Sandro Roco

Sandro Roco is a Filipino-American entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Sanzo, the first Asian-inspired sparkling water brand in the United States.^[2] He launched the company in July 2019 after careers in nuclear engineering, investment banking, and direct-to-consumer fashion, hand-delivering the first 3,000 cans himself across New York City.^[2][15] Sanzo has since expanded to more than 3,500 retail locations nationwide — including Whole Foods, Target, Sprouts, Albertsons, and over 2,000 Panda Express locations — and has raised approximately $16.3 million in venture funding.^[6][5][2]

Roco was born in Queens, New York, to Filipino immigrant parents and raised in central New Jersey, where his family was among the first Asian households in a predominantly Italian-American, Irish-American, and Polish-American town.^[2] He graduated from Villanova University in 2009 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and spent the next decade moving through nuclear power, Wall Street, a short-lived men's styling startup, and a five-year tenure at venture-backed fashion company Bombfell before founding Sanzo.^[15][2] The brand name is a portmanteau of his given names, Alessandro and Lorenzo.^[15]

Sanzo's product line — made with real fruit and no added sugar, artificial flavors, or preservatives — includes flavors rooted in specific Asian culinary traditions: calamansi (Philippines), lychee (Southeast Asia), Alphonso mango (India), yuzu (Japan), and pomelo.^[3][6] The company achieved 5x year-over-year revenue growth in both 2020 and 2021, and its direct-to-consumer channel grew more than 600 percent during the pandemic.^[3][4] Roco has described the brand's mission as bridging Eastern and Western cultures through food, and has been recognized as one of the most prominent Filipino-American founders in the consumer packaged goods industry.^[2][12]

Alessandro Lorenzo Roco was born in Queens, New York, to parents who had immigrated from the Philippines.^[2] His family later moved to central New Jersey, where they were one of the first Asian families in a town that was predominantly Italian-American, Irish-American, and Polish-American.^[2] Roco has said his parents raised him in an assimilatory atmosphere — he grew up eating Filipino food at family gatherings and chicken parm with neighbors — and that his appreciation for his Asian-American heritage developed gradually through the 2010s.^[2] He visited family in the Philippines regularly as a child, where he first tasted calamansi-infused beverages, a flavor memory that would later anchor Sanzo's product line.^[2]

As a teenager, Roco worked as a delivery driver for his then-girlfriend's family's deli, serving dentists' offices and construction companies.^[15] He has described the experience as his earliest connection to the food industry and to the rhythms of a small, family-owned business.^[15] He enrolled at Villanova University, where he studied chemical engineering with a minor in general business, graduating in 2009.^[15][2]

Exelon Nuclear (2009–2012)

After graduating from Villanova, Roco took a position as a Systems Engineer II at Exelon Nuclear, one of the largest nuclear power operators in the United States, working at a plant in Pennsylvania.^[15] He spent approximately three years in the role.^[15] Roco has said he chose the job by optimizing for "title, salary, and benefits" rather than asking what he would learn — a pattern he later identified as the central mistake of his twenties.^[1]

J.P. Morgan (2012–2013)

Roco left nuclear engineering for the credit derivatives trading floor at J.P. Morgan, working as a fixed income associate in New York.^[15] While there, he began developing a fashion app on the side — the first sign of his entrepreneurial instincts.^[15] When he told an executive director on his team that he was leaving to join a startup, the response was blunt: stay in banking.^[1] Roco later called it the worst advice he ever received, saying the executive's definition of risk and his own "were wildly different."^[1]

Dapp (2013)

Roco's side project became his first company: Dapp, a door-to-door men's personal styling service he founded in 2013.^[15] The venture lasted approximately five months before Roco was recruited to join Bombfell, a more established venture-backed company in the same space, as one of its earliest business hires.^[15][2]

Bombfell (2013–2018)

Roco joined Bombfell — an online personal styling service for men that had raised approximately $10 million in venture capital — as employee number seven, starting in customer experience and operations.^[2][15] Over five years he rose through a series of roles: senior manager of marketing and business development, director of strategic initiatives, head of growth, and ultimately chief of staff, sitting directly next to the founder and CEO.^[2]

The experience proved formative. Roco has said he witnessed "first hand the ups and downs the co-founding team went through" — the fundraising, the pivots, the team dynamics — and that the role gave him the operational knowledge he later used to build Sanzo.^[2] It was also at Bombfell that the sparkling water insight first took shape: the office fridge, stocked through a delivery service, cycled through the same flavors — lemon, lime, grapefruit, mixed berry — with no Asian flavors represented.^[14] With the support of his Bombfell bosses, Roco spent nearly a year incubating Sanzo while still employed, leaving only when the new brand had secured ten retail accounts.^[2][15]

Sanzo (2019–present)

The founding insight. In 2018, Roco was walking through H Mart in Manhattan's Koreatown when he noticed a gap he could not unsee.^[2] The legacy Asian beverage brands on the shelves were filled with sugar, preservatives, and artificial flavors.^[3] The clean-label sparkling water brands in mainstream retailers — the LaCroixs and Spindrifts — had no Asian flavors at all.^[14] At the same time, Asian culture was entering the American mainstream at an accelerating pace: Crazy Rich Asians was the number-one film at the box office, K-pop was reaching a fever pitch, and Asian food was reshaping American dining.^[2] Roco saw a disconnect between the cultural moment and the grocery aisle.^[14]

Prototyping and launch. Roco spent the remainder of 2018 learning beverage manufacturing while still at Bombfell, prototyping formulas in his Queens apartment with measuring cups, a kitchen scale, sparkling water, and fruit purees.^[15][2] He left his job in March 2019 when he had secured ten accounts.^[15] The first production run — lychee cans — rolled off a line in Brooklyn in the summer of 2019, and Roco hand-delivered every one of the initial 3,000 cans himself.^[2] Sanzo launched in July 2019 with three flavors: Lychee, Alphonso Mango, and Calamansi — the last a Filipino citrus fruit Roco grew up drinking and which he has called "an opportunity to honor my family's heritage."^[2][4]

Early growth and seed funding. Sanzo initially sold through foodservice accounts and local natural grocers in New York before expanding to approximately 300 stores across New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago by mid-2020.^[4] In August 2020, the company raised $1.3 million in seed funding — more than double its original $600,000 target — from angel investors including Away co-founder Jen Rubio, Adobe's Scott Belsky, and Boba Guys co-founders Andrew Chau and Bin Chen.^[4][5] Roco chose angel investors over institutional capital deliberately, saying the structure allowed him to "make sound business decisions and not get rushed into over-distribution just to fuel that certain top line goal."^[4] During the pandemic, Sanzo's direct-to-consumer channel grew more than 600 percent, and the company achieved 5x year-over-year revenue growth in both 2020 and 2021.^[3] The DTC repeat purchase rate exceeded 30 percent.^[3]

Retail expansion and Series A. In 2021, Sanzo added direct store delivery distribution and expanded its retail footprint beyond its initial DTC-heavy model.^[13] The company raised a $5 million bridge round the same year.^[19] In September 2021, Sanzo partnered with Marvel Studios for the premiere of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, producing limited-edition cans that drove a 6x spike in ecommerce revenue that month.^[10][17] In February 2022, the company closed a $10 million Series A led by CircleUp Growth Partners, with participation from Convivialite Ventures, Semillero Partners, Gold House Ventures, Kaya Ventures, and former Coca-Cola chief growth officer Francisco Crespo.^[3][9][18] At the time of the close, Sanzo's team numbered roughly 15 employees — one-quarter to one-half the size of comparable high-growth brands, by Roco's estimate.^[3]

By March 2022, Sanzo was available in all Whole Foods Market locations nationwide — a milestone Roco described as when "things started getting pretty interesting for us."^[16][18] Whole Foods named Sanzo's Yuzu Ginger flavor its number-two top food trend to watch in 2022.^[3] The brand also entered more than 2,000 Panda Express locations, as well as Target, Albertsons, Sprouts, Stop & Shop, and Erewhon.^[2][6] Sanzo's entry into Target was facilitated by the Target Takeoff Food & Beverage accelerator program, which the brand completed in 2021.^[8]

Cultural partnerships and brand collaborations. Roco built Sanzo's marketing strategy around cultural moments rather than traditional advertising. In February 2022, the brand partnered with NBA player Jeremy Lin to release a limited-edition Asian Pear flavor commemorating the tenth anniversary of "Linsanity," timed to the release of the HBO documentary 38 at the Garden.^[10] Roco noted that just 14 months earlier, the Marvel cans had been sold exclusively direct-to-consumer; the Lin collaboration was distributed primarily through retail, reflecting the brand's rapid expansion.^[10] In 2022, Sanzo also announced a collaboration with Pixar — its third movie partnership within a year featuring Asian characters.^[3] In the summer of 2023, the brand became the official sparkling water sponsor of the Professional Pickleball Association and launched cross-category collaborations with eyewear brand Covry, pickleball paddle maker Nettie, and Bachan's Japanese BBQ Sauce.^[8]

Continued fundraising and growth. By mid-2023, Sanzo had surpassed 3,000 retail doors and was generating over 80 percent of its revenue from retail channels.^[6][8] Household penetration was growing 300 percent year over year.^[8] In January 2024, the company opened a new round targeting $8 million, having already raised $5 million, with investors including actor Simu Liu, DJ and producer Steve Aoki, Health-Ade co-founder Vanessa Dew, and HartBeat Ventures managing partner Takeshi Nakanishi.^[5][7][11] Total funding across all rounds reached approximately $16.3 million.^[5] In early 2023, the company debuted a pomelo flavor with a redesigned "cut fruit" can aesthetic.^[6][20]

Roco has described the day-to-day reality of running Sanzo nearly five years in as still requiring him to operate "both in the very tactical day-to-day as well as be thinking one, three, five and even 10 years down the line, all at the same time."^[1] As of early 2024, the brand was distributed in more than 3,500 retail doors.^[11]

Whole Foods Market named Sanzo's Yuzu Ginger flavor its number-two top food trend to watch in 2022.^[3] Sanzo was selected for the Target Takeoff Food & Beverage accelerator program in 2021, which facilitated the brand's entry into Target retail locations.^[8] NOSH, the CPG trade publication, profiled Roco as part of a feature on next-generation AAPI founders reclaiming Asian consumer packaged goods in 2023.^[12]

Roco is a founding member and former board member of Naturally New York, an organization that connects emerging CPG brands with resources and networks in the New York natural products community.^[15] He served as a mentor at First Round Capital's Fast Track program from 2018 to 2019, advising early-stage founders while still at Bombfell.^[15] He has spoken publicly about mentoring Filipino-American founders, saying: "There's not enough of us Filipino American founders out there. I don't think of it as a burden to be one of the few; there's great power and responsibility to help the next generation."^[2]

Roco lives in Brooklyn, New York.^[1] He was born in Queens to Filipino immigrant parents who, as he has described it, "traveled halfway across the world with no network, no job, and raised three kids" — an experience he has cited as the model for his own reframing of risk.^[2] The calamansi flavor in Sanzo's lineup holds particular personal significance; Roco has called it "a Filipino fruit I grew up loving" and "an opportunity to honor my family's heritage."^[2] He has described his career path — from nuclear engineering to Wall Street to fashion to sparkling water — as "quite a bit all over the place."^[15]