Samuel AndersonManaging Partner, BevAssets, LLC · Just Pick Up The Phone 📞 | Joy 🦋 | Empowering individuals through meaningful connections, one person at a time.

What's the right month of SKUs. #beverageindustry #becomeentrepreneur

1 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:54

In this brief excerpt from Samuel Anderson's YouTube discussion, two speakers explore the challenge beverage entrepreneurs face when deciding how many SKUs (stock keeping units) to launch. Speaker A questions whether there is a "sweet spot" for SKU count, noting that founders often err by offering too few or too many products. Speaker B highlights the financial reality of cash burn, implying that SKU decisions directly affect burn rate and the need to pivot. The conversation sets up a deeper analysis of SKU strategy, cash flow implications, and timing for product launches in the beverage industry.

identify when you need to pivot? And, and I think SKU count is something there. That's always something. I don't know if I should have had more SKUs or less. Like, is there a sweet spot for SKU count? Because I think that's something that entrepreneurs either have too few or too many, it seems a lot of times.
I mean, as an entrepreneur, you know this better than me. Cash burn is real, right?
Yeah.
And then once you get distribution, operational cost is going to burn a lot of your cash. And then the other cost is is, you know, the salespeople trying to sell your product. And then another cost is the people buying your product. Like, well, what am I making? I'm like, you're nothing. You're gonna make your money on the out, right? So I don't think they're— I think it depends on the brand, the category, how the brand's behaving. You know, for RTDs, I think 3 SKUs is probably the number because you want some form of shelf presence.