Goodrays CBD: Scaling a £20M Functional Beverage with Founder Eoin Keenan

25:45Eoin Keenan:If this episode is inspiring you to think about new ways that you can drive growth for your business, don't forget to click follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app and even leave a review. Your small gesture has a big impact on me and my business and will be truly appreciated. So lots of brands explore calm in different ways, but Goodray's take is kind of rooted in nature and outdoor well-being. Yeah, well, I think the main thing about it, like we, our tagline is the power of calm, which I think is really important. I think, you know, calm as a word is hugely powerful. Like there are multiple psychology studies around how the word calm itself, just hearing that helps you to relax.

26:28but we know that calm is being used across the marketplace from cbd to multiple other categories you know how does it become does it become saturated or can you create a point of difference within that calm marketing so we talk about the power of calm because our belief is that basically calmness isn't an end state in itself right no one is looking at saying right i want to just feel calm at the end of the day like the calmness unlocks more right so if if what we talk about the why behind the why. Why do you want to feel calm? Why do you want, like, what's beyond that? What's better than that?

27:01Ultimately, people are trying to feel calmer, more relaxed so that they can perform better, right? So that they can be more grateful, so they can be a better husband, brother, sister, mother, et cetera, be better at work, be better with people, you know, so they can be more present and ultimately live happier lives. Like, that's really what we're about.

27:20Eoin Keenan:That's a really powerful question. What does calmness unlock for you? yeah yeah and that's something we like we do with our community so we bring our community in probably once a quarter we talk to them about this specific question right like what what is and that's all our content our content is about like what what is calmness for you as these individual individual ambassadors people we really love they're doing really impactful things in the community but i love that what does unlock for you because it's totally different for just what's you know because when i hear the word calm i think i'm gonna i'm gonna finally get to sit down with no noise around me.

27:49Eoin Keenan:But actually, there's so much more can be unlocked from feeling calm in my day. The days where I feel calm, I get so much more done. I think that's hugely important, right? Because people don't think about it as a performance enhancer. But like, why do people meditate in the mornings before work? Why do you exercise before work, right? It's to calm the mind. It's to create more focus and more prioritization. And I think, you know, one of the things I've learned from building a business is one of the most important things to that high performance is being calm being focused being able to prioritize but also being able to see the the future and you can't do that if you're constantly overstimulated overtired and frazzled like those things cloud your judgment and we're burnt out like like people people in the uk are burnt out like we talk a lot about you know the the british stress epidemic you know something like 66 percent of the uk are reporting heavy levels of stress on a weekly basis and that number has doubled over the last six years so doubled right so no the the stress levels in this country just crazy and when you think you're like like okay what can you do to control that yes we can build in meditative routines but you know 74 percent of consumers look at how diet impacts their well-being not just physical but also mental so can we do more as a food and drink industry to address that and that's part of our mission right is offer people healthier alternatives to feel better how do you bring all of that alive inside your business with your team and your culture yeah it's to be honest it's tough like it's and we have to face the fact that you know there's a there's slight contradictory messages between calmness and relaxation and stillness and all this wonderful stuff when you are growing at 100 year on year and you are in a competitive environment where you have to win like how do you hold those two things in your head how do you balance them so i think you know firstly you've got to bring on people who are you know stimulated by growth and feel calm and slightly chaotic environments that are growing rapidly like you know they they've done all these studies about life satisfaction and how long you live and like high performance and you know the right level of pressure with the right person is actually healthy right so So you have to look for those people who look for that kind of high performance and enjoy that growth.

30:09And then I think you have to balance it between, right, we're going to move really quickly because as a startup, that is our number one asset. But we're also going to try and balance that, right? Can we help support you on an individual level, whether that's personal growth or whether there's packages around that, right? So can we do flexible working for the team so that they can be engaged and present with their family, whether that's at home, whether that's abroad? So we do two weeks a year for working abroad. We do one day per quarter where everyone gets paid leave to go and work on charities or causes related to our mission.

30:44So we try and create benefits around that and create a culture which is open, transparent, trusting, which is a calming environment. And the people feel supported whilst also being able to move at 100 million miles an hour.

30:57Eoin Keenan:I'd say the picking the right people to do that must be really important then because so do you have like is it just still at the stage where it's in your head when you're recruiting are they going to be able to deliver speed and great work in a calm way have you actually made that into some kind of like formula when you're recruiting and you kind of like have a tick box yeah what we always hire on what I was higher on is is attitude over um CVs or or experiences like And A, are you really passionate about the business and do you want to do it? I'd like to give you a story. This guy, Flynn, who's one of our field sales people, who was a window glazer before this.

31:36They're very good at it. And he really wanted to move into sales. He works in the field sales team. And our call was 15 minutes because, like, you know, I can't really talk to him much about field sales teams. I don't know that much about window glazing. But it was all about, like, attitude. And I just knew from him, like, he really wanted the job. He loved the brand. He loved the mission. He loved the vision. And he was just like, I can do this. And often what we try and do is we try and be somewhat realistic with candidates as well to say, look, this is a 16 person team in a very competitive environment.

32:07Like we have to work hard. We have to work smart, obviously, which I think where the canvas comes in. We also have to work hard and you have to enjoy the work. Like you have to, I think that's the number one thing for being an entrepreneur is you have to love the graft because you've got to do so many crappy shitty jobs all the time. It's not particularly glamorous. Like you've got to love that level of intensity. So, yeah, we look for that within the recruitment process on attitude, on experience. We try and level people's expectations. And if they come back, then it's probably a good sign.

32:40Eoin Keenan:So how do you then manage yourself? I imagine the fundraise you recently did, so you raised five million Series A. I note that you said earlier that you had already been working with Guinness or Diageo. We worked with the chief liquid developers from Diageo. So did that help then when you were doing the fundraiser? Were they two totally separate? They were two totally separate entities. We met the Guinness Ventures team, oh God, it must have been kind of October of last year. and to be honest we weren't fundraising right we we'd we which i think is probably when you meet your best partners is like they had chatted they wanted to get involved we said we're not quite fundraising right now but we're planning to go to market kind of probably middle of this year um but we kept conversations going and we realized actually probably could move slightly sooner we could do a deal relatively quickly so to be fair to guinness and to the team internally we you know we got that done in six to eight weeks before um which is which is pretty rapid pacing for anyone who's done like a series a raise how how did you get that done in six eight weeks combination of both parties like fully engaged fully bought in um we had been relatively well prepared and well structured we have amazing fds and heads of operations who'd set up data rooms and stuff in advance and I think you know I've got an amazing board and advisory team my one of my business partners guy called Justin Stone who I think is one of the best entrepreneurs in the UK um he's a friend of business called Surf Dome and his owner of business called Passenger so in the clothing space he's scaled multiple businesses from zero to 100 million so really good at putting in that infrastructure early and then our chairman is a guy called Shillen Patel who is chair of Lucky Saints who actually be a good guest for you.

34:28Eoin Keenan:Yeah I'd love to have Shillen on I'd absolutely love to have him on um i think i've asked him but i'll need to push that push that one again i'll chase him on that but then you know they gave that level of experience that we were kind of well prepped for this stuff and had a good team around us going through the process and guinness were bought into it yeah let's let's do this early let's get ahead of it before it goes to market which always helps that's incredible and then so they were your lead investor but you you have others as well right who came in in that round yeah we've we've other investors we have a network of high net worth investable investors as well whether that's executives of banking former food and drink founders, creatives, a couple of celebrity investors like Vernon Kay and Tess Daly and Sam Fender, a couple of athletes, mostly in surfing and snowboarding and stuff as well.

35:14So kind of a cool roster of different investors.

35:16Eoin Keenan:Very cool. You've achieved so much in what feels like so little time. And I know there's a huge graft and a huge amount of years that went before, you know, you got your kind of national rollout in 2022. But it does feel like you've achieved an incredible amount. Maybe. We're not very, I think, you know, maybe you're the same, but entrepreneurs aren't very good at reflecting on the past, always looking at the next thing. I just think there's a huge, huge opportunity. Like it's, I think where functional health and wellbeing drinks now is genuinely at the we're at the kind of cusp and edge of a huge consumer shift away from unhealthy soft drinks and also away from booze as you can obviously see and functional drinks blurs the lines between those soft drinks and the booze and can capture so much in the middle because it's a multi-use product right soft drinks during the day non-alk in the evening to relax i just think that opportunity in itself is hugely important which is part of right why we raise the money because we could see the performance in Waitress of these products, you know, in four packs and multi-packs in the back of store in some of the more premium grocers in the UK.

36:22We were out selling like for like Monster, Red Bull, LucasAid, like which is insane to think about. And remember, we are the most premium soft drink in the supermarket, right? We are at$750 a four pack, which is the highest price per liter in soft drinks. And we're moving volume. So when you have the confidence of that, plus the big vision and opportunity in the future, I think you've got to go for it. So it feels like you have great progress today, but there's a huge amount of headroom.

36:50Eoin Keenan:So what is the vision and the big opportunity, the future of innovation and the science and ingredients seem to be very much part of your background and efficacy? You know, is that what's going to come down the line? Are you going to change the face of what CBD or functional drinks mean to us all going forward? Give us a little flavour, Owen. Yeah, OK. So I look, I think the way we look at innovation and MPD is like, we'll map out that consumer that we talked about. So we talk about them as like the self-improver, right? So they're healthy, active, outdoors people, right? And we're thinking, okay, they're pretty busy.

37:30They're pretty stressed out. They're always trying to optimize their day, whether that's sleep technology or eating clean in the dinners and stuff. You know the type of people. Well, probably us, you know? And so when you look at that day, okay, like I think our drinks at the moment are fulfilling different needs, dedications throughout that day and multi-usage both probably like lunchtime plus evening. But there are other points of the day that we can tap into that aren't cannibalizing our existing range. So that's how we map out the NPD and innovation process. And then we look, as you say, like I think our value is that we can move really quickly.

38:03We can take calculated swings on new categories and new ingredients. So being aware of, OK, what are the supplements and what are the trending ingredients that are changing the game that are truly effective and also truly great tasting and working back and then matching that to the need state throughout the day where we can add value.

38:23Eoin Keenan:OK, so you stick with the consumer. So you've decided on your consumer, that's where you're going to play. Yeah. And then and is it necessarily always CBD? No, not necessarily. No, I think like for us, we define ourselves as a functional drinks brand. So our value is bringing new ingredients, new adaptogens, new products that help people feel calm and clarity. We define ourselves as helping people from above the neck, anything above the neck, right? Whether that's brain function, cognitive performance, mental balance, sleep, relaxation. That's the stuff that we go after. And that's the stuff that we feel like is under untapped basically in the food and drink market.

38:59Eoin Keenan:Is it always drinks? because I know at the moment you've got edibles as well and oils. Yeah. Yeah. So not always. It goes back to that mapping out that day from the consumer, looking at the ingredients and then actually saying, OK, what format tackles this specific problem that our consumer is facing? Talk to me a little bit about, you mentioned before we started recording, we were talking about being Irish and being Irish in London and, you know, whether we'd ended up in the same places or not. And I'd end up in Clapham and you hadn't because I said you were definitely more cool than me. So I wasn't surprised you'd ended up in, where was it?

39:33Eoin Keenan:Bermondsey. Bermondsey, yeah. And then you were saying about like being Irish in the UK and how that feels as an entrepreneur. Talk a little bit about that. Well, I think, you know, I talk about this quite a lot because obviously when I moved back from Canada and California, I met a lot of other Irish entrepreneurs and weirdly a lot in the CBD and medical cannabis space. I think, you know, we've got a good appetite for risk and for startups, I think. I also think there's probably a thing, you'll know this well, maybe discreet, but in Ireland, I think when you take a bit of a swing and go out and do your own thing, there's a bit of, you know, notions is what they talk about.

40:12Do you know this word?

40:12Eoin Keenan:No, I know what it is, but the listeners won't. Okay, okay, okay. So like the idea basically, you know, in Ireland is like if you're trying to do something new and, you know, I suppose innovative, people might think you're getting notions of yourself, getting a bit ahead of yourself, get a bit too big for your boots. So I think a lot of those people then gravitate towards the UK or the US or other markets. So when you meet those people in the UK, they tend to be those kind of risk taking types. And also I think then there's an expectation of like, well, you left Ireland. What did you do with yourself?

40:43you know when you come back and you see the aunt and uncle what have you been up to yourself you

40:47Eoin Keenan:kind of want something to show for it in a way have you made it yet have you made it yeah yeah so so I think there's there's a pressure in that way and I think obviously here fosters a culture culture of kind of innovation and entrepreneurship and I think those Irish people also yeah have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder to to prove something yeah it's really interesting isn't it I I think you know we don't maybe talk about it enough but like I remember when I moved to Nestle in the UK in 1999 and every morning people would say to me in the lift, top of the morning to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

41:18Eoin Keenan:And you know, did you have any potatoes for your dinner and all the rest of it? And I still have people in my life who say that to me and I think, you know, would you say that to somebody who was from you know, Southeast Asia, did you have noodles or, you know, from India big bowl of rice when you went home last night? Like people go, oh for God's sake fee you know, don't be sensitive. But actually no, there is this like joke I just think it's really not good I don't think it's nice yeah yeah it's it was I mean it's still happening like when I first moved back um 2017 yeah so it's like it's that it's definitely still happening I think it's um you know I think I think we're also we have a laugh at ourselves we have we're good-natured yeah we're too good-natured we're too you know we're too uncomputational I mean I even struggle that a little bit like as founder and CEO is like I'm probably not the most confrontational CEO or founder like I try and find different ways of of motivating or addressing but I don't necessarily fly off the handle at work maybe like I know that is common in fast run run startups and and some of that's good some of that's bad right sometimes you can end up being a bit too bit too soft sometimes and not addressing things that need to be addressed.

42:33Addressing things. So I'm like, I've worked on that massively within myself. I think as a non-confrontational, good-natured people, like people also then think that they could probably take the piss without you getting offended. Oh, that's your humour in a way, isn't it?

42:45Eoin Keenan:I know. It's a funny one though. I just, I just, it's just something that I note, I've noticed over so many years and I wonder why it isn't put into the same like pot as, well, you can't really talk about somebody's, you know, food, culture, habits, accent. and almost caricature it for any other country, but it's free for all for Irish people. Yeah, and, you know, not to make this a Republicanist podcast, but, you know, like English people, I talk to this a lot about, my in-laws are obviously English as well, actually a good topic of conversation for the holidays, is like the history of Ireland and England is like, we're probably more sensitive to how the English treat us and they think, oh, well, you're just the same as us, you know, It's just like us, you know, maybe banter between a Northerner and a Southerner.

43:34And it's like, well, it's kind of a long distance of history there. And they don't necessarily teach it as well. So it's not structurally put in place where people can become aware of it and maybe more sensitive to it.

43:43Eoin Keenan:Yeah, absolutely. No listeners should get me wrong. I've lived in the UK. Well, I don't live in the UK now. I live in the Isle of Man, which is very different. But, you know, I adore everybody from all nations. But I just was raising it almost as a point of interest, you know, that it's something that niggles at me. and it isn't even, it could be someone from anywhere in the world. American people do it all the time as well, Irish people. I just think it's interesting. As an Irish person, we get it a lot, don't we? Yeah, it is interesting. And I think it might be, you know, you see this a lot in London and I'm quite lucky obviously having an English partner.

44:16So, you know, it kind of opens up that world of networking and communicating. I know obviously I work with predominantly English people and in our food and drink industry, it's predominantly, you know, English people as well from here. So in a way, I'm sort of an outsider to that, but getting a gaze in. And I think a lot of Irish people obviously stick to themselves over here as well in London as well. So probably a reason behind that.

44:38Eoin Keenan:I actually was thinking as we started talking, there's so many Irish food and drink entrepreneurs that I have in my network that I've never got together with as a group. I'd love to do that. Like, you know, you and me and Cian and Sam Dennegan and Shane from Feed and so many Irish entrepreneurs in food and drink. I would love that. We should go for a big dinner or something. It'd be really nice. Yeah, that'd be great. So, okay. So what's next now with all this money? What are you going to do? Well, it's all allocated, isn't it? Pretty much already. We've mapped out the growth plan. You know, we are still just scratching the surface, I think, in where we are in retail, right?

45:13So the performance is exceptional, but I think there's more to do on distribution. So there's a huge amount of headroom in all our grocers. We're launching in a couple more this year, but also having big expansion plans. within the existing ones, which I'm super excited about. So we have to back that and support that correctly. We've never really spent on brand, you know, like I think we've focused with this rebrand on getting brand equity right, positioning right, look and feel right. And now we're going to go and invest behind it to actually drive people into it. And we can see already from the early reads on how that rebrand is performing is massively outperforming our previous performance, which is already significant for the category.

45:51Eoin Keenan:Even on shelf or just ETC? Even on shelf, yeah, yeah. And normally there's a lag between your new brand coming in and your old brand going out, right? Whether that's stock issues or consumers trying to adjust to it. But the early reads that we've got are incredibly positive in terms of how that's performing. So you've simplified the can. Talk us through a little bit the decisions you made. Yeah. So initially what I always wanted, and I think this is an important thing to understand, is like whenever you're going through a rebrand, The brand has to be heavily differentiated from what else is in the category.

46:22And what we tried to look at is like, what are the codes and the rules that we can break? And what are the codes and rules that we probably should follow? And that's really where we played around with. Like the objective was premiumize. Look more like a healthy, functional drink. So if you look at this from five meters away, you say, I know that's going to be good for me. And I know it's not going to be a sugary, soft drink, which I don't necessarily know if we had from the previous design. And premiumize. Those are the two objectives. And then find out what rules we can break. And what we found is like, okay, the color palette is differentiated from what exists on the market.

46:56But really, it's around text, layout, line work that differentiates it. Most of the category still looks at kind of lighter colors, illustrations. And fundamentally, like the buyer of this product is more of an adult drinker, right? But actually, you look at soft drinks and you still look at much of the category in functional. it looks kind of like it's built and designed more for younger drinkers right whether that's teenagers or even children sometimes i think our category has actually been led down that road maybe without knowing it and i think you can add more of an adult more technical like taking themes and inspiration from technology sectors from cosmetics from alcohol that are more adult and more premium and trying to bring them to the functional soft drinks category okay really

47:44Eoin Keenan:interesting thank you that's an amazing insight into what you did um and it's great to know that you can already see the difference on on rate of sale on shelf that's the fabulous it's really promising and the last big question i wanted to ask you because i know that we've been on for ages now france so is that your only ex market that you've launched into yeah it's our only export market um for now um there's still a lot of headroom to go after in the uk and but france have been a blast. I mean, we launched pretty rapidly, I think. You know, France opened up for CBD drinks, not overnight, but relatively quickly.

48:18And we saw an opportunity for us to grow faster than the local French brands. So we launched in four supermarkets in six weeks, Carrefour, Intermarché, System U and Leclerc. And it's a blast. Like it's obviously challenging operating with two different markets, but we see the long-term potential as, you know, the UK is building this blueprint for functional and CBD drinks because the UK and the US tend to be these innovation hubs for food and drink. So can we build the blueprint in the UK to be able to grow it into Europe and other growth markets? So France is a bit of a testing ground for that.

48:56And I'm sure other European markets will come on board soon, as soon as regulations allow. So it's that blueprint that allows us to grow.

49:02Eoin Keenan:It's an expensive market to act in. It is expensive. But I think within this functional health, well-being market, everything is expensive. Opening up convenience is expensive. Opening up out of home is expensive. Fair enough. But we're building a category, right? And we need to invest in building that category. And we need to have the ambition that separates us from other players within the category as well, right? Because it's such a competitive space. The reality is you need to be well capitalized and you need to have big ambitions. and need to spend to grow. Obviously, calculated, smart, test and learn.

49:41But in the long run, to get to where we want to be, when we look at that Red Bull size opportunity, we need to invest behind it.

49:47Eoin Keenan:I love it. What an amazing piece of advice. I love that. On that note, let's wrap up because we have been on for ages and I know I can hear your team outside the door going, let us in, let us in. There's a dog barking at the door, which I've never seen before, which is slightly concerning, but also kind of exciting. Exciting. I was going to ask you why you never became head boy at school, because when I looked at your CV, which I found on LinkedIn, it said to me, this is a boy back in the day who should have been head boy. Teasing you about it before we started. Why did you not become head boy?

50:20That's very embarrassing. I really need to scrub my LinkedIn now, which I actually thought I did recently. But anyway, why not become a head? I mean, it's another embarrassing story. I mean, as a teenager, I was a middle child, potentially undiagnosed with ADD. So I acted out quite a lot. Actually, something happened to me when I turned 18 and I started to really chill out and level out. But when I was like 16, 17, I just had a bit of an authority complex, which probably leads to the entrepreneurship a little bit. And I got in an argument with a staff member and I basically told him to F off. I just didn't...

50:59He was squaring up to me. He was squaring up to me. I felt intimidated and I lashed out. And my parents got called in and fair play to them. They defended me, which is very kind. Oh, wow, that's nice.

51:10Eoin Keenan:But it was interesting because you were still getting straight A's, like really high level of A's in your exams, but yet you were, you know, having all these other difficulties in school. That's an interesting mix. Tantrums, yeah, yeah, two sides of the same coin. But yeah, I found outlets for, you know, that kind of energy that I probably needed to expel. So yeah, I managed to get grades, grades okay and on track, but maybe my behavior record probably wasn't as strong as it should be. What an enigma. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with us today and wishing you massive success because I know you're going to go so, so far.

51:49oh you're very kind thank you so much for having us on as I said a huge fan of this podcast I've learned so much from it I've listened to it for what three years now it's my go to one so you have me on it's great that's a little you know reflection moment just to say oh shit we're now on the podcast we're now

52:06Eoin Keenan:Gregor Theros yeah thanks a little Owen okay send you big hugs alright lots of love see you soon bye

52:16Eoin Keenan:well I loved talking to Owen it's always lovely to talk to another Irish founder. I really love the story about him, you know, leaving university and going straight out to California, picking up that beat up car and traveling around and really learning how to grow his own, what was going to be the principal ingredient in his value proposition. I learned a lot about, you know, incremental category value and how it takes more than just one brand to create a new category. I hope you got as much out of the episode as I did and the conversation as I did. If you liked the episode, please do click follow, subscribe on your podcast platform and share it with another founder if you think they'll get benefit out of it too.

52:55Eoin Keenan:Thanks again.

53:02Eoin Keenan:As always, thanks again to my tech guru and sound engineer, Jip Bagan of Balagroove and my podcast producer, Catherine of Social Cues.