Why we don't do Black Friday

Your inbox has already started to shout. Countdown timers, red banners, biggest sale of the year, when it is gone it is gone. And the day itself is still weeks away. By the last Friday of the month it will be unreadable.

We will not be joining in. There will be no Coco Loco Black Friday sale, no Cyber Monday follow-up, and no quiet little "extended by popular demand" on the Tuesday. We would rather tell you now, well ahead of it, than leave you wondering whether to wait.

Here is the reasoning, in full.

There is nothing to take off

A Black Friday discount only works if the everyday price had padding in it. Ours does not. We set it as low as we can run it, on a drink that is fermented slowly in small batches in regional Victoria, and then we leave it alone.

If we could sell it to you for less, we would be selling it to you for less in June. That is not a slogan, it is arithmetic. The only way to offer you 30% off in November is to charge you 30% too much for the other eleven months, and we would rather not start there.

You already get something back, all year

Every order earns 10% back as store credit towards your next one. Not for one weekend. Not above a spending threshold. Not if you are quick. Every order, every month, including this one.

Across a year that is worth considerably more to you than a single discounted weekend, and it does not require you to buy anything on a particular Friday to qualify. Free shipping on orders of $150 or more does not move in November either.

Discounting alcohol against a clock is a bad idea

This is the part we feel strongly about.

A steep discount with a timer attached is engineered to override the decision you would otherwise make. That is the entire point of it. With most products the cost of that is financial, and you end up owning an air fryer you did not want.

Alcohol carries a second cost. What gets bought gets stored, and what gets stored tends to get drunk. Being good at persuading people to stockpile alcohol because the price expires at midnight is not a skill we want to develop.

We would rather sell you one slab you will genuinely enjoy than three you bought because a clock was running.

The panic is the product

Here is the part that is easy to miss. Black Friday does not really sell you a discount. It sells you the fear that this is the only good price you will ever see, and that hesitating means losing.

That fear does the work. It is why people buy things they do not need, in quantities they did not plan, with money they had set aside for something else, and feel oddly flat about the whole thing come December.

We would rather not be a source of that feeling. A drink should be a small, good decision you made on purpose.

It is the same reason we make it the way we do

Coco Loco is the world's only brewed alcoholic coconut water. We ferment real young-green coconut water into the alcohol itself rather than mixing a neutral spirit with a sweetened mixer. That is slower, fiddlier and more expensive, and we do it because the result is better: 0g sugar, 1.7g carbs and 101 calories a can, Gluten Free, vegan and all natural.

The same thinking runs through the rest of it. We were named a finalist in the Clean + Conscious Awards 2026 across three categories, judged on clean ingredients and materials, ethical sourcing and manufacturing, sustainable production and social responsibility. None of that sits comfortably alongside a business model that depends on talking you into buying more than you meant to, once a year, at speed.

So, about that Friday

Nothing will happen. The price will be exactly what it was the day before, and exactly what it will be the day after. Your 10% cashback will be sitting there as usual.

Buy a slab next week, or in March, or not at all. The deal will not have got better and it will not have got worse, which we rather think is the point.

Always enjoy Coco Loco responsibly.