Hats, Hoodies And Pineapple Rum Soda: East Coast Lifestyle Broadens Product Mix
HALIFAX — One of Nova Scotia’s best-known brands is branching out into the booze market.
East Coast Lifestyle is expanding beyond the hats and hoodies it’s best known for with a new, East Coast-inspired mixed drink.
The company’s Pineapple Rum Soda is a low-calorie, white rum and soda beverage that comes in cans: think White Claw but with rum instead of vodka.
Alex MacLean, the founder and president of East Coast Lifestyle, says starting a beverage company has been a dream of his for more than five years and that it’s “surreal” to think it will be on store shelves in just a few days.
“We’ve just been working on it super hard behind the scenes and we’re finally proud to bring to life our first-ever beverage,” he says.
MacLean says Pineapple Rum Soda will fill a niche in the “ready-to-drink” booze market where there’s currently little to no choice.
“There’s just not anything pineapple on the store shelves…and nothing in the rum soda category,” he says.
East Coast Lifestyle is releasing Pineapple Rum Soda under its newly created beverage company: East Coast Rum Soda.
The company is licensed with Labatt, which will take on the heavy lifting of producing and distributing the product.
MacLean says Pineapple Rum Soda is the first of several rum-and-soda mixed drinks the company will offer and that their second flavour is already locked in.
Right now, he says, he’s working on getting it in liquor stores across the country.
East Coast Lifestyle Poised For Major Expansion
East Coast Lifestyle’s move into the mixed drink market is a significant one, but MacLean says it’s just the first of several expansions the company plans to make in the next year or two.
He wants to see East Coast lifestyle become a complete lifestyle brand and that the company has “a lot of different projects lined up” in 2021 that will take it far beyond clothing.
“We’re hoping [2021] is our big year to really branch out into a ton of different industries, a ton of different categories, with different partners on board and different collabs lined up,” he says.
“We are really creating a whole, bigger lifestyle brand behind the scenes.”
MacLean wouldn’t go into detail about most of those plans but did tease a major new product coming from the company before Christmas.
“[We have a] whole different product category coming to light that will be sold in grocery stores across Canada,” he says “it will be in about 2,000 stores across Canada before Christmas. I can’t tell you the product yet but it’s a good Canadian collaboration.”