sparkling dreamS

FERNANDA SAMPSON-GOMEZ AND CELZO FLAVORED WATER

WORDS BY NATHAN MATTISE

About four years ago, Fernanda Sampson-Gómez had a particular frustration. The Mexico City native moved to Austin with her wife and wanted to pursue an MBA at the University of

Texas, but she couldn’t find the right beverage to become her de facto work companion.

Sampson-Gómez grew up with agua frescas, but they contain too much sugar for her at this point in life. Many sodas and energy drinks had the same issue. While everyone around Sampson-Gómez reached for seltzer whenever it wasn’t time for caffeine or alcohol, even the growing selection of sparkling waters around Central Texas felt lacking. “Topo Chico and all these waters have some kind of flavor hint, and they’re fine,” she says. “But honestly, I wanted more.”

Sampson-Gómez craved something that simply didn’t seem to exist. Luckily for her, the answer seemed obvious, though: Just make it.

“Celzo has been a dream come true,” Sampson-Gómez says of her new sparkling water brand, which launched in fall 2022. “I wanted to create a product that represents my culture and roots — a drink that represents agua fresca flavors in an elevated and authentic way. And when I’m drinking something, I want it to be functional. So I wanted to find the balance between flavor and health, because in my experience, I’d get trapped there. I’d be craving something with flavor, then I’d look at the nutritional facts and think, ‘Oh damn, that’s a lot of sugar.’ Celzo is a drink where that sacrifice — choosing between flavor and health — no longer exists.”

According to Sampson-Gómez, it took a year and a half for Celzo to go from concept to cans on shelves. That’s impressive, but even more so when you consider this entrepreneur/CEO had no prior background in beverage development or consumer packaged goods. Sampson-Gómez worked in advertising before her time at UT Austin. And while that gave her confidence that she could recognize a market opportunity or identify something with consumer appeal, she knew virtually nothing about formulas or fulfillment. So when she created Celzo, Sampson-Gómez started with the one aspect she did know: flavor.

“I keep wanting to put her on Master Chef, she’s so good with flavor,” says Cat, Fernanda’s wife and co-founder of Celzo.

“Now I get to share some of Fernanda’s heart and flavor with the world, and I love that. There’s this phrase in Spanish that translates to, ‘Where you put the eye, you put the bullet.’

Fernanda was always like, ‘I’ll figure out how to make this thing.’ I saw her go through all this, talking to formulation people or the people who make cans, learning this new vocabulary. For me, it was overwhelming. For her, it was like, ‘OK, now I understand more. What’s next?’”

Celzo comes in three flavors — Lemon/Ginger/Basil, Spicy Tamarind and Strawberry/Hibiscus/Mint — combinations which came from experiments in SampsonGómez’s own kitchen. First, she turned her home into a modern seltzer warehouse, acquiring and trying every sparkling water she could find. She recalls next heading to H-E-B to grab raw ingredients and experiment, trying to settle on the right combinations then refining the balances between flavors. Once she had the right mix, she’d create small samples for friends, family and neighbors to gather feedback.

Sampson-Gómez’s insistence on authentic, robust flavor didn’t stop when Celzo went from DIY to genuine production, either. “When things got more serious and we had an agency working on our formula, I worked very closely with them,” she says. “I’d ask about everything. ‘Why this much of this? What about this?’ To finish Spicy Tamarind, I went to Mexico and bought as many candies, as many references, as I could get. The formula table looked like a little candy store.”

This first run of Celzo offers a noticeably fuller flavor than most seltzers. If many sparkling waters seem carbonation-and water-heavy with just a hint of taste, Celzo essentially flips that script. The Spicy Tamarind can be downright savory with its slight chile essence and an almost creamsicle sweetness on the backend.

In addition to flavor, Sampson-Gómez wants to set Celzo apart through a focus on nutrition. Even as she was advocating for the right taste, the CEO remained adamant on keeping the drink relatively healthy. The current 12-ounce can has only 50 calories and 9 grams of total sugar, versus about 140 calories and 39 grams of sugar in some colas. For the additive functionality Sampson-Gómez desired, each Celzo can proudly contains ingredients like green tea (leading to 30 milligrams of caffeine, about a third of a cup of coffee) and hemp extract. The inclusion of hemp extract specifically was a point of emphasis for Sampson-Gómez, as she uses it herself for anti-inflammation purposes and believes it’s an untapped ingredient in beverages today.

Sampson-Gómez hopes she can release new flavors within the year, and has goals to get Celzo across Texas before eventually distributing across the U.S. and Mexico. For now, it all remains quite new.

Tasting events have been overwhelmingly positive, and customers keep unearthing use cases, too. At one event, people told SampsonGómez that Celzo has become their go-to non-alcoholic option at parties since many mocktails can be overly heavy or sweet. At another event, customers revealed they’ve adopted Celzo as a post-workout drink given it’s less sugar-y than many energy drinks while also offering that hemp extract to aid recovery The brand’s slogan is all about presence and positivity — ”Vive El Momento,” or “Live in the moment” — and, so far, that fits whether you’re talking about customers or the couple at Celzo’s core.

“Cat’s previously been in startups, I previously owned an advertising business. But it’s never like this, where you’re fully immersed in every single angle of the product,” SampsonGómez says. “I’m Mexican, and I feel like we always grow up figuring out things. It’s a talent. So it’s exhausting, it’s a lot, and you have to keep everything working. I have meetings with investors one afternoon, and the next day I’m at a tasting. But having that can in your hand has so much meaning. How can you refuse to be part of this when it’s so fun?”