Caroline Foulk, co-founder of Beer Girl, has been thinking about beer since she was old enough to walk the floor of her family’s brewery. For years, she couldn’t drink it the way she wanted to. So she rebuilt it from scratch – and on March 18, Shark Tank investor Fawn Weaver offered her $125,000 to help her scale it.
Earlier this month, Foulk appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank with Beer Girl, the Laguna Beach, California-based brand she co-founded with her husband, Griffin Foulk. On-air, Weaver’s offer came in at $125,000 for 20%, giving the low-calorie, zero-sugar beer brand a prime-time stamp of credibility and a new set of expectations.
Weaver, who co-founded Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey in 2017, brings deep beverage industry experience to the partnership – along with a high profile that has grown more complicated in recent months, as her company navigates a legal battle that has played out across multiple rounds of headlines.
How Beer Girl started
Beer Girl’s origin story starts where Caroline Foulk’s instincts were formed: inside the routine of a working brewery, watching customers move through a tap list and listening to what they said afterward. Over time, a pattern emerged. Guests – particularly women, though not exclusively – would pass over traditional beer because it felt heavy or left them bloated.
Then it became personal. Caroline Foulk has tied Beer Girl’s creation to a health journey involving an autoimmune condition, which pushed her to rethink how beer fit into her life and what “ingredients” really meant in the glass. That pivot – equal parts lived experience and practical product development – later shaped the Beer Girl’s blueprint.
“Let’s be honest, most beer has been made by men, for men,” Caroline Foulk said in her opening pitch to Shark Tank investors. “For decades, women in beer ads were merely bikini-clad extras; we weren’t the customer, we were the scenery.”
Beer Girl’s flagship lagers are corn-brewed, gluten-reduced, and naturally zero sugar, with an ABV the brand pegs at 3.5%. In a category where “better-for-you” has become wallpaper, Beer Girl also anchors itself in concrete numbers and repeatable details, which is exactly what a skeptical consumer reaches for before committing.
What the numbers say
The beer startup was founded in 2023, and its early commercial trajectory reflects a brand still in the climb phase, with retail expansion as the next big step. According to Inc., Beer Girl recorded $140,000 in first-year sales and has been balancing between $140,000 and $160,000 annually.
The publication also said the brand is projecting $1.1 million in revenue next year, tied to plans for 150 new retail doors, with as many as 330 additional locations “in the pipeline.”
For Caroline Foulk, the story has always threaded back to the same place: a family brewery, a health diagnosis, and a beer she needed to exist before she could build a brand around it. The Shark Tank offer may now give Beer Girl a new platform, but what the founder does with it is the part still being written.
