Crooked Pop Names Diageo and Zevia Veteran Lee Schill CCO Ahead of National Expansion

Crooked Pop, the organic zero-sugar hard soda brand founded by Ben Weiss, the creator of Bai, has named Lee Schill as Chief Commercial Officer as the company prepares to move beyond its East Coast launch into national distribution.

Schill arrives with 25 years of CPG experience, including two decades at Diageo and, most recently, a distribution leadership role at Zevia. In the new position, he will oversee sales, distributor partnerships, revenue growth, and channel strategy.

The hire signals a deliberate shift from early-market building to scaled commercial execution. Crooked Pop's lineup, which includes Cherry Lime, Orange Cream, and Blackberry varieties, is built around a proprietary organic alcohol base made with quinoa, millet, amaranth, and cassava root. The brand positions its ingredient transparency as a point of differentiation in the hard soda set, describing its fermentation as free of synthetic nutrients and turbo yeasts.

Why it matters

The hard soda segment has attracted growing attention from consumers trading down from spirits-based ready-to-drink products and trading up from conventional flavored malt beverages. Crooked Pop occupies a specific intersection: USDA-certified organic credentials paired with zero sugar, a combination that carries meaningful weight with retailers actively expanding their better-for-you alcohol sets. Bringing in an executive who navigated Diageo's global distribution infrastructure and then applied that knowledge to an independent better-for-you brand at Zevia is a pointed choice. It suggests Crooked Pop intends to compete for shelf space at national grocery and convenience accounts, not merely regional independents. The Bai pedigree of founder Ben Weiss also adds fundraising and retail credibility that most early-stage beverage brands cannot claim, and layering in Schill's commercial depth signals that the company believes its East Coast proof of concept is sufficient to justify the infrastructure cost of a national rollout.

What to watch

The central open question is which retail banners and distribution partners Crooked Pop is targeting for the expansion. Schill's Zevia experience is instructive: Zevia built its natural-channel foothold before pushing into conventional grocery and mass. Whether Crooked Pop follows a similarly staged rollout or attempts a faster, broader channel entry will determine how quickly the brand can generate the velocity data needed to attract retail resets and, eventually, strategic acquirer interest.

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Sources

• Crooked Pop - Organic Hard Soda Pop
• About - Crooked Pop
• About - Crooked Pop