Chief Executive Officer — Hint Inc.
He helped sell Bai for $1.65 billion. He built ZOA Energy into the fastest-growing energy drink in America alongside Dwayne Johnson. Now he's at Hint - the brand that's been quietly winning the unsweetened water aisle since 2005 - and asking a deceptively simple question: what if water was irresistible?
In 2005, Kara Goldin started infusing water with fruit at her kitchen counter and built it into a category. In November 2024, she handed the company to someone who has spent three decades inside the machine that makes brands like hers go from cult favorite to supermarket staple. Michael J. Pengue walked into Hint's San Francisco headquarters with two things most beverage founders never have: pattern recognition across every tier of the industry and a contact book built over 30 years of doing exactly this work.
Pengue's appointment wasn't a typical CEO transition. It arrived alongside fresh capital, backed by Belgian investment firm Verlinvest, and through Herbert Mines Associates - the search firm brands call when they mean serious business. The message was clear: Hint's second act was being structured, not improvised.
The beverage industry has a particular kind of operator. They know what the Nestlé Waters national sales infrastructure feels like from the inside. They know what it takes to pitch a $1.65 billion acquisition to Dr Pepper Snapple's board, because they've been in the room. They know how a celebrity energy drink brand built around Dwayne Johnson can go from concept to fastest-growing category entrant in a single year. Pengue has done all three.
His career reads like a tour through the entire better-for-you beverage revolution - from Groupe Danone in the early days, to the corner office at Nestlé Waters' North American business units, to the scrappy insurgency of Bai, to the celebrity-industrial complex of ZOA. Each stop taught him something different about how Americans decide what to drink and, more importantly, what makes them come back.
"The chance to join Hint - a great brand and a leader in the healthy hydration sector - is incredibly exciting for me."
- Michael J. Pengue, on joining Hint Inc. as CEO, November 2024What Pengue brought to Hint wasn't just a resume. He brought a specific thesis: that the flavored water category was still dramatically under-penetrated, that consumers craving healthier options were actively looking for a brand to commit to, and that Hint - with its 20-year track record of unsweetened, preservative-free, zero-calorie fruit-infused water - was sitting on an underdeveloped platform. The 2026 brand relaunch, anchored by the "MMMMM Water" campaign developed with New York agency Mythology, was his first public answer to the question of how he intended to run the play.
Newport, Rhode Island is where Pengue lives. San Francisco is where he works. The distance between the two - physically and culturally - says something about the kind of executive he is: grounded in the consumer reality of the coasts, operating out of a city that still believes you can build a brand on a simple, honest idea.
Almost two decades in the belly of the multinational water machine. As President of Business Units, Pengue managed brands that ranged from the Italian luxury of S.Pellegrino and Perrier to the mass-market ubiquity of Poland Spring and Nestlé Pure Life. Under his watch, the business became the largest healthy refreshment beverage company in North America - and third largest beverage company overall. This is where he learned how distribution works at scale, how brand hierarchies function, and why category leadership is won in the grocery aisle.
~16 yearsJoining Bai as Chief Strategy Officer in July 2016 was a calculated bet on a brand built around antioxidant-infused beverages and a story about natural ingredients. Pengue arrived, assessed, and helped architect the company's positioning for acquisition. Six months later, Dr Pepper Snapple Group announced it was buying Bai for $1.65 billion. The deal closed in January 2017. Pengue's fingerprints were on the strategic case that made that number possible - the kind of exit that rewrites a founder's life and a career's credibility simultaneously.
Chief Strategy OfficerPost-acquisition, Pengue moved to Keurig Dr Pepper as Senior VP and General Manager of the Emerging Brands Group. This was operational execution at its most demanding: managing a portfolio of brands at different stages of growth under the roof of a large-cap public company. He also led the Away-From-Home coffee business, navigating channel complexity that most pure beverage operators never encounter. This stop was the bridge between his M&A-focused Bai chapter and the startup intensity that would come next.
SVP / General ManagerZOA launched in 2021 with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as co-founder and a bold proposition: clean, better-for-you energy. As CEO, Pengue had to build brand, distribution, and credibility simultaneously against established giants like Monster and Red Bull. The result: ZOA became the fastest-growing energy drink in the US. Molson Coors eventually took a majority stake - completing Pengue's second strategic exit. The ZOA chapter proved he could operate in a high-visibility, celebrity-amplified, startup-speed environment and still deliver institutional-quality results.
Chief Executive OfficerHint Inc. was born in 2005 when Kara Goldin stopped drinking diet soda and started infusing water with fruit at home. The company she built from that kitchen experiment became the number one unsweetened flavored water in the US by SPINS/IRI data - a 20-year run that required convincing mainstream America that water without sweeteners could still taste worth choosing.
Pengue arrived in November 2024 as the brand's second-ever CEO - tasked with taking a proven platform and scaling it from category creator to category dominator. He didn't arrive quietly. The announcement came alongside fresh capital from Verlinvest, the Belgian investment group known for backing consumer brands with long growth runways.
His approach has been methodical. In 2026, Hint relaunched with a new visual identity, an evolved Sparkling with Electrolytes lineup featuring a fresh flavor portfolio, and - most visibly - the "MMMMM Water" campaign, developed in partnership with New York-based Mythology. The campaign's premise is a deliberate reframe: hydration isn't a chore. Water isn't utilitarian. If you make it taste like something you want, people don't just drink it - they crave it.
The company operates across retail and direct-to-consumer channels, with a subscriber base and e-commerce infrastructure that most beverage brands its size have never built. Hint ships directly to homes - a model that generates both data and loyalty that a grocery shelf-presence alone never could.
At the ICR Conference in January 2026, Pengue appeared in a fireside chat to walk investors through Hint's 20-year history, market differentiation in the bottled water industry, and the strategy behind the brand refresh. He also spoke on NYSE Floor Talk about how Hint's flavor portfolio hooks customers. The message: this is a brand with structural advantages that have never been fully leveraged.
Hint's product range covers still infused water, sparkling water, Hint+ with vitamins, Sparkling with Electrolytes, flavors ranging from Watermelon and Blackberry to Pineapple Peach and Crisp Apple - all without sugar, diet sweeteners, or preservatives. The 220-person team runs on $75M in annual revenue with $51.7M raised, including a $25M Series D in August 2020.