Miles Teller Sells Stake in the Finnish Long Drink, in $325M Sale
Miles Teller
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In 2019, Miles Teller became yet another marquee name in a long list of celebrities to enter the adult beverage sector. It wasn’t 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 — makers of White Claw, a top-selling hard seltzer brand — for a reported $325 million.
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“I don’t really talk numbers,” says Teller of the acquisition, refusing to disclose his take-home total. “I was always taught that’s not in good taste. All I’ll say is that I’m not retiring from acting anytime soon.”
Courtesy of Long Drink
Nevertheless, equity exits of this order aren’t 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’re proven wrong. Over the last 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.
Teller, 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.
All 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 6th largest spirit-based ready-to-drink in the US for 2025.
Pushing it never felt like tedious work because this was a project Teller took on of his own accord. And that’s 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.
For 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’s now exiting with blockbuster box office numbers.
In an exclusive interview, the star, who has a supporting role in Michael — out on April 24 —talks about his hands-on role in building the brand, and why you’ll never see him on Instagram.
Congratulations on the acquisition. How have you been celebrating these past few days?
I’ve been feeling very proud. I’m very excited for our founders. How cool for them to come from a country where they don’t export a lot of things on the global stage. But this drink — their national beverage — for them to bring this product here that they believed in and to scale it and grow it organically, it’s the true American dream.
How does it feel different, achieving this type of success as a businessman versus as an artist?
I find them to be very similar. With a movie, I sign onto it because I really believe in its potential. And from there you don’t feel like you’re promoting something so much as you’re supporting something and it’s 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.
Was there ever any long-term