While tubing down a river in Utah, actress and filmmaker Elizabeth Banks cracked open a cold alcoholic beverage to sip on and had an epiphany.
Banks wasn’t consuming beer or a ready-to-drink cocktail, like one might assume—rather, she was sipping on Archer Roose, a canned wine brand founded in 2015 by Marian Leitner-Waldman that currently sells eight different varietals.
“I immediately understood why the format in a can was working for my lifestyle,” Banks, who now serves as chief creative officer of Archer Roose and owns half of the company, shared onstage at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City. She had relocated to Utah during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was spending a significant amount of her time hiking or on the water—situations where indulging in a glass of wine might enhance her afternoon but would require lugging around an entire bottle.
These are the use cases that Leitner-Waldman wanted to solve for when she founded Archer Roose. Initially searching for a way to enjoy a glass of wine on a weeknight without committing to opening (and feeling the pressure to drink) a new bottle, she quickly realized that by eschewing alternative types of packaging, the wine industry was alienating a majority of its consumers.
“The wine industry as a whole actually is catering to 3% of its customers, who are collectors,” she said. “For most of the wine that people are drinking, which is like $25 a bottle and under, you’re paying more for the shipping and the packaging than the wine inside the bottle.”
Banks explained that she didn’t want to feel ashamed for aiming to spend a maximum of $20 on a bottle, and that she has historically felt intimidated by fancy wine lists. “I didn’t know how to say—I still can’t spell—sommelier,” she said.
Those experiences have informed Archer Roose’s mission to make wine accessible and to meet consumers where they are—at celebrations and special occasions—which has led to relationships with Dave & Buster’s, Princess Cruises, JetBlue, and Vail Resorts.
“This is the fundamentals of brand building,” Leitner-Waldman said. “We want to be everywhere our consumer is. We want to show up wherever they are, even if it’s overstimulated at Dave and Buster’s. But also, we want to be associated with the great time that you’re having.”
Banks thought there was an opportunity to leverage that connection with consumers and change the narrative around the wine industry, which she believed lacked fun and humor—something that didn’t make sense to her, given alcohol’s association with celebratory occasions.
“We were already not being taken seriously,” she said (since canned wine has historically been considered of a lower caliber than its bottled counterpart). The duo wanted to challenge that assumption as well.
“We can have fun and not take ourselves seriously, but we are very serious about the wine inside,” Leitner-Waldman said.
They partnered with Cornell University’s Food Science Department to research how canning wine affects its composition, eventually developing a patented technology to ensure the product’s quality is not compromised by its form factor. Leitner-Waldman and Banks also initially sought out beer distributors, given the occasions they had designed their product for.
Despite previous indications that Gen Z is drinking less than older generations, Archer Roose has found its niche with younger consumers, who tend to value brands that feel accessible, authentic, and ethical when making purchases. Gen Z and millennials make up 70% of the brand’s customers.
“They are drinking at the same participation rate as previous generations. But what has changed is what’s changed across the industry, which is about having control over your own consumption,” Leitner-Waldman said. “That is very aligned with the millennial and Gen Z mentality. And this is, again, how you keep this industry relevant—by understanding what their values are and making sure that you serve that need.”
