As a child, Lyda Hanson had always been obsessed with starting her own company. In her senior year at UC Berkeley, she started thinking about canned drinks and began to look into the idea of canned cocktails when she noticed canned mimosas had no presence in the market.
During COVID-19, Lyda spent time mocking up the branding and concept. Soon after, Hanson brought on her twin brothers, Wyatt Hanson ’22 and Spencer Hanson ’22, to join her. Together, the Hanson family became the driving force behind their mimosa brand Suntide.
The Suntide brand is built around the California lifestyle, said Lyda, who added that the team wanted to capture the “surf-oriented coastal living” California is particularly known for.
After Lyda finished mocking up the brand’s packaging, the Hansons reached out to flavor houses, companies that make formulas for the drinks. The Hansons would create a sample for the flavor houses to match, then receive experimental samples to test and refine. This process continued until they found the right combination of juice and sparkling wine.
“I think the peach [flavor] went through like 35 different revisions until we finally nailed it,” Wyatt said.
Creating the company had its ups and downs, Lyda shared. When she first began the process, there was an aluminum shortage. She also struggled to find a co-packer, a company that packages the products of a client.
Additionally, while Lyda found working with her family extremely rewarding, it was also sometimes difficult finding “that line separating business and family.”
“Family is important, right? You want to preserve those relationships as well,” Lyda said. “At the end of the day, it’s super rewarding, of course. Like how cool is it to start a company with your brothers? It’s fun.”
Wyatt, who majored in management science & engineering (MS&E), felt that his classes didn’t specifically prepare him for the alcohol industry but did teach him a lot of the frameworks and problem-solving methods he applies in his work now. Spencer majored in political science and most of his classes did not directly relate to his work at Suntide, but he had wanted to major in something that would challenge him and allow him to read and write a lot.
“College in general prepares you for critical thinking and communicating, but [the] specific industry stuff, you can’t learn that unless you work in the industry,” Spencer said. Being able to communicate, email and meet deadlines were the biggest skills he took from college that has helped him in his work, he said.
At Stanford, Spencer said that there’s so many people to learn from, not just from professors or classes but from other students.
“We really identify with our time at Stanford, and it really affected us as entrepreneurs. I think that being around people who are so motivated, so hungry, and I always wanted to start a company. It was just a matter of when,” Spencer said.