Greg LaVecchia was standing in a Soho event space four hours before thousands of people were expected to line up down the street when he made the kind of declaration that tends to age badly or age perfectly: Strawberry Shorty, launched in October when most people said it was the wrong season, had just become the number-one product on all of TikTok Shop. Not the top energy drink. Not the top beverage. Everything. That milestone, backed by documentation from TikTok Shop corporate, is the clearest proof yet that the philosophy Bloom has been building on for a decade actually works. The story of how the brand got there, and what a weekend in New York City revealed about where it is going, is worth unpacking.
Launch it now, not when the season says so
When Strawberry Shorty dropped in October, the DMs arrived fast. Fans pointed out it was an ice cream truck flavor, the kind of thing that belongs in a June heatwave, not an autumn weekend. Greg’s response was direct: ‘If you have a good idea as an entrepreneur, launch that thing as fast as you can. Patience is an entrepreneur’s worst energy.’ The flavor sold. It broke records for Bloom internally. And now it sits at the top of an entire platform.
The same urgency shaped how the Big Apple event came together. What started as a plan for a small satellite office trip in New York grew into a full two-day consumer event in Soho, projecting 4,000 to 6,000 attendees across the weekend. Friday night was a VIP session for strategic partners and top creators, everyone dressed in red, the space centered on Crisp Apple, the brand’s number-one-selling flavor since its August 2025 launch. A full cocktail bar, a DJ booth running live the entire weekend, free energy drinks, free snacks, and a mountain of merch that Greg described as ‘the coolest photo booth I have ever seen in my life’ anchored around a giant Crisp Apple prop.
The most telling station in the room had no labels on any of the cans. Five unreleased flavors, golden kiwi, strawberry acai, mango cream, pineapple passion fruit, and raspberry grapefruit, were offered blind to consumers who then ranked them and suggested their own dream combinations. Erica, who ran the booth, explained the logic: ‘We are going to be sampling unreleased flavors. We have five polarizing flavors that our team loves, but we are interested to see if consumers will like it.’ Greg underlined why the in-person tasting beats any survey: someone who would never ask for golden kiwi in an energy drink might love it the moment they try it. Several 2026 Bloom flavors came directly from an identical experience at a previous event.
Stacking days, not chasing moments
In between event prep, Greg LaVecchia kept having the same conversation in different forms. A young founder who had spoken with him six months earlier reappeared at the event and reported that his business had genuinely grown tenfold after implementing the advice. A 16-year-old wrestler showed up and explained he had created an all-natural hydration product in a commercial kitchen, sold out 5,000 bottles with zero paid ads using a single street-style video that got 5,000 likes, and had just secured a $100,000 investor. A firefighter who had been building his personal brand for 88 days hit 10,000 followers and landed a video with 1.9 million views, posting once a day plus three trial reels.
The throughline in every exchange was the same. Growth at Bloom over ten years looks flat when you zoom in and exponential when you zoom out, because it is built from consistent days stacking against each other, not from single breakthrough moments. ‘The algorithm does not lie,’ Greg said. ‘If something is not getting traction on Instagram or TikTok, then people do not want it.’
The weekend closed with a tour of potential New York headquarters spaces. One required six months of construction and was ruled out immediately. The leading candidate had floor-to-ceiling windows that one team member flagged specifically for creators needing natural light. The budget conversation was still live at $100,000 a month, with the question hanging over whether a larger space at $150,000 would be worth it.
The golden kiwi can with no label on it
Five unmarked cans sat in a row on the blind-tasting table, the pineapple passion fruit entry carrying the footnote that Greg personally cannot stand pineapple.
The weekend proved that Bloom’s real product development lab is a room full of strangers who do not yet know what they want until they taste it. The pink trucks, the last-minute event pivots, the founder posting every day without embarrassment: none of it is accidental. Strawberry Shorty is number one on all of TikTok Shop, launched in October, in defiance of the ice cream truck calendar, and that detail keeps getting harder to argue with.
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