From Research Brewer to Energy Drink Entrepreneur
There are not many people who can say they helped develop White Claw, worked as a research brewer at Anheuser-Busch, ran their own brew pubs, did a stint in corporate strategy at FedEx, and then came back to the beverage world to launch an energy drink with their son. Tony Vieira can say all of that. And he has the stories to back it up.
Tony has been in the beverage industry for 36 years. He is a brewmaster by training with a biology degree and an MBA from Vanderbilt. He started his career in the research brewery at Anheuser-Busch, where he worked on experimental batches, hop evaluations, and malt testing on a brewpub-sized system that took in raw grain and malted it on-site. One of those early projects in 1989 was a clear beer, which laid the groundwork for products he would help bring to market decades later at Mark Anthony Brewing, including Mike’s Hard Lemonade and White Claw.
The White Claw Explosion
Tony believes White Claw may be the fastest growing product in the history of alcohol. During his time at Mark Anthony Brewing, demand was so high that the logistics team had to allocate orders. You would request a full pallet and get a tenth of it because they were splitting supply across distributors. They built three breweries in a couple of years, two of them over a million square feet, just to keep up with production.
What made it take off? Tony thinks it came down to something simple. It was the one product that both guys and girls could agree on. Fraternities were ordering pallets of it. The cost of throwing a party went up because a punch bowl no longer cut it. It was a cultural shift, and it happened fast.
The Science Behind Your Drink
We got into the science of distillation and what actually causes a hangover. Tony broke down how distillers separate the heads, tails, and hearts of a distillate, and why the major producers are meticulous about quality. The idea that Japanese whiskeys give you fewer hangovers than American ones? Tony is not buying it. He explained that most hangovers come down to overconsumption and how your body metabolizes alcohol into acetaldehyde, which is what causes the headaches. He also dropped a fascinating stat: about 25% of Asian men cannot metabolize acetaldehyde efficiently, which makes them more susceptible to the effects of alcohol.
We were sipping on Yamazaki, a Japanese single malt, while talking about it. And Tony has a Guinness tap in his garage, which immediately earned my respect.
From Brew Pubs to FedEx and Back
After leaving Anheuser-Busch, Tony ran his own brew pubs. That is where he said the real learning happened. At a major brewery, you have million-dollar lab equipment and a team of corporate brewers behind you. At a brew pub, you have nothing. If you cannot figure out why a batch did not turn out, nobody is coming to save you. It sharpened his technical skills in a way the corporate world never could.
Then came a curveball. When Coors closed the Memphis plant where Tony was working, his family was settled. His kids were in high school, his 90-year-old grandmother was living with them, and he had just finished his MBA at Vanderbilt with a focus on corporate strategy. He took the hit instead of relocating and went to work at FedEx. But brewing kept pulling him back. He launched a contract brewing business called Naked Lion during that time because, as he put it, you cannot get beer out of your system once it is in there.
Mocean Energy: The Adults in the Room
The idea for Mocean Energy started about six years ago when Tony’s son Christian was in a hospital at 2 a.m. while his wife was in labor with their first child. He went to grab a caffeine boost and all he could find were neon-colored, candy-flavored energy drinks. He realized he had outgrown that market. A few weeks later, he told Tony the story, and Tony said, “Well, we could make an energy drink.”
They decided to be the adults in the room. Instead of targeting 16 to 24-year-old males with extreme branding, they would make something for everyday people. Tony pulled from his own childhood for the formulation. His mother Karina, a four-foot-ten Filipino woman, was what he lovingly calls a witch doctor. If Tony got sick as a kid, she would pull out the echinacea, ginseng, and elderberry. It worked. Those ingredients became the backbone of the Mocean formula, built around an Eastern medicine approach with functional benefits like immunity and antioxidants at bioavailable doses, not the 1000% RDA overkill you see on most energy drink labels.
They finished production in November of last year and are currently selling on Amazon and their website at drinkmocean.energy, along with some mom and pop shops. Tony is on Cape Cod and Christian is in Orange County, so they are running a bicoastal operation. They are gearing up for retail reset conversations this summer to push into larger stores for 2027.
An Incredible Backstory
Tony also shared his family history, which is one of the most powerful origin stories I have heard on this show. He was born in the Philippines in 1967 in the same clinic where his grandmother died. His mother was born in a jungle during World War II because his great-grandfather took her mother away from the family so the noise of childbirth would not attract Japanese soldiers. While they were away, the rest of the family was killed. His mother later survived a violent attack at age 15 that also claimed her own mother’s life when the hospital only had enough blood for one of them. His grandmother refused the blood so that her daughter could live.
Tony’s family eventually came to the United States, and he grew up in southern New Hampshire. He played soccer, met his wife in college, and had a son during their junior year. He graduated with a biology degree and a one-year-old, sent his resume to Anheuser-Busch figuring they owed him a job after all the Budweiser he drank in college, and the rest is history.
April Fools and Durian Energy Drinks
One of the best moments was hearing about their April Fools prank. They printed real cans and announced the world’s first durian-flavored energy drink. It got picked up by around 900 news outlets, including the Manila Times, which Tony called a personal win given his Filipino heritage. Christian filmed a spoof of the McDonald’s Big Arch CEO tasting video. What he did not know was that Tony had spiked the carbonated water inside the cans with Mama Lam’s hot Malaysian sauce. Watching his son figure it out mid-take was, in Tony’s words, priceless.
That dynamic between father and son is what makes this brand feel different. Half their time together is spent trying to make each other laugh. The other half is building a business with decades of industry knowledge behind it.
Where to Find Mocean Energy
- Website: drinkmocean.energy
- Amazon: Search “Mocean Energy” (M-O-C-E-A-N)
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