The first supermarket banner under the Loblaw Group of Companies to carry CWENCH Hydration™, Fortinos is a grocery store chain with locations across the Greater Toronto and Greater Hamilton areas of Southern Ontario. Each Fortinos location will be carrying the full lineup of CWENCH-branded hydration mix products, which are being featured in dedicated displays on the sales floors. Fortinos will also be advertising CWENCH Hydration™ in its flyer, to bolster awareness of the brand and its availability in Fortinos stores.

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 13, 2025-- Cizzle Brands Corporation (Cboe Canada: CZZL) (OTC: CZZLF) (Frankfurt: 8YF) (the “Company” or "Cizzle Brands"), is pleased to announce that Fortinos is now carrying CWENCH Hydration™ in all 24 of its supermarket locations throughout the Greater Toronto and Greater Hamilton areas of Ontario. Fortinos is part of the Loblaw Group of Companies, a Canadian grocery and retail giant with 90% of Canadians residing within 10 kilometres of one of its more than 2,400 locations.

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CWENCH Hydration Mix is currently offered for sale on branded displays in Fortino’s supermarkets across the Greater Toronto and Greater Hamilton areas (Photo: Business Wire)

At launch, both CWENCH hydration mix formats in all four CWENCH Hydration™ flavours are being carried by Fortinos, with the ready-to-drink (“RTD”) format of CWENCH Hydration™ expected to be available by April 2025.

Fortinos has positioned CWENCH Hydration™ in its Nature’s Treasure department, which is a dedicated area in each of its supermarkets for a curated selection of organic/natural products and health foods. The Nature’s Treasure sections of all 24 Fortinos locations have a Certified Nutritional Practitioner on-site, who can help guide consumers towards the most suitable wellness products for their needs. Cizzle Brands will be providing educational materials for these department staff members to highlight the key attributes of CWENCH Hydration™ (all-natural ingredients, no sugar, 6+ electrolytes) as a uniquely healthy and high-performing hydration option for athletes of all ages.

More information about Fortinos can be found on its website: https://www.fortinos.ca/en/

Cizzle Brands Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, John Celenza commented “An important part of our strategy for growing CWENCH Hydration™ is being selective with who carries our products in each category. This ensures that both Cizzle Brands and our retail partners are properly aligned in growing the brand awareness while driving strong margins. This strategy has yielded strong performance for us so far, and this alignment is part of the reason all Fortinos locations will be supporting CWENCH Hydration™ with prominent visual merchandising in dedicated high-visibility displays as well as features of the product in their flyer.”

Mr. Celenza continued, “In addition to growing our distribution in Southern Ontario, this placement gets Cizzle Brands in the door with Loblaw, who is one of Canada’s largest food retailers, which we anticipate will be carrying CWENCH Hydration™ elsewhere in their network soon. We look forward to continuing to work with Fortinos and their team as we keep building up our brand presence in the Toronto and Hamilton area markets.”

Stephanie Skalic, who is Senior Merchandising Manager for Nature’s Treasure by Fortinos, commented “Fortinos is excited to launch CWENCH Hydration™ in all 24 of our locations in our Nature’s Treasure department. This brand raises the bar on our current assortment and further expands the category of sport drinks using quality, clean ingredients that parents can feel good about giving to their kids post game.”

About Cizzle Brands Corporation

Cizzle Brands Corporation is elevating the game in health and wellness. Through extensive collaboration and testing with leading athletes and trainers across several elite sports, Cizzle Brands has launched two leading product lines in the sports nutrition category: (i) CWENCH Hydration, a better-for-you sports drink that is now carried in over 1,200 stores in Canada, the United States, and Europe; and (ii) Spoken Nutrition, a premium brand of athlete-grade nutraceuticals that carry the prestigious NSF Certified for Sport® qualification. All Cizzle Brands products are designed to help people achieve their best in both competitive sports and in living a healthy, vibrant, active lifestyle.

For more information about Cizzle Brands, please visit: https://www.cizzlebrands.com/

For more information about CWENCH Hydration, please visit: https://www.cwenchhydration.com

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On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Company,

CIZZLE BRANDS CORPORATION

“John Celenza”

John Celenza, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release contains "forward-looking information" which may include, but is not limited to, information with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, such as, but not limited to: new products of the Company and potential sales and distribution opportunities. Such forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words and phrases such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Company.

Forward looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other risk factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such risks include risks related to increased competition and current global financial conditions, access and supply risks, reliance on key personnel, operational risks, regulatory risks, financing, capitalization and liquidity risks. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation, except as otherwise required by law, to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors change.

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For further information, please contact:

Setti Coscarella
Head of Corporate Development
investors@cizzlebrands.com
1-844-588-2088

Source: Cizzle Brands Corporation