Bringing Throne Sport Coffee to the mainstream

STAMFORD, CALIF. — Change is on the horizon for Throne Sport Coffee following its latest leadership announcement. The functional coffee company has named Julia Perez as its chief marketing officer.

Perez’s appointment follows the company’s latest fundraising round, which resulted in $10 million that will be dedicated to growing the business.

“The company and the brand have a lot of momentum right now, so I’m excited to join,” Perez said. “(The company) is still early enough where you can really come in and shape the brand for the future, but it’s also at a time where there is already strong cultural and athletic credibility there.”

The functional coffee company was founded in 2024 by its chief executive officer Michael Fedele, an experienced leader in sports nutrition beverages. The company also has support from National Football League quarterback Patrick Mahomes, an investor.

Like Fedele, Perez is well-versed in beverage-focused leadership. Prior to joining Throne, she was the CMO of OWYN, a plant-based sports nutrition brand, and helped grow the company to over $160 million, up from $30 million, before securing its $280 million acquisition by Simply Good Foods.

Before that, Perez was on the Core Water team and helped lead the company to a $525 million acquisition by Keurig Dr Pepper.

Now, Perez is taking the strategies she learned from her previous roles and is planning on using them to scale Throne.

Perez said OWYN’s marketing initiatives contributed to the company’s growth.

“We were very thoughtful and strategic about how we were growing and how we were investing,” Perez said. “We were really intentional and lean and smart about where we put our dollars, and we focused on the ‘unsexy’ foundations and fundamentals of how to run a business.”

Scaling OWYN’s omnichannel presence was a pivotal strategy for the company’s growth, Perez said. The company focused on understanding the digital shopping category and invested in retail media channels.

“I think we were really early adopters to understanding how that journey is changing through our investments in our ‘dot com’s,’” Perez said. “I’m really looking forward to bringing that digital foundation that I grew at OWYN and influencing that at Throne.”

Perez also was mindful of how she implemented partnerships with influencers through a community-focused lens. Perez said they stayed away from just paying influencers to “post about them” but instead worked to turn them into “brand evangelists.” She hopes to replicate the strategy with Throne’s focus on working with professional athletes.

Throne Sport Coffee ready-to-drink lattes are available in four flavors.

| Photo: Throne Sport Coffee

“It’s really important that we’re deepening our relationship with our athletes and our VIPs in a way that maintains authenticity because those athlete relationships are part of the brand’s DNA when it was created,” Perez said.

The company regularly collaborates with professional athletes for marketing purposes, but Perez plans to elevate the relationships through formulation advice and flavor decisions. Additionally, as the company grows and expands its roster of athlete partners, she wants the partnerships to be regionalized.

“You’re not going to see the same athlete in point-of-sale assets in Chicago as you would in New York,” she said.

Perez’s leadership experience combined with the recent fundraising is pushing the company into expanding its distribution footprint, brand awareness and product innovation.

“You’ll see that growth over the next six months,” Perez said.

The company’s products were included in 7,000 accounts at the start of 2026. Distribution is expected to reach over 20,000 accounts by July, according to the company.

The growth of the functional beverage category and increased competition in the space does not phase Perez. She said Throne’s commitment to ingredients perceived to be clean and its athlete partnerships help give the company a point of differentiation.

The functional coffee is free from artificial sweeteners, instead using natural cane sugar to sweeten the beverage. Additionally, the company’s ready-to-drink lattes contain 100% of the recommended daily value of B vitamins, 150 mg of caffeine  and 10 grams of protein derived from lactose-free milk.

“For Throne, our ambition for this brand has always been more of a mass market play, so I do not foresee us going down the super niche functional benefits trail right now,” Perez said. “I think it’s really about just maintaining that this brand was built hand-in-hand with professional athletes, and the ingredients are going to be things that you recognize.”