Seltzer to popular off-premise locations, such as grocery stores including Whole Foods and Sprouts, as well as on-premises locations (i.e., local restaurants and bars).

Our industry competitors use fermentable sugars from corn, cane sugar, and grain, a commercially mass-produced monoculture taken from the earth over and over without ever giving anything back.

Our seltzers’ fermentable sugar is organic honey: the essence of thousands of flowers in a single sip. This alternative to environmentally damaging monoculture sugar is not only regenerative and increases biodiversity: to make more mead, all you need is more bees visiting more biodiverse flowering ecosystems.

In three years, we hope to find ourselves deeply rooted in on- and off-premise locations throughout both the West and East Coasts. 

As we expand, we intend to continue using hyperlocal ingredients—honey born of flowers and botanicals to create flavors that reflect unique geo locations around the world. We truly believe we are only at the beginning of the flavors and products we can offer.

In the future, we also hope to have an entire estate with a full floral and fruit garden for a tasting room, restaurant, and events, in addition to a world-class production site.

Golden Coast Mead Founder and former Naval Officer Frank Golbeck has more than 15 years of experience making the finest meads with the finest ingredients.

 CEO Andrew Maffey has spent 10+ years in organizational leadership and is a seasoned hand with High Growth CPG experience. For example, as the Director of Business Operations and Development at Boochcraft Hard Kombucha, he facilitated 2x growth in revenue and a $5 million raise.

Do it for the bees. Or do it for the mead. Whatever the reason you choose to invest in Golden Coast Mead, though, know that you’re contributing to something larger than a seltzer.