Liquid Death appoints Karim Sadik-Khan as CFO

Liquid Death, a healthy beverage platform and one of the fastest growing non-alcoholic brands, has appointed Karim Sadik-Khan as its chief financial officer.

“At Liquid Death, we’ve driven triple-digit retail scanned sales growth for the past three years, so we are thrilled to bring on Karim, an experienced financial leader in the beverage world, as we execute on further growth and expansion strategies,” Mike Cessario, founder and CEO of Liquid Death, said in the announcement. “We are scaling a high growth company with a foundation of strong fundamentals and solid financials, and Karim will be integral to that work. We’re excited to welcome him to the Liquid Death team.”

Sadik-Khan brings 19 years of management and finance experience at leading public and private beverage companies. He was most recently CFO for Beam Suntory (BSI) North America, the world’s third largest spirits provider, where he held several financial leadership roles in his 14 years with the company including during Jim Beam’s IPO in 2011 and the acquisition of Jim Beam by Suntory in 2014. As BSI North America CFO, Sadik-Khan was responsible for all finance functions including financial planning and analysis (FP&A), business support, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), accounting, compliance and revenue management for North America. Prior to BSI, Sadik-Khan held finance roles at PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper-Snapple (now Keurig-Dr Pepper) and IBM.

Liquid Death has become a category leader as a healthy beverage platform that combines humorous marketing and a better-for-you mission. In 2023, Liquid Death hit $263 million in retail scanned sales through registers and expanded to 113,000 retail doors across the U.S. and U.K.

Iced tea, one of the company’s newest product lines, saw tremendous growth throughout 2023. Shortly after the line’s launch, Liquid Death’s iced tea quickly rose to the #1 best-seller position in the RTD tea beverage category on Amazon as defined by total retail sales. It was also the #1 new iced tea brand launched in 2023 and drove most dollars from innovation to the category in multi-outlet retail.

Liquid Death’s social following captures more than 8.9 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, making it the third most followed beverage brand globally.

“After nearly two decades of experience in the beverage industry, I strongly believe that CPG value creation starts with building great brands, and I’ve never seen a better brand builder than Liquid Death,” Sadik-Khan, CFO of Liquid Death, said in the announcement. “Liquid Death is a healthy beverage platform with a sizable, global market potential in water, sparkling water, tea, and beyond, and I’m honored to be joining this world-class team at an exciting inflection point for the business.”