A 'Live' Take: In a Crowded Market, Clarity Wins

0:10Hello friends and thanks for tuning into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I'm Ray Latif, the editor and producer of Taste Radio and with my co-hosts John Craven and Melissa Travers. I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling a little hoarse, and it's not from the event last night. It's from the insanity here in New York City because of the New York Knicks, which won Game 4 of the NBA Finals, and it was an incredible comeback win when they were down about 30 points and ended up winning the game. And, of course, the chaos in Midtown ensued after such an incredible victory.

0:52Glad I was in bed. You were in bed. You missed it all. Yeah, I just couldn't do it. Okay. I was tired. Melissa, were you in bed? I was. We watched some of it at dinner, and then I went back to the hotel, but I could hear the entire city cheering rhythmically, so I felt like I was watching it even though I wasn't watching it. Did you check your phone and just find out what's going on? I was talking to my husband, and he was telling me what was going on. Okay. That's one way to get information. Right, right, right. I like a third party. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't call it chaotic here at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

1:24This is where we're recording this episode of the show. But it definitely was electric and exciting here on day one of BevNet Live. We have been preparing for this event for so long. And I feel like a lot of things clicked yesterday from the content on stage to the networking that we saw and that we engaged in with so many of the attendees to the New Beverage Showdown, of course, which is my favorite thing to do here to the Taste Radio studio. so I was really happy with the way the day flowed and now we're here on day two and I'm hoping that the same energy will be here but it's early in the morning so I think we need to kind of get acclimated to the content that we'll be seeing later today and the content includes the final round of the new beverage showdown six brands made it and the six brands that we're going to be seeing today include dadgrass which is a THC leisure drink beverage kabo latte which is a blend of coffee and cacao, Dirty Virgo, a premium brand of N.A.

2:28cocktail drinks, LifeFlow, a brand of protein water, Umma Juice, which is a modern-day juice brand, and Brausa, which describes itself as a brand of German craft soda. John, I know you're looking forward to seeing all these brands on stage. Oh, yeah. My favorite part of the event, too. Is it really? Yeah, I think so. You know, I mean, it's the only time they let me on stage, Or I should say, I want to be on stage. Don't you have to do an intro at the beginning of the event? Oh, yeah, I did that too. You did that too? I forgot about that. That feels like three days ago. Did you talk about the 30 years that BevNet's been in business?

3:01I did. I showed a really horrific screenshot of BevNet from 1996. Yeah, it's crazy when people ask me how long I've been working at BevNet. I tell them I've been here for 15 years. So I've been here for half of BevNet's existence, which is kind of crazy to think about. And I've been here for all of the BevNet lives, with the exception of, I believe, of one. which is the very first one in New York City. It wasn't very good. You got to start somewhere, right? It's just like a beverage brand. No, it was fine. We just had no clue what we were doing. Yeah. Hey, Mike, Cold Brew was having another moment with consumers, and High Brew is turning heads with Bold Innovation.

3:38Super exciting, Ray. There's new ready-to-drink nitro flavors like blueberry and Mexican chocolate that are hitting the shelves at Sprouts and Target later this summer. And this fall, they're dropping three regenerative organic certified multi-serves in 48-ounce bottles. Big size, bigger mission. Part of their higher standard. You can find High Brew at Sprouts, HEB, Wegmans, Raley's, and more. High Brew's everywhere the action is. Grab yours at highbrewcoffee.com. Cold brew for those who do. Well, it's a good time to be in the industry. I think there's still a lot of enthusiasm for beverages and, you know, for all the discussion about how difficult it is and how challenging it is to be a beverage founder.

4:19the enthusiasm once again and the positivity around better for you beverages and improvements upon legacy categories was very evident in the room yesterday yeah definitely i mean i think just overall kind of i don't know a lot of optimism from people which is always one of those things i wonder just how people are feeling when they're at these events you know it's mid-year obviously like you know busy time of the year for beverage sales too so but yeah i think you know really good outlook and man i think you know even a lot of these thc brands you know many of them have like other product lines they're launching just in case and stuff so yeah i don't know good stuff and clearly retailers are bullish about the future of beverages whether they be functional for refreshment for indulgence you know we've got folks from as i mentioned many times in podcasts leading up to this event, the Vitamin Shop, Walmart, Wegmans, Whole Foods.

5:16And, you know, from Samantha Fletcher from Whole Foods to Nicolette Payne, the Vitamin Shop, you just get a sense that they are excited about the future of this business. And they're looking for new brands to bring into their stores, but they're looking for clarity, right? They're looking for a key understanding of what the value proposition is and how they're communicating that value proposition to consumers. That was very evident in the showdown yesterday. I really enjoyed seeing Nicoletta Payne on stage yesterday. She is with Vitamin Shop. She was talking about some of the trends that she's seeing.

5:48And if I hear creatine one more time, then I'm going to start taking 10 milligrams of it and become like an incredible Hulk woman. But she talked about creatine a bunch. She was talking about protein and she was talking about the evolution of protein and how consumers are looking for, you know, what's next in protein, like what's, so now just protein in and of itself isn't enough and trying to figure out how to drive it a little bit further. So I thought she was incredibly insightful. Yeah, it was interesting with one of the brands I mentioned that made it the showdown finals, LifeFlow. They have 10 milligrams of protein per bottle, two different kinds, including collagen, which has come up as a source of protein a number of times or a number times in our conversations yesterday.

6:32And it's definitely a trend or at least a part of that protein trend that we've been following and that there seems to be some traction going on there. And there has been for a while. I mean, collagen was an ingredient and has been an ingredient that has been associated with beauty and beauty in beverages for some time. But I expect we're going to hear a lot more about it in line with all the excitement around creatine, or at least all the discussion around creatine. I mean, we hear more about collagen now in terms of protein. I feel like I used to hear it, hear about it a lot more when you were talking about skin, hair, and nails.

7:04Did you guys check out that brand Solstice? It's a canned, you know, sort of like skin supplement brand. I thought they were really interesting. I talked to Erica and Brett yesterday for a bit. Those were the two founders. It's a dermatologist and anesthesiologist husband and wife team, and they have nianimicide and polypodium in their products, which I've never, polypodium I hadn't heard of, but apparently you drink it and it reduces the amount of sun exposure that you experience. And then Nyena Masai is something I've only heard of that you put topically on your face. So I don't know, super interesting.

7:40It is super interesting. I think the question is going to be how broad and how applicable is the trend to consumers, to modern day consumers, because the education hurdle is still pretty high. Ingestible beauty, you know, drinking your drinking your beauty, drinking collagen, isn't necessarily the most intuitive thing. But the more people do it, like any trend, the more that you're going to see brands incorporated into their innovation strategies. Definitely feels like it has kind of an education hurdle or maybe a trust hurdle perhaps too. Yeah. I mean, typically when you think about beauty, you think about topical.

8:14You don't necessarily think about ingestible. But in addition to the discussion about trends that we saw yesterday, I thought it was really great to see on stage folks who have created successful businesses and either exited or continuing to build those businesses. You had Tom First, you had Ben Weiss, you had Bill Shufeld. And people seem to really love hearing from Bill Shufeld, who plays in the beer space as the founder or co-founder of Athletic Brewing. But I thought his discussion on stage, everything he talked about was very applicable to how early stage founders are thinking about and building their brands.

8:47Just from the, you know, what is the need to how do I meet that need to how do I think about you know how consumers are drinking and and not drinking over the next 10 years I thought it was interesting to hear Ben Weiss talk about how even though this is his second time around he still has to figure out how to engage with the consumer that that's all always sort of a new process to figure out what the consumer is actually interested in and how to cater the product to them. Yeah, I mean, the same playbook never works twice, I think is kind of it. And yeah, no, I think that was great just hearing him talk about all that stuff.

9:27Yeah, Ben Weiss, the founder of Buy, which again sold for$1.7 billion in 2017. And he's back at it with Crooked Pop, which is a brand of hard sodas. Very different businesses for sure. And the alcohol space seemingly more complicated than NA for sure. Well, like I said, I'm excited for day two of the events and John and I are about to go sample some beverages for the New Beverage Showdown final round. And I hope you're not hydrated at this point because you will be very hydrated in about 10 minutes. Can't wait. Can't wait. Yes. No, I can't wait as well. To everyone who attended the event this time around, thank you so, so much.

10:06It was so amazing talking with you and seeing you and I hope everyone got a lot out of this show. Of course, folks who didn't make the event, we hope to see you in December for BevNet Live LA 2026 and of course our Taste Radio meetups which we'll be holding in Chicago in August, San Diego and San Francisco in September and in London, England in October. As always, thanks so much for listening to Taste Radio and reach out anytime. Ask at tasteradio.com. Interview ideas, content ideas, or if you're thinking about being on the show yourself, we'd love to hear from you. So once again, thanks so much, and we'll see you next time.

10:45That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Golang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram.

11:20Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at tasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you.