Crawler is looking to hit the ground running at the LCBO.

The company, co-founded by Mike Johnson and Brendan McLeod in 2018, now has its Citrus SKU coming to roughly 190 of the retailer’s locations.

“It [began as] a side hustle thing, trying to find a niche in the market,” says Johnson, whose day job is as an ACD at Anomaly in Toronto. He tells strategy the product’s development preceded the RTD craze and the viral popularity of White Claw, when the only similar product around at the time was Palm Bay.

“We formulated this based on the drinks we would make at the cottage,” Johnson says.

In fact, the name Crawler is inspired by a “porch crawler,” which also goes by “porch climber” or “jungle juice” depending on where you live, which is any blend of alcoholic beverages with a sweetener base. In the case of Crawler, it’s sparkling water and citrus blended with vodka, gin and a splash of light beer.

Johnson says the time was ripe for a category shakeup and innovation, but admits this can be tough if you don’t have something new or interesting to talk about, hence the formulation and messaging around it.

He says Crawler’s mix of spirits and the nostalgic kick of beer is what makes it unique. It’s about owning and building equity in a category, in a similar way that beer/cider hybrid Radler did for suds, he explains.

Crawler’s slim 355 ml can is on trend, but is limiting from a design perspective. So, the Crawler cursive runs vertically, a differentiator accommodating the format to better stand out at shelf.

According to the brand, the pack design was done on a napkin after many iterations. “We took a lot of influence from how poorly [some] big brands brand, almost clip-arty,” Johnson says. The orange waves, meanwhile, are a design nod to the three types of alcohol used in production.

“We know people don’t obsess over one brand,” he says, and is hoping buyers will “throw us in the cooler too.”

Crawler is in conversations with other jurisdictions right now, like Alberta and B.C., but the brand is currently focused on Ontario, as the LCBO is the single largest alcohol buyer in the country.

Like other RTDs, Crawler is heavily focused on sampling. Last year, it did a five day sampler event at the CNE in a food truck area festival zone with simpatico brands like Town Brewery and Ace Hill, which the company says paid dividends.

Given its cottage positioning, getting out of the Toronto bubble is important too, Johnson says, whether it’s festival sampling or golf course tastings.