BuzzBallz are hard drinks sold in bottles that resemble phosphorescent billiard balls. They contain around 15 percent alcohol by volume, more than double that of the average beer. And Lucy Rocca first heard about them from her 13-year-old daughter.
It was December, and Ms. Rocca was talking to her daughter and a friend about a shopping list for a New Year’s Eve party. When the girls brought up BuzzBallz, “I was like, ‘Whoa, no way,’” Ms. Rocca, 50, recalled. She asked where her daughter had gotten the idea. “All my friends are drinking them,” she responded.
The exchange alarmed Ms. Rocca, who lives in Sheffield, England, and runs a sobriety group for women. On her next trip to the supermarket, she tracked down a display of the beverages, which cost around $4 apiece and come in flavors like Strawberry ’Rita and Peachballz — a vodka cocktail the color of a traffic cone.
Ms. Rocca had flashbacks to drinking similar sweet, flavored beverages like Castaway, a wine cooler, when she began binge drinking as an adolescent. (She stopped drinking in 2011.) Her daughter’s generation seems to have found its equivalent.
BuzzBallz have been around since 2009, but today they are practically ubiquitous. You can find them sprinkled like confetti throughout college parties and stacked by the checkout at convenience stores. The fluorescent orbs are easy to spot on a Florida beach during spring break; in a crowded social media feed, they glow like beacons.
The drinks are portable, flavored and cheap, a combination that has earned them a reputation as a go-to beverage for Gen Z. BuzzBallz were the No. 2 prepared cocktail brand in terms of dollar growth during a four-week period ending in January, according to Nielsen IQ. The brand was acquired by the spirits company Sazerac in 2024; that same year, Forbes estimated its annual revenue to be somewhere around $500 million.
Andrew Pentland, a manager and buyer at Gator Beverage, a liquor store in Gainesville, Fla., said he had noticed a surge in sales of BuzzBallz in the past two years, along with other strong, ready-to-drink beverages like BeatBox and Cutwater.
“I hear a lot with the younger drinkers that 4½ percent and 100 calories kind of seems like a waste,” he said, referring to other drinks like hard seltzer. BuzzBallz are seen as having “more bang for your buck” by college students, whom Mr. Pentland says he is always careful to card. “There’s definitely people that come in underage, and this is kind of thing they would buy,” he said.
Sazerac says that it is careful not to market to people below the legal drinking age, and that the company takes steps to prevent BuzzBallz from getting into too-young hands. But as the brand has grown, so have the frustrations of watchdog groups that argue that the drinks are intentionally positioned to appeal to minors.
To Pam Pearce, the executive director of Community Living Above, an Oregon nonprofit dedicated to preventing youth substance abuse, BuzzBallz follow a familiar playbook for drawing in young people, with toylike packaging making the product more closely resemble an energy drink than an alcoholic beverage.
“It’s the poster child for what a new drinker would like,” she said. “And now they’re everywhere.”
The Dry Generation? Hold My BuzzBall.
BuzzBallz are the brainchild of Merrilee Kick, a former high school teacher in Texas. As she tells it, she was sipping a cocktail and grading papers by a pool when she first envisioned a drink in ball-shaped plastic packaging. She was inspired by a spherical votive candle holder she kept nearby.
“I thought it would be really cool to make a round, party-ball type of beverage,” she said in an interview. The idea, initially called “Party Balls,” became her thesis project for her master’s degree in business administration.
The BuzzBallz sold in liquor stores contain spirits like vodka and rum, while BuzzBallz Chillers, available in gas stations and convenience stores, contain a base of wine made from oranges or agave. (That allows them to be sold in establishments with wine licenses rather than more restrictive liquor licenses.)
Victor Lopez, 24, who lives in San Diego, is a fan of the flavors Berry Cherry Limeade and Grapes Gone Wild. The drinks are tasty and easy to get down, and they lend themselves well to social media stunts, he added. He has posted several TikTok videos in which he chugs three BuzzBallz in a row.
“Whenever you go to a party, you’re going to see a BuzzBall,” he said. People his age often pass around supersize BuzzBallz called Biggies at parties, he said. In December the company released an even larger version, Boulders, which contain three liters of liquid and about as much alcohol as 25 standard cans of beer.
BuzzBallz are reaching a generation whose members have a reputation for being hesitant drinkers. The rate of adults ages 18 to 34 who reported drinking alcohol fell nine percentage points from 2023 to 2025, according to a Gallup survey, continuing a trend that began more than a decade earlier.
Jess Scheerhorn, the president of BuzzBallz, said in an interview that she thought the appeal of the drink was “about as straightforward as you can get.”
“They’re delicious, convenient, affordable — affordability is a key factor of it, for sure,” she said. “So I think that’s why we buck the trend a little bit.”
BuzzBallz has leaned into a more rambunctious identity than your typical hard beverage brand. It auctioned off a BuzzBallz-inspired diamond engagement ring and sold basketballs designed to be filled with the drinks, called Big Blue BBallz. In 2024, BuzzBallz announced partnerships with the athletic programs at Louisiana State University and Texas Tech University to offer its drinks in stadiums.
But Ms. Scheerhorn pushed back on idea that BuzzBallz was courting underage customers, despite the fact that the drinks are sweet, colorful and flavorful.
“I think there’s a lot of examples of that,” she said. “The new trends are always going to be favored toward young, influential consumers, so I think that there’s always going to be a fine line around that. I think what we do, and what we can do, is focus on the occasion.”
She said the company was “relentless” about making sure its marketing events complied with federal, state and local laws and with the advertising standards set by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Events in and around college campuses involve strict ID checks, she added, and the company employs a digital “community manager” to monitor the appropriateness of discussions about BuzzBallz online.
Like a Liquid Meme
On TikTok and other social media platforms, BuzzBallz can seem like a giant inside joke, a sticky-sweet party accessory.
Charlie Inman, 19, a college student from London, often sees people in her TikTok feed drinking from blue BuzzBallz while illuminating them with their iPhone flashlights. She and a group of friends dressed up as different flavors for a recent pub crawl.
“The marketing, I would say, is really good,” Ms. Inman said, adding, “Because they are constantly bringing out new flavors, it’s constantly topical.”
Ms. Inman is of legal drinking age in Britain, but said that younger teenagers in her area were “100 percent” getting their hands on the drinks. And critics for years have argued that the branding and marketing surrounding the products could veer into dangerous territory, increasing a young person’s risk for alcohol addiction and the negative health consequences that come with it.
In 2016, the advocacy organization Alcohol Justice accused BuzzBallz of deliberately targeting youth. In 2022, a British alcohol industry regulator dismissed a consumer complaint that argued BuzzBallz were designed and marketed to look like toys. (A panel wrote that the drink’s branding was “close to the line of acceptability” but did not cross it.)
“You have bright colors in a sugary drink that’s high alcohol content, in an easily concealable container,” said Jonathan Noel, a professor at Johnson & Wales University and lead author of a coming study of digital alcohol advertising. “Not saying it’s their intent to do this, but the design characteristics of the bottle and of the product are conducive to youth drinking.”
In one dangerous but common challenge on TikTok and other social media platforms, people combine BuzzBallz with two other beverages with a high alcohol content, then down the entire mixture. The trend was shared last month by an influencer with four million TikTok followers.
BuzzBallz sends free beverages to some people older than 21 who post about the brand, but said it had not encouraged the videos about drink-mixing. “We don’t engage in or promote these types of challenges overtly, and our position is that any challenge of this nature should be done always through the lens of measured and responsible consumption,” Ms. Scheerhorn said in an email.
Alcohol-drenched recklessness is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a result of BuzzBallz alone. Mr. Pentland, the liquor store manager, said he did not think the brand was any more dangerous than those that have captivated young drinkers in the past. “There’s always that ability to abuse, and not use something the way it’s intended,” he said.
At least some fans of the beverages have chosen to cut back. Mr. Lopez, the 24-year-old in San Diego, still enjoys a BuzzBall from time to time. But it has been a while since he has crushed three in a row, he said, because he has been paying more attention to his health.
“I just wanted to make better choices,” he said.
Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times.
The post The High-Alcohol Drink Taking Over Gen Z appeared first on New York Times.
