Small-town roots, divorced parents, drug use and becoming a teen parent – all things Adam Kroener, president and co-founder Plymouth-based Carbliss, said would ordinarily deter a person from the kind of success he and his wife, Amanda Kroener, have had in starting their ready-to-drink cocktail company.

“Put (those things) on a board and tell me where you would label that person,” Adam said recently during Accelerate Sheboygan County’s 2026 Innovation Speaker Series. “Not a great spot.”

Carbliss, however, has defied those odds.

Founded in 2019 by the husband-and-wife duo, the zero-carb beverage brand has grown exponentially over the past seven years, selling 4.2 million cases last year, up from just 2,200 in its first year of business. Now distributed in 22 states, the company was recognized in 2024 as the No. 1 fastest-growing food and beverage company on the Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing privately owned companies – and it all started with a diet.

In the summer of 2018, the Kroeners were deep into the keto diet, a low-carb, high-fat regimen with limited alcoholic options. Adam, adhering to the diet, brought what would be the first draft of a Carbliss cocktail to a beach gathering, experimenting with flavors like kiwi-strawberry and pink grapefruit. Friends and family tried the drinks and were shocked that the cocktail was carb free and full of flavor, unlike others on the market that were heavily carbonated and lightly flavored.

Though they didn’t intend to start a business with their proprietary cocktails, the duo knew they had created a unique product – one that could be brought to market.

The Kroeners then spent nearly $500 trying nearly every other low-carb drink they could find to compare – and nothing did, Adam said. The idea of canning and selling their recipe was born.

Amanda, with a background in finance and business operations at Sheboygan-based The Wasmer Co. and later Van Horn Automotive Group, asked Adam to create a proper business plan before moving forward. Due diligence began shortly after with more market research, public and peer review, requests for bank loans and collaboration with the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corp., which Adam was affiliated with through his role at Plymouth-based Masters Gallery Foods.

The duo worked with a flavor house in California and created six flavors, which they later narrowed down to three after realizing how expensive it would be to produce and distribute six SKUs through a co-packer. They designed a logo using Adam’s daughter’s handwriting plus several sessions of photo editing and secured a $50,000 loan to begin production.

At its launch in 2019, Carbliss debuted in 250 locations, including grocery stores, liquor stores and bars in Wisconsin. The product sold out at nearly every location over the first launch weekend.

In years to follow, the business overcame a variety of challenges such as canning defects, COVID-19 supply chain disruption and the integration of an angel investor who has partial equity. Despite these challenges, sales have skyrocketed, with 8,000 cases in its second year, 40,000 in its third, 420,000 in its fourth, 1.5 million in its fifth, 2.8 million in its sixth and 4.2 million in 2025.

The Kroeners continue to utilize the backyard-to-backyard mantra, famously used by Culver’s co-founder Craig Culver, in their business plan to scale growth strategically and safely.

Addressing a crowd of roughly 300 at the Innovation Speaker Series at Road America near Elkhart Lake, the Kroeners reflected on and answered questions about their entrepreneurial journey.

Which markets are you eyeing currently?

Amanda: “We’re currently only in 22 states. We want to be in all the rest of them.”

Adam: “Our lack of scale is 100% our choice. There’s actually about four or five brands that we are outpacing in national sales that started around the same time we did, and they decided to go national. We just sell a ton in a small space. We have inbounds from distributors in every single state, but we are moving at a pace that fits us. We want to do this the right way, we want this brand to exist in 30 years instead of being a flash in the pan for two or three.”

To what do you attribute the speed of your growth?

Adam: “Our growth feels very organic. What feels really fast to you feels like eons to us. In consumer packaged goods, there’s product and there’s execution. We believe our product is the best product on the market. There’s a ton of good products that sit on store shelves and never move. There’s also a ton of really crappy products that are executed very well within the market that end up moving because a team executes it so well. So, we’ve got a premium, awesome product, and we’ve got a team of amazing individuals who execute this product day in and day out. Everything we do is a mile deep and an inch wide.”

Amanda: “We also realized very early on that being a personal brand meant a lot more to us. Rewind to 2019, we’d get a babysitter on the weekends, and we would sample from morning to night, the two of us. We later hired some companies that do promotional events and we realized that they were never going to love the brand as much as we love the brand. We eventually decided to bring that operation in-house, and we now have over 2,000 brand ambassadors that are out there sampling every day, getting liquid to lips, and that is a true differentiator.”

What is it like working together as a couple and as parents?

Adam: “At first, there was a ton of fights and arguments, but now I think we just respect each other, we love each other and we care about each other. We realize we’re in this for the long haul, so some questions we ask of one another just come from difference in perspective (rather than a blatant critique).”

Amanda: “In 2022, between roles at my other companies, I tried to jump into the business, and it didn’t work. The business wasn’t big enough for both of us to provide the value we wanted, and it created a lot of tension. I was traveling but I also wanted to be the consistent parent at home. I felt like I had lost everything that I had built in my corporate career. We both had to dig deep and realize that (her not joining the business) was the right decision for us at the time, even though it was so hard to sit back and see all the things I was missing as our company started to grow. So fast forward to when I did come into the business, I think we were both pretty nervous about it, but it’s been amazing. We’ve had a year to travel together and catch up on all the things we had missed when we were apart. We are having so much fun, and we’re both finding ourselves again after being so wrapped up in growing this business and raising our family.”