Meet Anna Zesbaugh, Founder & CEO, Corpse Reviver
Anna Zesbaugh built Corpse Reviver, an electrolyte beverage brand built on tension: bold enough to hold its own on a crowded shelf, and playful enough to hide the discipline underneath it.
With product in more than 2,000 doors nationwide and freshly named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for Food & Drink (2026), Zesbaugh is currently mid-reformulation directly based on what her customers are asking for. We chatted about building a CPG brand from scratch, her recent ‘gut feeling’ move to NYC, and what it takes to earn shelf space, one relationship at a time.
Tell us who you are in a few words.
Hi! I’m Anna Zesbaugh, a midwest gal at heart now living in Williamsburg, NY. I love to travel, am always deep in CPG trends, used to teach yoga, and now practice it a lot to stay sane while running a beverage company.
You built Corpse Reviver out of Denver, CO. Tell us about your recent move to NYC.
NYC started as a test and I truly fell in love with it. Denver has been my home for 12 years—I went to college and lived there post-grad. I LOVE Colorado and love Denver, but told myself I wanted to start playing bigger. I felt really called to NYC intuitively, so I decided to make the jump. What started as a two-month test turned into a full-time lease. The CPG community in CO is incredible, but simply due to size, NY is even better. I’m so excited to be building out here and challenging myself in a new way. I love being scared walking into a new room; I know that's where the growth happens.
You spent years in hospitality & wellness before touching a beverage company. How’d you land in the world of CPG?
I got furloughed from my job in luxury hospitality back in 2020, so I fell into it a bit.
You spent three years collecting data and instincts on your first brand, Hooch Booch. What inspired the pivot?
Hooch Booch taught me almost everything I know about this industry and about running my own business—how retail actually works, how people actually shop, what makes someone put a can back down. I feel like I’ve gotten an MBA ten times over at this point.
But somewhere along the way I kept noticing the same thing: people wanted the ritual, not just a healthier drink. They wanted to hold something in their hand at 6pm that felt like an occasion. We attended so many events and people were simply drinking less alcohol. It was noticeable. So we turned to our community of sippers and asked where they felt beverages were currently lacking, and we went back to the drawing board.
People wanted something that was hydrating; could transition seamlessly from morning to night; actually felt ‘craft’ and elevated yet healthy; and not crammed with sugar or fake ingredients. Corpse Reviver was born out of a team brainstorm taking all these insights into account. Where we saw Hooch Booch falling short, we created a beverage that could fill those gaps.
A ‘Corpse Reviver’ is a real 19th-century hangover cure: gin, Cointreau, Lillet, a dash of absinthe. Talk to us about the choice to name your brand after a drink whose whole identity is the alcohol you left out?
Hooch Booch was born during the "Denver prohibition" back in 2020. Everything shut down, bars closed, and people freaked out and started stocking up. That scrappy, a little rebellious energy is where it all started. So when we went back to the drawing board to build an NA option, I knew I wanted to keep that same nod to classic cocktails, that same nerve.
The name also just works for the occasion. A Corpse Reviver was originally meant to be the hair of the dog; the thing you drank to fix what the night before did to you. Now we're reviving you with minerals and actually-good-for-you ingredients instead. It's ‘revival’ in a whole new way.
And honestly, I'd guess only about 20% of people have even heard of the original cocktail, so most people just get to experience the name as this fun paradox: this bold, slightly dark name sitting next to branding that's feminine and playful. People really love that tension. It's not what they expect.
You're WSET II certified and fluent in cocktail culture, but you're building a N/A brand. How do you hold both of those: the craft of drinking and the business of not drinking?
I don't think of them as opposites at all. WSET taught me how to actually taste, to appreciate craft: acidity, bitterness, structure, the way a good drink builds and resolves. That's the exact toolkit I used to build Corpse Reviver. We aren’t trying to make a "healthy" drink—we’re crafting a great tasting one with unique botanicals that also happens to have electrolytes. The craft doesn't disappear just because the ABV does. If anything it gets harder, because you lose the one ingredient that used to do half the work for you.
What have you struggled with and/or learned in these past few months of business?
Right now we're actually in the middle of reformulating Corpse Reviver, so that's taking up a lot of my workday and brain space. Listening to our consumer has led to literally every big decision we've made, this one included. If the people drinking it are telling us something, we listen, even when it means going back to the drawing board for our formulation (and especially because I like it as it stands today). As the business grows, so does our audience, and they’re asking for something just a little more punchy—so here we go!
Ultimately where I've struggled is wanting more, faster. I want the growth right now. What I keep having to relearn is trusting the process and remembering that my timing is always right, even when it doesn't feel fast enough from the inside.
What strikes you about fellow CPG brands and makes you buy in? What are some of your favorites right now?
Packaging is number one for me, full stop. That's what gets me to pick it up. But then the product actually has to be good, or I'm not coming back. Beyond that, I'm really into clean ingredients, and I have a bit of a thing about brands trying to make everything "functional." Sometimes a cookie should just be a cookie. Not everything needs a health claim attached to it to earn its spot on the shelf.
Right now I'm loving Dieux Skincare, Saie Beauty, and a Sourmilk Yogurt bowl with One Trick Pony peanut butter and Purely Elizabeth granola. I love all-things CPG, which is exactly why I started my "Shelf Talks" series where I go through brands I think are winning on the shelf and break down why.
You're on shelves all over the place! What’s a dream shelf you’re hoping to land?
We're actually in a little over 2,000 doors nationwide right now: Walmart, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, Central Market, Erewhon, and more—which still feels wild. But I've got my eyes on a few big ones next: Target, HEB, Wegmans, and Sprouts. Those are the shelves where I know our exact customer is already shopping.
What are you drinking/reading/watching/listening to right now?
Drinking: natural wine this summer. I love hunting down new beverage brands, especially ones that skip the stevia and the high sugar, which is way harder to find than it should be. And obviously our own Botanical and Berry Hibiscus Corpse Reviver. // Reading: Emma Grede's Start With Yourself. // Listening to: Noah Kahan and Olivia Dean on repeat, plus the Hot Smart Rich and How I Built This podcasts.
What's something people get wrong when they hear "electrolyte hydration beverage?”
They hear "electrolytes" and think "post-workout" or "hangover cure,” like it's a category you reach for once a week in an emergency. I want people drinking this on a totally normal Tuesday at 3pm because it tastes good and makes them feel human, not because they're recovering from something.
The second misconception is that hydration has to taste like a chore. It doesn't. That's kind of the whole point of what we are building with Corpse Reviver.
Someone recently wrote that Corpse Reviver is "quietly stealing shelf" in a $4B category. Does the ‘quiet’ part feel true?
Ha! From the outside it's quiet. From the inside it’s extremely loud. Every shelf we land on is the result of a hundred unglamorous, exhausting conversations nobody sees. We don't have a huge social following making a lot of noise, but our velocities in stores are killer—we’re moving, and moving really well.
I actually love that the growth reads as "quiet" because it means we're not buying our way in, we're earning it one relationship at a time. That's slower and it's definitely more tiring, but it's the version I can be proud of in five years.
Is there anything we didn’t ask that you’d like us to cover / anything coming up for you that you want people to know about?
Keep an eye out for our new reformulation of Corpse Reviver 2.0 :))
How should readers get in touch? Drop your links.
drinkcorpsereviver.com / @drinkcorpsereviver / @anna.zezzers
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