- A leaked 2024 deck shows how Emma Chamberlain aimed to grow her coffee company to $33 million in revenue this year.
- Chamberlain Coffee had some growing pains but planned to expand through retail and promotions.
- Other online and Hollywood stars have ventured into new business lines, with mixed success.
Superstar influencer Emma Chamberlain’s coffee brand has big ambitions but experienced growing pains last year — and they’re both detailed in a pitch deck obtained by Business Insider.
Chamberlain Coffee hit some bumps last year, partly due to supplier issues that led to stocking problems at stores, the 2024 deck revealed. But it expected to bounce back in a major way, with the deck projecting revenue to grow by more than 50% in 2025 to over $33 million.
The deck said the company eyed a “strong path to profitability by 2026.” It’s now expecting to reach that goal this year, a person familiar with the company told BI.
Late last year, it started prioritizing profitability over aggressive growth, this person said. After significant cost-cutting, it was in the black for the first two months of the year and expects to be profitable for all of 2025.
Chamberlain, now 23, catapulted to internet fame by posting funny videos about her mundane teenage life before becoming a high-fashion star. She’s represented brands including Louis Vuitton and Cartier and played Vogue’s red-carpet correspondent at the Met Gala.
She’s one of the internet’s most influential creators, with over 12 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 15 million Instagram followers. She cracked Time magazine’s list of the 25 most influential people on the internet when she was just 18, and ranked No. 14 on Forbes’ list of top creators last year.
Like many creators, including MrBeast, Chamberlain is now also a big business. She parlayed her online fame into a line of consumer goods, launching Chamberlain Coffee, a product that befits her longtime coffee habit, in 2019. (“I drank so much coffee I literally feel buzzed,” Chamberlain said in a 2019 video.)
In the era of the multi-hyphenate, many celebrities have made forays into product lines and other businesses. Some have found success. Bloomberg recently reported that MrBeast was making more money from his chocolate bars than his videos. But some categories have become crowded with similar product offerings, and The Information reported last month that certain investors had soured on celebrity brands in general. Some celebrity-fronted production companies have also faced recent challenges as Hollywood has pared back on spending.
As celebrities build businesses across various sectors — harnessing the power of the creator economy — the successes and failures of different brands are closely watched by would-be investors and the broader public.
The deck and other information gathered by BI provide a picture of Chamberlain Coffee’s trajectory over the past year, as well as more recent tweaks to its strategy.
The company grew aggressively, going from selling in 500 to 10,000 stores in one year as it cracked Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, and more. It added new products in colorful cans and packaging with an emphasis on cold drinks. In January, it opened a brick-and-mortar café in Los Angeles where fans can sip her signature cold brew.
Still, Chamberlain’s brand has encountered challenges familiar to many startups, as the leaked deck reveals. It contains data up to the second quarter of 2024 and projects performance for 2025 and beyond.
Last year, Chamberlain Coffee went out to investors in search of another $5 million to $10 million. (The company previously said it had raised a combined $14 million in 2022 and 2023 rounds, led by investors including Blazar Capital, UTA, and Volition Capital.) It was able to raise an undisclosed amount in recent months, the person familiar with the company said.
In the 2024 fundraising deck, Chamberlain Coffee acknowledged growing pains, which it blamed on issues caused by a former co-packer — a company that handles packaging and labeling for consumer products — that led to Chamberlain’s coffee being out of stock at some retailers.
It also referred to the work it was doing to get the product mix and formulations right. In the deck, the company forecast that 2024 revenue would grow 14% to $22 million after nearly doubling two years before. Some of the details in the deck were previously reported by The Ankler.
Chamberlain Coffee said in the deck that it was fixing these problems. The company said it was working with larger-scale suppliers to grow retail sales, its biggest channel, and planned to double its promotional spending. After focusing on a larger mass-market expansion, it’s now concentrating on certain retailers like Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Target, the person familiar with the company said.
The deck also laid out the brand’s plan to expand its line of matcha, which it characterized as beloved by Gen Z. In fact, the brand’s appeal to Gen Z is a big part of its positioning in the deck.
It categorizes rival brands like this: Folgers is for boomers, Starbucks and La Colombe are for Gen X, and Blue Bottle and Stumptown Coffee Roasters are for millennials. But Chamberlain Coffee is made for Gen Z, with its emphasis on canned coffee, flavored drinks, and matcha. The company said in the deck that pre-made drinks and packaged coffees each made up about a third of the company’s retail sales at the time, with matcha making up a fifth of sales.
In the deck, Chamberlain Coffee also emphasized the company’s ties to its famous founder and ability to drive promotion based on her popularity, citing collabs with Kendall Jenner’s 818 tequila brand, Levi’s, Erewhon, and others. It pointed to the exposure it’s scored from stars like Shawn Mendes and Kylie Jenner.
Looking forward, the deck outlined the company’s bet on cafés, which it saw as a way to increase awareness of the brand and cross-sell bagged coffee and canned drinks alongside brewed coffee and pastries. It expected the first café to generate $1.8 million with a 17% EBITDA margin. The deck said the first five cafés would be jointly funded by an unnamed partner that would fully fund the expansion.
The company saw an exit in its future, with the deck saying it was on the radar of several industry players. It listed Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and JDE Peet’s among potential acquirers.
Here are some key slides from the deck Chamberlain Coffee used to pitch investors in 2024 on its next phase of growth:
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