How Drink Modern grew 2.5x monthly sales across three brands — with creators pushing Total Wine, Gopuff, and Instacart
Calmezzi, Wave & Trail, Five Flowers — three distinct brands, one unified creator engine. Hundreds of verified creators per month buying, posting, and reviewing across every channel where these products sell.
Results · Campaign period
The portfolio
Three brands. One company. One creator engine.
Drink Modern Technologies operates three distinct functional and cannabis beverage brands — all positioned at the same consumer shift away from alcohol and toward clean, functional, feel-good alternatives. Each brand needed its own creator voice and its own channel strategy. The engine that powered all three was identical.
Each brand had retail and delivery placement. The problem was velocity — units sitting on Total Wine shelves, low Gopuff and Instacart rankings, and not enough verified reviews to convert shoppers who were curious but on the fence. In the cannabis and functional beverage category, shoppers don't buy because of ads. They buy because someone they follow already did.
The strategy
The three-channel retail and delivery engine
Every creator activation was designed to generate one thing: a real, verified purchase signal on a channel that Drink Modern's retail and delivery partners actually track. More signals mean better rankings. Better rankings mean more organic discovery. More discovery means compounding revenue — month over month, across all three brands simultaneously.
Total Wine retail pull-through
Creators visited their local Total Wine, bought Calmezzi (and other Drink Modern products in-store), and filmed discovery content — driving geo-targeted foot traffic and in-aisle purchases across key markets.
Gopuff creator demand
Creators ordered Five Flowers and Wave & Trail through Gopuff and shared the delivery experience with their audiences — building platform purchase volume and pushing all three brands up Gopuff's algorithmic rankings in the alcohol-alternative category.
Instacart traffic & reviews
Creators ordered across all three brands on Instacart, shared product links directly with their audiences, and left verified photo and video reviews on every product page — a compounding asset that keeps converting long after the post expires.
The results over time
2.5x monthly sales — compounding across the full portfolio
The 2.5x didn't happen in a single push. It built month over month as reviews accumulated on every platform, creator content kept circulating in the cannabis-alternative and functional wellness categories, and Gopuff and Instacart rankings climbed from sustained real purchase volume across three brands at once.
This category is uniquely dependent on peer discovery. A shopper considering Five Flowers on Gopuff doesn't convert because of a banner ad — they convert because someone they follow posted their order, showed the experience, and left a 5-star review. Izzy built that machine at scale for three Drink Modern brands at the same time, every month.
Delivery platform impact
Real orders. Real rankings. Real discovery.
When creators ordered Five Flowers and Wave & Trail through Gopuff, and all three brands through Instacart, the platforms' algorithms took notice. Sustained real purchase volume drives algorithmic placement — and better placement in the cannabis-alternative category means Drink Modern brands surface organically for every shopper looking for an alcohol alternative, with no ad spend required.
The compounding asset
Reviews don't expire. They compound.
A creator post has a 48-hour peak. A verified review on Five Flowers' Gopuff page, Calmezzi's Instacart listing, or Wave & Trail's product page sits there permanently — shaping every future shopper's decision. By asking every creator to leave an honest review on every platform they ordered from, Izzy turned Drink Modern's campaigns into permanent conversion assets across the entire portfolio.
"Working with Izzy was one of the best decisions we made for all three brands. The process was completely hands-off for us — they handled everything — and the results kept compounding every month. Having one partner scale Calmezzi, Wave & Trail, and Five Flowers at the same time was exactly what we needed."
How it worked
One engine. Three brands. Every month.
The same three-step mechanic ran in parallel across Calmezzi, Wave & Trail, and Five Flowers — each brand getting its own creator pool matched to its audience, its own brief, and its own growing review base across the channels where it sells.
Buy on the right channel — with their own money
Creators were matched to the brand and channel that fit their audience. Spirits and nightlife creators went to Total Wine for Calmezzi. Wellness and active lifestyle creators ordered Wave & Trail on Instacart or Gopuff. Social drinking and lifestyle creators picked up Five Flowers on Gopuff. Every purchase verified. Every review carries real weight.
Post authentic content that drives category discovery
Creators followed brand-specific briefs for each of the three brands — Total Wine shelf-finds, Gopuff delivery reveals, Instacart haul videos, taste tests, cocktail builds with Calmezzi. Content that looks real because it is real. The cannabis and functional beverage category converts on authenticity, not production value.
Leave verified reviews on every platform they ordered from
Every creator reviewed every product on every channel where they bought it — Instacart, Gopuff, Total Wine, and each brand's own website. Over the campaign period, that built +620 verified reviews across the Drink Modern portfolio. Reviews that sit on product pages permanently, converting every future shopper who lands there — long after the creator's post is gone.
The full-portfolio recap
Hundreds of verified creators per month, buying and reviewing Calmezzi, Wave & Trail, and Five Flowers across Total Wine, Gopuff, and Instacart. 2.5x combined monthly sales growth. +620 verified reviews across the entire portfolio. And three brands that now show up organically — in store, on delivery apps, and in shoppers' feeds — because real people in their community told them to try it.