{"id":611273,"date":"2026-04-18T00:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611273\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T00:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:04:12","slug":"miles-teller-sells-stake-in-the-finnish-long-drink-in-325m-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611273\/","title":{"rendered":"Miles Teller Sells Stake in the Finnish Long Drink, in $325M Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn 2019, Miles Teller<\/a> became yet another marquee name in a long list of celebrities<\/a> to enter the adult beverage sector. It wasn\u2019t exactly an obvious entry point. The leading man landed a minority stake in The Long Drink Company, makers of an eponymous ready-to-drink spritzer native to Finland, consisting of gin and grapefruit soda. Now he joins an elite group, one of surprisingly few celebrities to cash out significantly on a booze deal. Earlier this week The Finnish Long Drink sold to the Mark Anthony Group of Companies \u2014 makers of White Claw, a top-selling hard seltzer brand \u2014 for a reported $325 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t really talk numbers,\u201d says Teller of the acquisition, refusing to disclose his take-home total. \u201cI was always taught that\u2019s not in good taste. All I\u2019ll say is that I\u2019m not retiring from acting anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Long Drink<\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless, equity exits of this order aren\u2019t as frequent as many suspect. Often, the A-list actors, singers and athletes backing brands believe that consumers need to see nothing more than their recognizable faces on a few Instagram reels in order to meaningfully impact consumer purchasing habits. More often than not, they\u2019re proven wrong. Over the past few years, for example, the industry has seen whiskey from Drake, tequila from Justin Timberlake and vodka from Channing Tatum prominently emerge on shelves only to quietly depart shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n

\n\tTeller, by comparison, took a much more hands-on approach. He criss-crossed the country, hopping behind busy bars on college campuses in Columbus, Bloomington and Ann Arbor. He doled out swag and signed merchandise at golf tournaments outside Reno. He wrote copy for cheeky ad campaigns featuring an animatronic bear. He took meetings with key distributors. He increased his stake in the company, injecting his own capital to help fund a national marketing expansion.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll this movement was instrumental in moving liquid to lips. Since 2022, the brand has more than tripled in size. Sales of 3.3 million 9-liter case equivalents was enough to make it the sixth largest spirit-based ready-to-drink brand in the U.S. for 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\tPushing it never felt like tedious work, because this was a project Teller took on of his own accord. And that\u2019s another key differentiator separating his endeavor from celebrity brands that have sputtered. Most of those partnerships are thrust upon talent at meetings inside WME, CAA and UTA. Teller stumbled upon Long Drink himself at his local New York liquor store, where Finnish co-founders Ere Partanen and Sakari Manninen happened to be hosting a tasting. Teller was taken by the crisp, quaffable drink of their native land. Less than a year later, they were business partners.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a bankable star with indie bona fides, laying down a stake in Long Drink was more like self-funding an auteur project as opposed to being handed a superhero script. Even if he\u2019s now exiting with blockbuster box office numbers.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an exclusive interview, the star, who has a supporting role in Michael \u2014 out on April 24 \u2014 talks about his hands-on role in building the brand, and why you\u2019ll never see him on Instagram.<\/p>\n

\n\tCongratulations on the acquisition. How have you been celebrating these past few days?<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been feeling very proud. I\u2019m very excited for our founders. How cool for them to come from a country where they don\u2019t export a lot of things on the global stage. But this drink \u2014 their national beverage \u2014 for them to bring this product here that they believed in and to scale it and grow it organically, it\u2019s the true American dream.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow does it feel different, achieving this type of success as a businessman versus as an artist?<\/p>\n

\n\tI find them to be very similar. With a movie, I sign on to it because I really believe in its potential. And from there, you don\u2019t feel like you\u2019re promoting something so much as you\u2019re supporting something and it\u2019s very easy to support something that you believe in. There are parts of the country where we outsell every RTD [ready-to-drink beverage] by a fairly big margin. So, when I got to those places and everybody is wearing Long Drink stuff, I take as much pride in that as I do when somebody tells me that they really loved a movie that I was in.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas there ever any long-term intention to enter the beverage space or to be a spokesperson?<\/p>\n

\n\tLong Drink was certainly my first company. It\u2019s the first brand that I ever really attached myself to in this way. I don\u2019t have Instagram, I\u2019m not on TikTok, I\u2019m not on a lot of these platforms that brands think, \u201cWell if he can\u2019t promote it through his own personal channels then how much awareness are we going to get out of it?\u201d And this just really disproves that and it shows, I think, that consumers can really sniff out bullshit. And they can tell when a celebrity is really just trying to get in and out to make a buck. I\u2019ve been involved in this company for over seven years. It was something that I really believed in and we came up with great ways for me to advocate and put my own branding on a part of this.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurely you\u2019ve been pressured to join those social media platforms you mention. Do you think their impact on driving sales is overhyped?<\/p>\n

\n\tI remember early on in my career, even midway through \u2014 up until this point \u2014 I would have agents and people tell me, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get this deal, you\u2019re not going to get that deal, because you\u2019re not on Instagram.\u201d For me, it\u2019s a personal choice. But again, I think how a product lives or dies \u2014 how a movie lives or dies \u2014 is still word of mouth. You can have all the marketing you want in the world, but if people that tried this didn\u2019t like it and they didn\u2019t refer a friend or tell somebody, we were never going to be able to do what we did. We sold 100 million cans in a 12-month period. It all starts with the product, or in film it all starts with the quality of the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo we shouldn\u2019t expect to see you on Instagram anytime soon?<\/p>\n

\n\tI never assumed people would care about the things I was doing all the time. I personally am not all that interested in that. I\u2019m never going to be on the app to just get a little snapshot into somebody else\u2019s life. I like to keep my personal life private and have people get to know me through the movies I align myself with and my association with Long Drink. That\u2019s just my thing. It would just be pictures of my dog, anyhow. I do have Twitter, mostly because it used to be a fast kind of news source. But I pretty much only post about Philadelphia sports, [wife] Keleigh, the Grateful Dead and my dog. I\u2019m fine with people knowing that much about me. (Laughs.)<\/p>\n

\n\tYou said your payout isn\u2019t enough for you to retire from acting, but will it inspire you to pursue, or even self-fund, different sorts of acting projects?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0Yeah, I think if anything, I\u2019ve gravitated toward underdog stories. I really like chip-on-the-shoulder characters, odds stacked against you \u2014 a person or a community. This gives me a lot of confidence to trust my instincts. I\u2019ve been producing for the last several years. Certain actors can get movies made on different budgets. If you can say, \u201cHey I\u2019m attached to this thing, let me find a director and what actors do we like for this, do I have relationships with them?\u201d So, it certainly helps.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt seems like a lot of indie projects kind of have that same startup mentality.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, [working on movies like that] lends itself to believing in startups. A lot of people have a lot of similar skills. But you\u2019re kind of betting on a person. And in this case, our Finnish founders, those are just guys that I bet on. And they bet on me \u2014 as an investor, as someone who could be front-facing on a business. Especially when you look at a lot of the other celebrity-backed brands, it\u2019s a tough market.<\/p>\n

\n\tTalk about the toughness of that market. Did you have a sense of how the adult beverage sector worked before you invested? And why do you think you succeeded where other celebrities have failed?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, well I\u2019ve been a consumer of alcohol for quite a while, so I had a good sense of how that went. (Laughs.) No, but I\u2019m glad you mention it because when I first got involved, I was talking to a distributor and he said, \u201cMiles, I\u2019ve seen a lot of these celebrity brands come and go. They think that just because people like their movies, they\u2019re going to buy their product. That\u2019s not how it goes. The analogy I\u2019m going to give you is when you\u2019re having breakfast, say you have bacon and eggs. The chicken is involved, the pig is committed. You gotta be the pig.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI know you\u2019ve spent a lot of time in bars, publicly pushing Long Drink. But what is a more behind-the-scenes example of that commitment?<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been very involved in so many meetings, from a marketing and financial perspective. With a lot of the marketing, I was very hands on. We did this commercial and some of the guys in-house were writing some comedy copy and we were still a small business and we didn\u2019t have a ton of budget. I said, \u201cJust give me an animatronic bear and I\u2019ll know how to shoot this thing.\u201d Who doesn\u2019t love a friendly animatronic bear?<\/p>\n

\n\tWill you continue to be involved in the brand, or are you ready to move on to the next business venture?<\/p>\n

\n\tAs much as the headline is \u201ca sale,\u201d and it certainly is \u2014 we\u2019re being acquired by Mark Anthony Group of Companies \u2014 but for us, this is an opportunity to continue to scale. [The group] has proven itself and we feel very comfortable and confident with them. So much of this business is awareness of the product. We\u2019ve done incredibly well in sales and still have a relatively low brand awareness. We\u2019re in the single digits percentage-wise for that. I see it more as a handshake and a partnership and the start of something. It\u2019s not the end for us. It\u2019s not like a car dealership, like, \u201cHere\u2019s your car keys, see you later.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re friends with Ryan Reynolds, another actor who benefited from a sizable booze buyout, with his Aviation Gin brand. Has he reached out to congratulate you?<\/p>\n

\n\tThat first wave of guys with Ryan and Clooney and Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman \u2014 it kind of started it all off, where you had a lot of these celebrity copycats come in and say, \u201cOh man, look at this cash grab.\u201d But anyone in the industry will tell you that\u2019s just not how it goes. If you do the research on the celebrity brands, a lot of times it doesn\u2019t work out. It\u2019s tough to build a business, in general. I can tell you, I\u2019ve had a lot of texts from various friends and people who have built companies and had companies fail and they said, \u201cMiles, this is a huge, huge win. It doesn\u2019t happen very often, it\u2019s extremely rare.\u201d I\u2019m sure it\u2019s less than one percent of people who start companies who end up selling it for any kind of profit. It feels good because it was a new arena for me and I\u2019m really proud of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2019, Miles Teller became yet another marquee name in a long list of celebrities to enter the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,24828,230239],"class_list":{"0":"post-611273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-miles-teller","13":"tag-wines-and-spirits"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}