On June 1, a pink can with 5 calories and 150mg of green tea caffeine starts landing on shelves at roughly 1,900 Target stores, carrying an exclusive Pink Lemonade flavor that was negotiated specifically for the chain [PRNewswire]. The can belongs to Gorgie, a Boca Raton beverage company founded in 2022 by Michelle Cordeiro Grant, and the Target rollout is the most concrete proof point the company has offered yet that its wellness-coded energy drink is graduating from a community-led DTC brand into mass retail.
The ICP here is straightforward and worth naming up front: women in their twenties and thirties who already drink Celsius, Alani Nu, or matcha, who track ingredients, and who shop the wellness aisle at Target rather than the gas-station cooler. Gorgie's formulation reads directly to that buyer: zero grams of sugar, 5 calories, 150mg of caffeine from green tea, plus Biotin, B vitamins, L-Theanine, and natural flavors with no preservatives [GORGIE Official Website]. The brand's own LinkedIn copy describes itself as "built by women for women, yet inclusive for the whole household" [LinkedIn], which is less a tagline than a shelf-positioning statement against the more masculine-coded incumbents in the energy category.
The bet
Grant raised a $24.5 million Series A in April 2025, led by Notable Capital, the firm formerly known as GGV Capital US [Fortune, April 2025]. Notable's consumer track record (Airbnb, Affirm, Peloton, Quince) is the headline credential, but the more specific signal is that Notable was also an early backer of Grant's first company, LIVELY, in 2017 [PRNewswire]. That is a re-up, not a cold bet. Alix Earle, the TikTok creator with one of the largest Gen Z followings in beauty and lifestyle, is also on the cap table [Fortune, April 2025], which slots cleanly into the brand's community-first acquisition motion.
The wedge Gorgie is buying with the Series A is shelf space. Energy drinks are a distribution business as much as a brand business, and the Target deal puts Gorgie inside the same physical footprint where Celsius and Alani Nu compounded their growth before being acquired or scaled into the billions. A flavor exclusive (Pink Lemonade) is the kind of merchandising commitment a buyer makes when they want a brand to anchor a set rather than fill it.
Series A raised | 24.5 | $M
Target stores at June 1 launch | 1.9 | K stores
Caffeine per can | 150 | mg
Calories per can | 5 | count
(Units differ across rows above; read each line independently, not as a comparison.)
Why it could be big
The better-for-you energy category is one of the few consumer packaged goods stories of the last five years that has actually produced venture-scale outcomes. Celsius went from niche to a multibillion-dollar market cap on the back of a Pepsi distribution deal, and Alani Nu was acquired by Celsius in 2025 for $1.8 billion. The thesis Notable is underwriting is that there is room for a third brand built explicitly around a female-skewing wellness identity, and that Grant is the operator most likely to build it.
Grant's resume is the second pillar of the bet. She spent years as a director at Victoria's Secret before founding LIVELY, a DTC intimates brand that was acquired by Japanese apparel group Wacoal in 2019 [TechCrunch]. Forbes has reported the deal value at $105 million [Forbes], while TechCrunch reported it at $85 million at announcement [TechCrunch]; either way, it is a real exit in a category (DTC apparel) that produced very few of them. Repeat consumer founders with a clean exit and an existing investor relationship are a small population, and that is most of why this round closed at the size it did.
Traction and team
Gorgie is a solo-founder company with Grant as CEO. The publicly cited momentum is the Series A itself and the Target expansion to 1,900-plus doors with a chain-exclusive SKU [PRNewswire]. Revenue figures and unit velocity have not been disclosed, and in the beverage category the metric that actually matters (velocity per store per week, often called "spins") is something buyers and investors will be watching through the back half of 2025 to decide whether the Target set holds, expands, or contracts at the next reset.
The honest counterfactual
The bear case is the same one that applies to every challenger in energy: the competitive set is brutal. Celsius and Alani Nu own the wellness-coded female energy buyer today, Red Bull and Monster own the broader category, and Poppi and Olipop are pulling some of the same shopper into prebiotic sodas one cooler over. Shelf space at Target is a privilege that resets, and a brand that does not move cans gets cut. The bull answer, and it is a credible one, is that Grant has built a consumer brand from zero into a national retailer's set once before, that Notable has watched her do it, and that the formulation and visual identity are differentiated enough on shelf to earn a fair test. The Pink Lemonade exclusive suggests Target's category buyer reached the same conclusion.
What to watch
The next twelve months are about three things: spins data out of Target after the June launch, a second national retailer (a Kroger, Whole Foods, or CVS deal would confirm the thesis), and whether the company can hold ingredient and supply discipline as volume scales. A Series B in 2026 is the likely capital event if the Target set performs, and at that stage the conversation will shift from brand and founder to gross margin, trade spend, and distributor economics. For now, the most interesting consumer launch on a Target endcap this summer is going to be a pink can with Michelle Cordeiro Grant's name behind it.
ICP: wellness-oriented female energy drinkers, 21 to 39, already buying Celsius or Alani Nu at Target and Whole Foods. Realistic competitive set: Celsius, Alani Nu (now part of Celsius), Bloom, and adjacent functional sodas like Poppi and Olipop competing for the same cooler dollar. Procurement cycle is the retail buyer reset, not a SaaS RFP; the renewal motion is whether the SKU survives the next planogram review.
Pipe Haddad, Startuply