Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple

27:14Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1991, and Don's made a snap decision to get into the iced tea business. He's seen how well Snapple is doing, and he thinks he can capitalize on it. I think by that point, if I'm not mistaken, Howard Stern was already endorsing Snap on his show. Oh, yeah, sure. And that, I think, really supercharged that brand because Howard Stern was talking about it in such a way that made it sound so appealing. Yeah. You know, the brand was started by a couple of window washers from New York. One of them had a health food store, I guess like a vitamin store.

27:58And Snapple was selling – they didn't start the brand, but they saw it there and then they took it over and da-da-da. They became very successful. And I saw it firsthand. So really, I mean, you got really excited about iced tea. And you started – I guess you started to look for a plant that could produce those lug nut cap, those wide mouth bottles just like Snapple. But from what I read, once you did that and you went to that factory, you started to kind of have second thoughts and thought, I'm not going to – I can't outcompete Snapple. There's no way. This is going to be – this is going to fail.

28:38Well, John and I drove to a plant in Trenton, New Jersey, who was making Snapple. And it's a man who ran the Peels Brewery. He was a production manager there. And he asked whether we had a name. I said we didn't. We didn't have a formulation. And we essentially went through like what it would take. Well, he said, there's generic bottles, you know, with a lug cap, there's a paper label. We can find a flavor house for you. And then on the way home, we stop at 7-Eleven and we buy some Snapple to look at on the way back to Brooklyn. And we kind of talk ourselves out of the tea business because we said, how are we going to get somebody to buy us over Snapple?

29:16How are we going to get them or convince them to buy us? Better looking label, but is that enough? You know, the same shape, bottle. Are we going to get lost in the mix? And we kind of said, you know something, we better stay in the beer business. We know that. Yep. Okay. For a couple of months, you put this out of your mind. I'm not going to get into the tea business. Snapple's killing it. We're not going to do it. What changed? I walked into a 7-Eleven one morning, which I did every morning, to buy coffee on the way to the office. And they had Gatorade and a 24-ounce can. And I had never seen that before.

29:53I knew that 24-ounce can because John and I delivered Schlitz Bowl. It was in a 24-ounce can. They were the only brewery using that can. I buy the can. I take it back to the office. I look on the side. It's Reynolds Metals making it. We call up Reynolds. Reynolds says, you can put tea in that can because that's what I asked. And I said, now I got the package. This is it. This will be 50 % larger than a 16-ounce Snapple bottle. 24-ounce can. So a tall boy can. So there was no – that was the first time you saw what we now call tall boy cans. That was the first time you'd seen it. No one was doing it up until Gatorade?

30:34With a non-alcohol. With non-alcohol. Okay. Schlitz was doing it with the alco. Right. So Schlitz had been doing it, but Gatorade and a can, and you said, wait a minute, we can sell it for the same price? How could you sell it for the same price if you're offering, you know, eight more ounces of product? Well, glass bottles were historically more expensive. With a lug cap, they run slower. In the beer business that we knew, we knew the speeds of cans was faster. Plus the fact, because we were just looking at pure margin, we were saying, if we can be competitive and get people to buy it, then we'll figure out what we got.

31:14I wasn't so focused on, well, are we going to make a killing on it? The question was, can we get consumers to buy it, see it and buy it? And I thought this was the angle. Bigger can, very, you know, stood out in the cooler, unique, different. And we entered the market with that big can. Okay, let's talk about getting ready to enter the market because you're almost 40 at this point. And you have a lot of experience now in beer distribution, the beverage industry. First of all, how hard was it for you to come up with a recipe for iced tea? How did you do? Did you go to your kitchen and start playing around or did you find a beverage scientist and start working with him?

31:57I looked at the back of a beverage magazine and it was an ad for a flavor house in New Jersey and I called it. And they sent a salesman in and we talked about his background. And I realized that he went to the same high school and graduated the same year that I did. and my wife knew him in high school because I met her in high school. And I should mention, you married your wife in 76, Eileen. I did. And you're still married today. Yes, we're going to celebrate our 49th wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks. Amazing. Thank you. Congratulations. Okay, let's go back. So anyhow, now we have this guy in the office and he works for Flavor House in New Jersey and we start playing around with flavors.

32:45Okay. Let me ask you about your palate. I'm curious, right? Because you were looking for a particular flavor profile, right? And how did you know? I mean, do you have a particularly good palate? I do. You do, really? For what? For any wine, beer, soft drinks? Because, you know, you have to have a, you know, some people can drink something and say, I don't know, I don't get it. Or, you know, maybe I developed it over the years, but, you know, I was always someone who savored things. And, you know, when I was working on the original flavors, I knew what I wanted. I wanted, you know, tea character with true fruit flavor, with good cleanup, good nose.

33:29And that's what I was striving for. And I was, of course, tasting the competition as well. And was it hard to do? I mean, or was he basically, he knew what he was doing and you could just kind of taste it and say, add a little bit more lemon, add a little bit more sweetener. The flavors he brought in at first were terrible. And I said, hey, Joe, I mean, I want tea. And he said, oh, you really want tea? But it was interesting because, you know, the typical response in the flavor category was, you know, you don't have to put a lot of tea in on a tea. You just put flavor. You can kind of fake it up.

34:00And then I realized that what other guys are not doing is putting real ingredients in. because, you know, they choose to go a less expensive route. And we then said, let's make a great taste in tea. We came out with lemon and razz. Those were the top two flavors for Snapple. Great taste in raspberry flavor. Put it in a great looking can and put it on the shelf next to Snapple at the same price. Okay. Now you've got a differentiated product because it is going to be in a tall boy can, which is going to make it stand out. But that's not enough. You still need a brand, and Snapple is a formidable brand.

34:37I mean, it has the wide mouth and still a big deal. So let's talk about how you started to think about what this was going to be. First of all, the name. Let's talk about the name. How did you come up with the name? Originally, the name was Santa Fe. Santa Fe. Good name, good name. Santa Fe Tea Company, okay. Because our house in Queens looked like it belonged in Santa Fe. And when you say, look, let's just describe the house again. So this is a house in Queens, in Rockaway, Queens. It looked like it was in Santa Fe. So what does that mean? Like, what were the colors of the house? It was an adobe style.

35:15And my wife, she said, I said, what do you want to do with it? She said, I'm going to make it look like an adobe style. And I didn't quite understand what that meant, but I said, sounds great. But then she transformed it into a house that looked like it belonged in Phoenix, Arizona. Wow. And people saw it and loved the colors and the vibrancy, the turquoises, the pinks and the yellows and the zigzags and all that kind of stuff. And that was the inspiration for the look of the can. And what about the name? Santa Fe. It was going to be Santa Fe Tea, but it's not called Santa Fe Tea. Well, we put Santa Fe on the can and I showed it to someone and they said, it sounds like a train.

35:55Oh, yeah. The Santa Fe Railroad. And I said, oh boy, I don't like that. So we had a map of the country on the wall. We said, Arizona. We wanted someplace dry, warm. Okay. So Arizona, you said all the name Arizona, and it's stylized with a capital Z in the middle. Yep. My wife, she went to Hunter College and she was an art major. I went home that night. I told Eileen, I said, Arizona. And she came up with a big Z in the middle of it. something that made Arizona look kind of cute on the can. And there we go. I wrapped it around a can and we said, wow, it's going to stand out in the cooler. In those days, the coolers were a lot more drab than they are today.

36:42You know, there was all blues and blacks and reds. The coolers in New York. Convenience stores? Because nobody was doing turquoise or pink. Yeah. Yeah. And so from the time that you saw the Gatorade cans to the time that you actually had product to sell, how long would you estimate that was? Probably under a year. So it's fast. Yeah. Well, I mean, today we do something in three weeks because we're plugged in. But back then we had to get the can supplier and all that. The brilliance of cans to me also seems not just it was going to differentiate the product. And by the way, just to be clear, no iced tea was being sold in cans at that point?

37:23Well, they had 12-ounce cans. You know, the standard. Okay, 12-ounce cans. Not the big cans. Right, but nobody was doing the tall boy cans. So that was the first thing. And the second thing, it's lighter than glass, right? So that's got to save you some money, too. It doesn't break. It doesn't break. And the freight is a lot more because it's heavy, you know? Right, the freight on glass has more. Right, yeah. Okay, so you come out with this, I think, what was it, in May of 92? when Arizona debuts? May 5th, 1992. First load comes to New York. Okay. So you've got, and your first run, how many, do you remember how many cases of it you made?

38:00I think we made 20 ,000 cases. Okay. And now, how are you going to get them into stores? Because you had a distribution business, but so could you just literally say to these stores, hey, we had iced tea, will you put them on your shelves? The first weekend we had Arizona delivered, it was early May, and I had my sales manager, I said, go out with a van and get me different types of stores. Let's place it. It was Friday. And then let's see what happens on Monday. Let's go back to him. And he comes back and he got a drugstore, a gas station, a bodega, a mom and pop supermarket. And he said, I placed it.

38:40He placed a case of each, put a sign on there, the price of Snapple, whatever Snapple sold for. It was usually a buck in those days, but some places had it for more. And then we went back on the following week and nine out of the 10 stores sold 48 pieces, which is two cases. Okay, but just let me pause for a while. How did you get the stores to agree to let you put it in their coolers? Because they have limited space. Well, somebody gets kicked out. Somebody gets moved over. You know, there's always room in a cooler as long as you get the green light from the shopkeeper to move something up. But why would he, but what gave you the ability to do that?

39:17Was it personal relationships? Because it's, right, you knew a lot of these store owners. Well, you know, if you're selling a guy something already, you know him. It doesn't mean he'll take a new product of yours, but it's more likely he will than he won't because he knows you. And he knows that if he doesn't sell, you'll pick it up and take it home, you know, and give him credit on it. So it was relatively easy to get a grocer to take it on, plus the fact it looks so dynamic and the can looked so good, the grocer said, yeah, sure, why not? I think I could sell it. But you did not put any marketing dollars behind it?

39:50Other than point of sale, like signs on stores and coolers, no. I'm curious, what was the cost to you per can? Back in those days, it was about a half a buck a can. So then you were probably, what, making 20 cents on each can, maybe? We were making 17 cents a can. So that was thin. You had to sell a lot to make money. Well, you know, back in those days, to make three bucks a case was pretty good. Yeah. Because it was incremental. We were going there already. The truck was there. To take a few extra cases off a truck, the economics were great. And in a sense, I mean, the fact that Snapple was doing so well was good for you because they were paying for marketing and Coke and Pepsi's products were paying for marketing.

40:45And all you really had to do was just kind of be next to them on the shelves and hopefully people would see this interesting can and say, oh, I'll try that. Well, exactly. Because they made tea cool. Snapple did at least. And then walking around with that big can was cool for kids. But I think packaging is what did it. And the colors and the look of the can as well. And I should mention the first year, I think 80 % of the sales were in four states, four places, New Jersey, New York, Miami, and Detroit. So you weren't really – hadn't penetrated every market yet. But those four places were doing very well.

41:27We did, I think it was 700 ,000 cases. Year one, it was 800 ,000 cases. And I guess another turning point was Detroit. There was a guy in Detroit called Michael Schott who was handling distribution for you. He did such a good job. You guys brought him on as a chief operating officer for you and really started to push this product out nationally. Yeah. By 93, we knew we had something. And Mike was the first real serious guy outside of New York, New Jersey to take the brand on. And they did very well that year. And from that, we became a national brand. By 94, you know, we became a powerhouse. I don't know if I'm reading this right.

42:14That two years in, you're doing more than$150 million in sales. Does that square with your memory? Yeah. Well, year two, we did$100 million year two. Then year three, we doubled it, more than doubled it again. So we got to like$400 million. That's unbelievable. Okay. So you've got, I think by the early 2000s, Arizona, which had started in 92, is already producing more iced tea than Snapple. I don't know if you're outselling Snapple by that point. Maybe you are. Yeah, I am. You are already. But Snapple went through multiple owners and they destroyed it as they moved. Right, because they sold to Quaker and a bunch of different things.

42:57But again, when they sold to Quaker, you would think, oh, they're going to be huge now. They've got a huge marketing team behind them and a huge company behind them. But it didn't actually happen. It didn't become this threat. Most entrepreneurial companies that are bought or consumed by larger companies usually don't fare very well. because that little thing that happens in entrepreneurial companies can't happen in these large companies. So unintentionally, they destroy them. And that's what happened to Snapple. That's what's happened to a lot of brands that you see acquired and then look what happened.

43:34Yeah. But I want to ask you about a product that really just turned out to be a huge winner, which was half and half, the Arnold Palmer. Arnold Palmer's, right? Everybody knows you go to a He asked for an Arnold Palmer. It's half lemonade, half iced tea. Arnold Palmer, great golfer. I think there was a company that had like a license to sell the drink in around, I think around 2001, 2002, maybe you guys partnered with this company or with him to bring it, to basically make a can, an Arnold Palmer can. Tell me a little bit about that, the genesis of that idea. That flavor house I mentioned, the guy I went to high school with, brought it in to me.

44:20And he said, what do you think it is? Now, I play golf, but I never heard the term Arnold Palmer's a half and a half. But he told me about it, and he had sold this company flavor out in California, and they came out with an Arnold Palmer in a dairy half gallon. And I said, well, send me it, because he said it didn't do very well. He said, would you be interested? it he sends it to me and the picture on the carton was awful didn't look like arnie and the product was awful and being a big size container for somebody who says oh i want to try it but i want to invest in you know in a half gallon giant carton yeah yeah so i said you did a lot of things wrong i said to myself she said what do you think you want to try it and i i said let me put some thoughts behind it and i came up with this look with arnold on the front arnie didn't control a lot of photographs of himself so they had photographers who would follow him and i asked arnie i said you got some pictures he said well call these guys and i did and they said well all right give us like a nickel a can i say i'm not gonna give a nickel a can to some guy who put a photograph of him in play.

45:33So we had this lady who did our graphic designs. She painted the first picture, put it on a can, put some of his highlights of his career on the side of the can, and we introduced it. And I went to a sales meeting a couple of weeks in, and one of the sales ladies said to me, I got an order today for four green tea and two George Bushes. George Bush was president at the time and it looked like George Bush not intentional she thought it was George Bush not Arnold Palmer George Bush I love this George Bush iced tea I said they ignored the umbrella they ignored all that golf references and Arnold Palmer on the front but I said who cares if they call it George Bush that's fine with me too and today it's our second best selling flavor when we come back in just a moment the end of a partnership and the beginning of a 10-year legal battle over what the brand is worth stay with us i'm guy roz and you're listening to how i built this

46:58Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2005 and Arizona Iced Tea is doing incredibly well, even outselling Snapple, the brand that inspired it. But behind the scenes, the partnership behind the brand between John and Don is starting to sour. In fact, it turns out that John has been drifting from the business for quite some time. When Arizona started and it became very successful, he became more remote and more away from the business. It was the evolution of a partnership that started with us both working together and then it turned into mostly me and John not as active or involved as he was.

47:44He was pursuing other interests at that point. And our success gave him opportunities that we didn't have before. And he liked golf and he ended up buying a golf course. And I said, go pursue your interest and have fun. But you guys are partners. You were full partners. And I want to be very sensitive here because John is not, you know, this is not a documentary show. We're interviewing one founder at a time. And your co-founder, John, is not here to give his side. And so we're going to talk about him respectfully. I mean, oftentimes when one partner is doing more of the work, it can create tension because one person is like, hey, I'm doing all the work.

48:22and you're getting all the profit, you're getting half the profit here. Did that create any tension or were you okay with that? I was fine with it. You didn't care? Because I never considered what I do work. I enjoy what I do. And I also, and I said to him at one point, I said, we didn't fight, we had nothing, we're not going to fight now. Did you call him to consult with him on anything? I mean, did you say, hey, we got this new idea for a product or was he completely out of the picture? And there were times when I didn't speak to him for over a year. Wow. But also I knew that at that point in his life, it wasn't for him.

49:03And oftentimes when I would make decisions, I did call him sometimes. But for the most part, I didn't because there was – he had trust in me and I had trust in the fact that what I was doing I felt was the best for both families. And we succeeded. It was great. All right. So let's get to 2005. By 2005, he decides he wants to sell his half of the company. No, he wanted to sell the company. He wanted to sell the whole company, not his half. He wanted us to sell. He wanted you to sell. OK, because I guess there were people out there who were offering lots of money. Why weren't you interested in selling?

49:42I mean, apparently there was billions of dollars at stake here. There's arguments to be made. Hey, 2005, we're on top of the world. Let's cash out. I have two sons in the business and I have four grandchildren. And I hope that one day my sons take over and then they have their children take over from them. Maybe it's an old-fashioned approach, but I think the worst thing in life is to be wealthy and not have anything to do. You know, the guys from Snapple told me the worst day of his life was the day after he sold out. I believe it. Because he said, now what? But I also understood that if he wanted to sell, I said, hey, sell it to somebody who will get into your shoes and get the same benefit you've been enjoying.

50:32That's fine. I can't have a guy buy you out and then say, I want to run the company because I know what they do to entrepreneurial companies. And I was concerned about then my stake would be hampered by some large company putting their big mitts on them, on the brand. And that's where the world kind of unraveled a little bit. Right. Because nobody – well, very few people would accept that deal. They would say, oh, they wouldn't buy out his share only to be in a situation where they couldn't control the business, right? Because if an outsider or private equity or a big firm buys into the company, they want to share it.

51:08They want to control it generally. Yeah, sure. And for their obvious reasons. They say, I put a lot of money up and I don't want this guy who's a founder to control my destiny. Of course. But I think it's a mistake because I think the reality of it is who better to run something is the guy who started it and who's got vested interest in it. And just to be clear, when it became obvious that you were not going to sell and that you were going to have to buy John out, the real dispute began over what the company was worth. And this gets pretty complicated, but suffice it to say, John thought the number should be much higher, like in the low billions, and you said the number should be lower.

51:53And so this began a 10-year legal battle that I'm assuming neither of you knew was going to last that long. Couldn't have imagined it lasting that long, right? 10 years of your life. Now, not every day you're in and out of court or depositions, but it's always hovering over you. There's a lot of stake. During that time, I said I was 70%, 80 % lawyer, 20 % marketer because it took up that much of my time. But I was able to take that 20 % of the time and keep running the business and keep growing the business. even though it was very difficult at times to make decisions. And also, it was difficult for me to tell an applicant, because oftentimes I'll interview people, to say, come on board without the certainty of where the company's going to be a year from now.

52:51And I felt it was wrong for me to have somebody leave his job, come work here, and then tell them a year later, hey, by the way, we got bought by Coke, and you're out of a job. So I wasn't able in good conscience to recruit good people to grow my business. And I wasn't able to make the kind of investments that businesses need to keep growing your business. So I was kind of like frozen. For 10 years. Okay. Why did it take so long? Like, again, I get it. And you get mad. I mean, and it gets personal. But I wonder, why didn't the both of you just go to a third-party mediator and say, okay, you value the company.

53:30Do a fair analysis and then let's see where the – you know, where it lands. You know, if I look back at it and I would say, well, what could have been done differently? Could that have worked? But there were other issues going on. There was family issues. There were ex-employees that went over to his side. Right. And so I was fighting on multiple fronts because I had people who my former CFO was on his side of the table, who was a friend of mine. But John promised them all kinds of wealth, and there were lots of sticky issues. Just see, when I represented the company as I did and the profits of the company were shared 50-50, not a nickel went to me over what John had received.

54:27I gave him half. But did we think it was going to last 10 years? No. Did we think the money that was spent on legal fees would have been possible? No. I cannot imagine how expensive that was. How did it take a toll on your physical health? Just sleepless nights or I don't know. I don't know. You know, I've said when you've had guns to your head in multiple times, those things are things that kind of stand out. But, you know, my wife often said to me, how long are you going to fight? How long do you want to keep this up? What are you doing? You know, that kind of thing. But I realized there were thousands of people who worked for me who depended on the decisions I was making for their future as well.

55:09Yeah. Okay. This case was settled. or a court-ordered settlement was reached between you and John in 2015. The public amount is a billion dollars, and then you guys reach a settlement. I don't know what for, but okay. A check was written to him. Do you think if he did nothing, if he just kept his 50 % share, he'd have more money today? Absolutely. What we earned last year was what he got bought out for. So again, this is not an indictment of you or John. It's just sad. It's a sad story, and it's sad because this happens in business, and money just messes with our minds. I don't have any harsh words for John.

55:51I really don't. I don't know what he thinks of me, right, because I haven't spoke to him since the lawsuit ended. But I wish him well, and I hope he's happy because I'm happy. There's more important things in life. There really are. Yeah. You know? Okay. He's out of the picture at this point, and now it's all behind you. Okay. Now that the legal battle is over, does it allow you to do things that you couldn't do before? Absolutely. That's why we've been able to do as well as we've done. I built a factory in New Jersey that we needed desperately. I'm very proud of it. It's 1 ,250 ,000 square feet of a building that every single piece of it we own, we paid for.

56:36We don't have any company debt. We have no banks. We have no lending institutions. I mean, it's incredible. You know, our cost of making a can today is less than it cost us 33 years ago to make the same can. Yeah, let's dig into that. I read, for example, that you actually thinned the aluminum in the cans, which made them lighter and cheaper, for example. Yeah. You know, aluminum is a component that when you buy cans at all level, aluminum goes up and down. Your price changes every 30 days. So taking aluminum out is a tremendous saving. But we're not the only one who did it. Other people did it as well.

57:16Can manufacturers did it because of the obvious reason. They used less material. And I read, for example, like another way to keep your cost down is you use lightweight trucks. You use them at night to avoid city traffic. Is that right? That's right. Well, if a trucker has eight hours to work and he's stuck on the George Washington Bridge for six hours, it's only one move. I came to that conclusion. I was going over to George Washington Bridge at 1 o 'clock. It was a nightmare. If you go after 8 o 'clock, it's still a nightmare, but it's a short nightmare. Less of a nightmare, yeah. So what are you doing to stay ahead of – I mean, again, there's so many brands that we've done on the show that lose market share, that do start to fade.

58:01And sometimes it's a bad executive that comes in or a bad series of decisions or just taste change or consumer interest change, right? And things have changed over the years. Some people say, oh, it's all about the future. It's all about no sugar. I know you have a no sugar beverage too. Or people say, oh, it's all about no carbs or it's all about clean ingredients, all kinds of things come and go. What is the secret of keeping your teas ahead of your competition? I think what we've tried to do and we continue to do is keep it simple. My belief is you got to give a consumer a fair deal and then you can expect them to come back.

58:42If you don't, they're going to go someplace else. There's too many choices in America. And, you know, quality of the beverage is to me the most important because the first reason they buys the can. And then from that point on, it's about, it tastes good and it's price fair. And the can of tea is still, I guess, priced at 99 cents? Yes. But not all stores sell it for that price. No, it's a suggested price. Some retailers choose not to sell it for that price or can't afford to sell it at that price. And we have other alternatives for them. And if they can't afford to do it, they got to do something else.

59:17Okay, but so how have you kept it at a 99 cent suggested price all these years? I'm asked that question like 10 ,000 times, right? And my normal reaction is, I don't know how I do it. But that's not true, right? The facts are there are multiple things you need to do behind the scenes in order to give consumers and continue to give them value. Because oftentimes companies say the best thing to do or the easiest thing to do is raise the price. go into a customer and tell them, hey, it's going up on March 1st. But to me, as a salesman, that's the worst day in your life because you don't want to tell a grocer or a customer, by the way, you have to pay more.

59:56And then you have to charge more to your customer walking in the door. And can I do it forever? I don't know, but we're going to continue doing it as long as we can. Don, I'm curious. After you had to basically pay a lot of cash out, right? And I I know it took a little bit of time to pay that back to the company. Were there ever, I mean, there must have been or must be over the years, private equity or other big beverage brands that have come to you and have said, hey, we're interested in buying you. Has that happened? Yeah, sure. And what's your response? I'm not for sale. You don't even want to entertain the offer?

1:00:38No, because, you know, I know what it means. It means I'm going to be unemployed and my kids are going to be unemployed. I don't like that. You know, 10 years ago when I settled the case with John, my first grandchild was born that night. I went from signing a document to the hospital to see hers at the first time. Now she's 10 years old. And I tell her, one day you're going to be running this company. And I hope that's a reality. I hope that's something that this company becomes multi-generational and run by my grandchildren at some point. And, you know, that's a good story. When you think about the journey you took, and I mean, listen, it's not a secret.

1:01:23You are a billionaire. I mean, you know, you entered a market dominated by big players and you're a massive product, right? You've created a massive product that outsells the big guys. And you are a big guy now. How much of where you got to do you attribute to how hard you worked? And how much do you think has to do with luck, just timing and the world around you and circumstances? I mean, luck is an important thing in life, right? luck to find a right wife, luck to have good kids, good grandkids. I've had good health in my life, which is also something you can attribute to luck. I've been consistent in my life.

1:02:10So I'm a very, very lucky guy. And I'm lucky to have, be in a business that after 30 plus years, we can still have customers who say, I like that product. My mother liked it. Now I like it too, which is a very difficult thing to do. Yeah. Don, do you imagine working until your dying day, like going into the office every day? Yes. That's my plan. Actually, last year, my plant manager in New Jersey, they got jammed up, forklift to operators and come to work. So I said, I'm coming here to help out tomorrow. He says, what do you want? I said, I want a forklift with fill it up with fuel and a bottle of water on it.

1:02:51And I got there at 10 o 'clock in the morning and got off the machine at eight o 'clock at night. And I unloaded and loaded 57 trails. Wow. And it was one of the more interesting, exciting days of my life. It was great. So really, I mean, you are there until the very end, as far as you're concerned. And hopefully the very end is a ways off. That's Don Voltaggio, co-founder of Arizona Beverage Company. Would you ever consider doing a George Bush iced tea brand now that, you know? George, I don't know. The Arnold Palmer works? Maybe it's all in Texas. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Or maybe people would be like, who is that?

1:03:30We've got to do the VPs. I like iced tea. Eisenhower iced tea. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please check out my newsletter. You can sign up at gyros.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Ramel Wood with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research shelf from Iman Ma 'ani. Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and Gilly Moon.

1:04:05Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Carla Estevez, Noor Gill, Sam Paulson, Andrea Bruce, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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