JoJo Fletcher — and her family — are officially at the top of their spritz game.
“We had a family dinner and we were like, ‘I’m tired of making these spritzes. They taste different every time, I’m tired of wasting a bottle of Prosecco. Surely this is already canned and ready to go.’ Turns out there wasn’t anything that we liked,” Fletcher, 34, told Us Weekly at a recent dinner for her alcohol brand, Saint Spritz, at the Butcher’s Daughter in New York City. “And so we were like, ‘Should we do this?’”
Noting her family is “very close in general,” Fletcher — who married her Bachelorette winner, Jordan Rodgers, in May 2022 — said “the coolest thing about working with your family is that there’s that trust factor.”
“You can’t find that everywhere. We all know each other better than anybody else,” she said. “So in any work situation, you could have a bad day, you could have a tough time, but they understand you. There’s that level of comfortability that just makes working together so much easier. And also on the other side of that, we can shoot each other straight and not be worried about offending anyone.”
Fletcher works with brother Ben, sister-in-law Mallory and Mallory’s sister, Jordan, on the business. “The two brothers that scared away Ben Higgins — [Mallory’s husband] was the oldest of the two,” she joked to Us, referring to her infamous hometown date on The Bachelor in 2016.
Saint Spritz just celebrated launching at Target and becoming the No. 1 wine cocktail at the retailer. “The fact that we were able to accomplish that within 60 days of launching in Target nationally was like, ‘Holy moly, I think we’re onto something.’ It was so freaking cool. So proud of our team,” Fletcher gushed.
So what makes their drinks — available in the flavors Saint Spritz Amalfi, Saint Spritz Hugo and Saint Spritz Sicily — so great?
“We want the consistency of the perfect spritz every time. And I think what we did that was a little different is we tried to make all of ours a little bit more palatable. Sometimes if you order an Aperol spritz at a bar, you’re like, ‘Whoa, this is too syrupy,’ or, ‘This is too bitter.’ We tried to make all of ours very light, refreshing and balanced across the board,” she said, adding that the drinks are free of added sugar and dyes. “We’re so much more aware of what we are putting in our bodies. When I was drinking traditional spritzes, I had no clue about all the things that were in them — Red 40, Yellow 6.”
Calling herself “the detail freak” of the group, Fletcher “spent so much time on the packaging, the aesthetic and the storytelling of the brand.”
“It’s the first thing that anybody sees,” she explained. “We went through so many different variations, but we came down to the stripes. We wanted [customers] to think of Italian, striped umbrellas and with those little pops of color to make you just feel happy when you think about your favorite spritz.”
As a reality TV vet herself, Fletcher is aware that she isn’t the first one to create a canned cocktail. On the last season of Summer House, star Kyle Cooke and Southern Charm personality Craig Conover were at odds when Paige DeSorbo’s then-boyfriend worked with a competitor (Spritz Society) to Cooke’s Loverboy.
“I need to call Paige DeSorbo and get her a spritz in her hand and throw it into the mix,” Fletcher joked of missing out on the reality TV spritz wars. “Maybe she’s moved on from that. It’s really funny in the Bravo world.”
If DeSorbo is looking for a drink to sip on, Fletcher would hand her the Hugo.
“Amalfi was our original, inspired by a love of the Aperol spritz. Hugo is the It Girl for me. When we were developing this, it was before Hugo even had its moment in the U.S. so we felt proud to be a little bit ahead of the curve,” she said. “I could drink way too many of these. But I, obviously, love all of them.