Before she was a Real Housewife, before the talk show, before all of that, Bethenny Frankel built Skinnygirl Cocktails into a brand that sold for roughly $100 million. That's the part of her story that gets overlooked because people focus on the TV stuff, but the business chops are very real.
She grew up in New York, bounced around a bit career-wise in her twenties, and eventually found her lane in food and lifestyle branding. The Skinnygirl margarita started as a simple idea: a pre-made cocktail that was low-calorie and actually tasted decent. It hit the market at exactly the right time when everyone was counting calories but still wanted to have a drink, and it blew up. Beam Global acquired the brand in 2011.
From there she expanded Skinnygirl into a full lifestyle brand covering snacks, supplements, shapewear, you name it. She also wrote several books on food and business, including "Naturally Thin" and "A Place of Yes."
As a guest shark on Shark Tank, Bethenny understands branding and consumer products at a gut level. She built something from scratch, scaled it, sold it, and then did it again in different categories. She's particularly good at evaluating whether a brand has that thing that makes people want to buy into it, not just buy it once.
She's also not afraid to be blunt, which honestly fits right in on the show.
A few things worth knowing:
- Founded Skinnygirl Cocktails, sold to Beam Global for roughly $100 million
- Built Skinnygirl into a multi-category lifestyle brand
- Author of multiple bestselling books on food and business
- Brings real CPG brand-building experience to the Shark Tank panel