Cultivating New Frontiers In CPG. Mergers, Magic & Makers.

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0:39Hello, dear friends, and thanks for tuning in to Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I'm Ray Lateef, the editor and producer of Taste Radio, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Jackie Brugliera and Mike Schneider. We have two feature interviews in this episode, both recorded at a raucous Naturally San Diego event held earlier this month. I'm joined by Lou Cooperhouse, the co-founder and CEO of cell-cultured seafood company Blue Nalu, and Heather Brown, the co-owner of modern beverage brand Sati Soda, for conversations exploring the origins and development of their respective businesses.

1:21Okay, so a little behind the scenes here. We spent a bit of time getting our studio set here in the Newton office. Our incredible designer, studio director, all of the above, Amanda Huang, is out of the office. So Mike and I were at each other's throats and just ripping cords out of the wall and cursing. I was crying in a corner and then Mike was crying in a corner and now we're all set. and hopefully everything is recording the way it should be. You made it. Jackie was having a ball in San Diego watching all this. I was just sitting here watching it all happen. I was here for, I guess, moral support.

1:57Okay, thank you. Your moral support was more than appreciated. You were very much watching a reality TV type situation going on. We should have been recording. I think we were recording some stuff. We have it recorded. It's recorded. There's at least a gig or two of Mike and I going back and forth. No one cursed. As far as I recall, no one was cursing. Mike got to a point where it's like, guys, guys, please, I can't. I was trying to play my role as audio engineer, my previous role as the audio person. And now that everybody has experience with these tools, people want to take on those roles. So if you looked at this from just an organization perspective, it just tells you why it's important to have roles.

2:41But then when people bleed into other roles, you have to stop, remember that, and listen. And I forgot that. Can I needle you for a sec? Maybe stab you in the back? You know, a lot's changed in terms of audio technology since 1986. Yeah. So, I mean, just. That is when I got my restricted radio telephone operators permit. I know. Is there like a cert you need to renew? Probably. No, I've never really been an engineer. I just, I know enough to be dangerous. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, thanks for bearing with us, folks, and just letting us talk about our ridiculous behind the scenes kind of crap over here.

3:13And thank you. I think they live for this, Ray, you know? Yeah, that's why they tune in. Thank you to everyone who we met at the 2026 Winter Fancy Fair. What a show. Yes. You know, we recorded on day two of that show. And if you missed that episode where we call out a bunch of brands, products, and people tune in, the title of that episode is called Innovation of Plenty at a Fair, an indication for 2026. And for sure, I would say what we saw in terms of trends and innovation is very clearly an indicator for the rest of the year. So tune into that episode. But you're listening to this one right now.

3:50So let's talk about some brands perhaps we didn't have a chance to highlight at the show. You know, I feel like in terms of brands that we loved on this show and that I hadn't really mentioned or we hadn't really mentioned since there's a brand called Nomad, Nomad Popcorn. So I saw those guys at the very end of the show and I'm so glad that I did. So just for context, year. Nomad is a brand of snacks. Right now, they only make popcorn, but they make some amazing popcorn. And they use global flavors and cuisines as their differentiator. And so they just introduced a new pad Thai flavor for their popcorn, which I thought was just absolutely incredible.

4:30You know, they're just one of a handful of brands that I think that we saw at the show that were really emphasizing global flavors, differentiated flavors than the typical, say, butter or cheese, or maybe even like a sweet type of variety that you would see associated with, I guess, what you would call, you know, popcorn flavors. Yeah. Yeah. It's tasty stuff. Their packaging really pops too. And they're a local San Diego brand. So love seeing them in the local stores and I'm excited for them to increase their distribution. Absolutely. Another founder that I loved meeting at the show was the founder of a brand called Teeny Tea, T-E-A-N-Y.

5:13And they make, ironically, hot cocoa. So it's called Teeny and it's described as a tea brand, but they had a hot cocoa variety that was just fantastic. The flavor was described as milk and cookies and it's infused with quote, kid-friendly rooibos tea. And they come in these stick packs and man, that was just one of the most indulgent, delicious hot cocoas I've ever had. I bet that's so good. It was so good. And the packaging is just fantastic. If you look at it. That's cool. That's good packaging. It definitely has a kid vibe to it. It's nostalgic. It feels really kid forward and kid friendly, but I feel like it's something that could appeal to anyone.

5:56Is it meant to be dairy-free? No. In fact, the founder recommended that you use milk instead of water for this. Because rooibos is such a complex tea that a rooibos latte is amazing. And probably a lot of us haven't tried that before. Oh, okay. I'll say a lot of us probably have because we're CPG professionals and we like to try a lot of stuff. But if you've had rooibos, you're interested in like a different tea experience than the a green tea flavor is a green tea flavor and a black tea flavor is a black tea flavor and i'm not saying they're not complex because they certainly are but rooibos takes you to like three other planes of existence when you're drinking it for sure for sure and actually i haven't seen many there was a who's it called ruby red remember ruby red oh yeah yeah that was a brand of rooibos teas i haven't seen many brands lead with or at least talk about rooibos as it's It's not as popular as black tea or green tea.

6:52No, no. What is quite popular all over the world, and in particular places like Spain, are churros. Churros are, everyone loves churros, right? So I was introduced to a brand called Madres Churros. And they make frozen churros that come in these little pints, these little ice cream looking pints. And all you have to do, according to the brand, is just heat, then eat. So the churros come in this little pint. They're frozen. You put them in your air fryer, your toaster oven, what have you. You eat them and they're amazing. They're gluten free and they're vegan. And they come in, let's see, nine.

7:30That's an interesting number. Nine per pint. So really cool stuff. So many other brands, so many really cool ideas. And the ones that I highlighted are just a handful of the ones that you will probably see in upcoming videos on Instagram and TikTok, Taste Radio's Instagram and TikTok, that is, where we highlight these founders and their brands in very short, mini elevator talk segments. We talked about this last week, but we sat down with, I think at this point now we have about 30 videos, Jackie. Yeah. 30 videos. A lot of founders that want to spread the word about their company, let everyone know their history, what they're excited about, where to find them and lots of different brands from, you know, all different categories, which was really cool to see.

8:21And if the great mom energy from Madre Churros isn't enough for you, we also have Quattro mamas who make a fantastic brand of salsa matcha. There was a lot to see. Again, tune into or check out BevNet Taste Radio on Instagram or just Taste Radio on TikTok to watch all those segments. So Culture Pop, which is a maker of prebiotic sodas, excuse me, probiotic sodas, they just introduced a new, I believe this is a limited edition flavor. It's a sparkling black cherry that they partnered with a musician on the musician's name is noah kahan is that how you pronounce his last name noah khan noah khan you don't know noah khan i know noah khan i just know how to pronounce it and you're from new england exactly he's big in new england yeah i've heard some of his music not a huge fan but i dig i love it so i it's great i tried this uh this this new black cherry variety the other day it's good from culture pop though i i love the the tanniness of culture pop.

9:26I love that most of their flavors have a little bit of a bite to them. This one is a bit more on the sweet side. I'm not getting that tang. It's black cherry. Yeah. There is a little bit of tang though. Is there? Yeah. There is a little bit of tang. Have you had a whole can? This is my favorite black cherry soda ever. I've had a fair few and I don't think this is as sweet as most black cherry sodas. I think it's the perfect level of sweet. And I like that it has a little bit of soul to it too. It has like a, I don't know, it's not a heaviness. It's 45 calories, 8 grams of sugar, but something about it just really pays off.

10:03It says fizzy, folksy, witty, tasty, gutsy soda on the side. I like the can too. It's a silver can with a huge black cherry flavor call. And then the words Noah Kahn are pretty small on here too. There's a guitar and things like that that would maybe draw you in, but the hero is clearly the black cherry. and I think it's pretty fantastic. Yeah. I've had five. Let's put it that way so far. I love their more esoteric varieties like they have a ginger and lemon variety, I believe. That's great too. It's amazing. They have a whole bunch of other flavors that are sort of more in my wheelhouse. They have a grapefruit variety.

10:38Right, Black Cherry's not in almost anyone's wheelhouse. That's the thing about it. You just said it was in your wheelhouse. It's in mine. I'm weird, man. If you haven't picked that up in 600 or 700 episodes of Taste Radio, I'm not like the mainstream consumer. And is Noah Kahn like this is his favorite flavor? Is that the connection? I think so. Okay. He's got some video. You can check it out on Instagram of him talking about the collaboration. And it seems pretty pure. Okay. Fair enough. It's actually described as Noah Kahn's, as in possessive, sparkling black cherry. He definitely had some ideas about how it should taste.

11:16Cool. Clearly they came through. I think so. You can see this in the news. This was on Nosh the other day, and I love seeing this. So the headline is female-led CPG brands Nemi, Tuyo, and Toto Verde merge. These are three early-stage brands. Nemi is a maker of cactus-based snacks. Toto Verde is a brand of seasoning blends. And Tuyo makes powdered beverages. And so they have merged under the Tuyo Foods name. The combined company will be based in Los Angeles, California. This is all according to an article written by our very own Adrian DeLuca, who talks about how The Collective will soon launch a new website, consolidate operations, expand distribution, streamline communication platforms, and make investments in inventory, marketing, and existing retail partnerships.

12:07They're going to get obviously some cost savings from this, combined ingredient sourcing, warehouse storage, freight, etc. I love this. I'm surprised that more early stage brands or that these smaller brands haven't done this in the past, which is, you know, everyone seems to be trying to get to a point where you're going to be acquired, or at least there's going to be some sort of strategic investment or private equity or venture capital firm that comes and is able to help you scale your business. But this in a way is achieving some of those goals by combining operations and reducing the overall cost of running a business, especially running a CPG business.

12:47And so again, I haven't seen this in too many cases before. I've seen mergers, I've seen acquisitions of smaller brands, but not necessarily three brands that have merged in this way. Yeah, I think it's really smart. I feel like we've seen it a bit more maybe on the beer side. Like we talked about that a bit at Brewbound Live in December. And it made a lot of sense in that category that was going through a lot of change. And I feel like last year, there's a lot of like maybe wait and see in the industry, in all industries. And it feels like people are ready to take action and work together to streamline, find efficiencies, save money, and maybe have a little bit more influence in the industry coming together rather than going at it one by one.

13:33Yeah, that's a really good point about the beer industry, Jackie. That is definitely one where we have seen consolidation in the form of mergers, especially because there's so many small breweries that would definitely benefit from producing beer as one singular organization, warehouse space, et cetera, having the same sales force. So hopefully this all works out. I mean, certainly we're going to continue to follow this story. And if it works out for these three brands, perhaps we will see more partnerships like the one we're seeing with Nemi, Tullio, and Toto Verde. All right, so Magic Spoon, I think on our podcast, I should probably fully admit that I was always kind of skeptical about the extremely premium, I'm going to use that term, or at least ultra premium cereals, those that you've seen out there that typically run for$10 or more.

14:30So Magic Spoon is one of the pioneers of this ultra premium cereal subcategory. But I got to say, for all my critique or criticism of these brands, I really love these new products that they came out with. They have two new protein cereals that are made with marshmallows. Okay. The reason I like this is because I think this goes back to why we all ate cereal when we were growing up. It's fun. It's something that you want to eat in the morning versus something that you have to eat in the morning, right? I think with a lot of modern day cereals, it's like, okay, well, if you're going to eat cereal in the morning, make sure it's really healthy.

15:09Make sure it has this. The flavor of added marshmallows, I feel like adds so much more to the fun, bringing back the fun in cereal. So obviously you're not going to go back to eating tricks, right? Lucky Charms. Why not? Or Lucky Charms. Lucky Charms, yeah. So if you're going to eat better for your cereal, you might as well have the ones that have protein and marshmallows. So they have a classic marshmallow variety, and they have one that's called S'mores, which I believe has chocolate O's. I'm not going to call them Cheerios. I guess I just did. Chocolate O's mixed with marshmallows. Magic Spoon also introduced some new protein pastries.

15:51What are these typically called, Mike? Pop-Tarts. Pop-tarts. Okay. So Pop-tarts, but they have these new protein pastries. There's 11 grams of protein per pastry, six grams of fiber and two grams of added sugar. They come in frosted strawberry and cinnamon brown sugar varieties. I've tried those. Yes. You have. Are they good? They're not bad. They're not a Pop-tart because you're expecting the frosting to be like just covering the top on a Pop-tart and it's full of all kinds of bad stuff and processed blah, blah, blah, blah. I think for me, these are like a step in the right direction. Yeah, the sweetener blend is allulose, erythritol, sugar, stevia, and monk fruit.

16:34Okay, so it's got like the full pack of sweeteners and it shows. It doesn't really hit you until after you've, you know, swallowed the Pop-Tart and you're waiting for the next bite, but there's still a bit of that. But I think as we get better and better and better at sugar alternatives. These are pretty darn good. Interesting on the nutrition facts label, it describes total sugars as three grams, including two grams of added sugars. I assume that's the sugar sugar, the white sugar. But then it also lists sugar alcohol and it lists 10 grams of sugar alcohol. So I wonder if consumers are going to look at that and try to figure out if one, you know, is more important than the other, or if neither is important, or or if they even know what sugar alcohol is.

17:21But all in all, I definitely want to try these. They look really good. I don't know what the price point is. I would assume it's probably in line with the cereals. Not saying these are$10 per box, but... $10 a box? For four... Probably. It could be. It could be. I don't know what it is either, so we shouldn't speculate, but...

17:41Did you see Mike just turned into John Craven right there? Probably shouldn't. Hey, right, shut the hell up. Yeah, I went into John Craven mode. But that said, what I do like about this is that it's a pretty easy way to get 11 grams of protein in a snack. And it felt pretty filling, too. It's 170 calories. Nice. Nice. Okay, so you feel sated or satiated. Again, like I think my review is kind of mixed, but generally positive on these. That's good. Nice. Solid 6.2. More than 5. I mean, they can be better than a 5 and better than 6.2. Okay. Let's call them a 7. Depends on your mood. Let's call them a seven.

18:16Pop-Tart's a 10. Seven. For a breakfast pastry or nine. Jackie, is that beer? What are you drinking? No, it's not beer. So Tractor sent over their haymakers. That's what they're calling it. So they describe the haymaker as a farmer's tonic, which is made with apple cider vinegar and natural juices. This one has citrus ginger. It tastes really good, but it's interesting. It looks very from the farmer, has like the list of ingredients, like it's handwritten on the front with like an apple and a lemon on it. Feels very handmade almost, even though Tractor is a pretty big company. Yeah. Tractor Beverage Company, best known for their fountain drinks.

19:03You can find them in independent retailers, independent restaurants. And they recently introduced some RTD products as well. that product. Do you remember the name that people have typically associated with that type of product, Jackie? Switchel. Switchel, yes. Switchel. Yeah. So glad they're not using Switchel because people have been there, done that, tried that. It doesn't really work. Nobody knows what Switchel means. So good. They have their own name, Haymaker. Actually, I like Haymaker better than Switchel, honestly. So yeah, well done tractor beverage company. And yeah, really cool cans it actually from the tiny screen in our studio here that i can see j it looks like a miller genuine draft type product it's gonna go is it a gold can yeah it is in a gold can and the packaging is very like simplistic i mean obviously they don't have a ton of rtds either so this is like one of their first rtds so it'll be interesting to see if this packaging does evolve and if this is just like v1 but definitely gives like a made by the farmer aesthetic I just Googled Switchle.

20:11And according to Google's AI, Switchle is also known as Haymaker's Punch. I never knew that. So, okay. Me either. Wow. Learning something. On Taste Radio of all places.

20:28All right. Let's get to our featured interviews for this episode. Lou Cooperhouse of Blue Nalu and Heather Brown of Sati Soda join Taste Radio to share how their respective companies are redefining consumer experiences with innovative products. Lou discusses how Blue Nalu is pioneering cell-cultivated seafood, think bluefin tuna and toro, bringing sustainable, chef-driven dining to the forefront. Heather shares how Sati Soda has grown into a nationwide brand, offering organic, CBD, functional, and low-sugar beverages that resonate with health-conscious consumers.

21:13Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Lou Cooperhouse, who is the founder and CEO of Blue Nalu. Lou, it's great to see you. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for being with us. We're at a Naturally San Diego event here in downtown San Diego. And I've been really excited to speak with you because Blue Nalu is a company that is doing amazing things in the seafood industry. But before we get to Blue Nalu, you are someone who's been involved in the food and beverage industry for some time. You're from Jersey.

21:46That's right. And you were a co-founder or the co-founder of the Rutgers Innovation Center before you're doing what you're doing right now. How do you get involved in this business? Actually, my career spans 40 years in the food industry. I was initially at Campbell's Soup in New Jersey, later on at ConAgra, then a Nestle-funded startup, always doing startups. And towards, to your point, the latter half of my career, I decided to kind of help other startups and was a co-founder of a Rutgers University Food Innovation Center based in South Jersey. And I do a lot of public speaking on food trends myself.

22:19And candidly, I wasn't actually looking to do another startup, but I was actually doing some consulting work for the University of Hawaii to create a food innovation center there. And I was asked to kind of talk about really big ideas that kind of motivated me, what would be really disruptive on our planet. And literally Hawaii being the center of the Pacific Ocean, where two-thirds of our global supply chain of seafood came from, I said, you know what? Somebody actually did a proof of concept to making a real animal product without the animal back in 2013. What if that was applied to seafood?

22:51How about wild capture seafood? It's inherently variable and volatile in supply and quality and consistency, as well as having a really lousy yield. So for most consumers, from a health perspective, what if we made a product without mercury, plastics, pollutants, any environmental contaminants, and consistent every time, accessible, and at the same price point? So that was my pitch in 2017. And sure enough, I ran into an investor. And before you knew it, I would start up another company again back in early 2018. Well, what you're describing is a BHAG, a big, hairy, audacious goal. It was. It still is.

23:28But I think some listeners might be saying, okay, so what are you talking about, Lou? You want to create a fish company without the mercury, without all the waste, and do it in a really sustainable way, but without the fish? How does that work? It starts off with one fish. So we literally take cells, muscle cells or fat cells, from a mother fish, a bluefin tuna that we caught in the Pacific Ocean. We actually grow those cells in large volumes. It looks like a fermentation vessel in a brewery. And then we actually form that fish cell product, if you will, which is real, natural, genetically identical bluefin tuna into our first product, a saku block of toro.

24:07So it's the highest value seafood product, if you will. It's the Wagyu beef of the sea that we're making without heads, tails, bones, or skin. 100 % yield, just the part we eat. So very sustainable, secure, consistent, et cetera. And we're launching to both sushi and fine dining restaurants here in San Diego in the coming months. So this is imminent. After seven, eight years of development, we are literally ready to launch here in Southern California. Amazing. So when you are selling this product to restaurants and the restaurants explaining what the sushi is, or at least where it's sourced from, how is it different from what you might say otherwise?

24:47How is it different from, quote unquote, the real thing? How do you talk about that? How do you communicate that to consumers and the restaurants that you're selling to? Yeah, in the seafood industry, they have kind of two categories today. They have wild caught or farm raised. Right. We are now a third category, cell cultured or cell cultivated. We're actually a member of the National Fisheries Institute. So we actually describe it as a cell cultivated product, as an alternative to wild or farm raised. So we want to be very transparent in our labeling. but to your question on a restaurant menu it might be just called blue fin tuna toro it might be branded blue nalo products might be called sustainable or something different but nonetheless those are some of the things that we're going to learn as we launch in the market but we've actually learned from an extraordinary amount of consumer research in fact 10 ,000 consumers and about 100 food service operators and the 10 ,000 consumers are in eight different nations that the health benefits are the first primary driver for consumers, absence of mercury, plastics, pollutants.

25:48And for restaurants, what gets them very motivated is the accessibility, 100 % yield, consistency year-round at the same price point or possibly less than what they're paying for today. So it's a win-win for both consumers and customers. The hardcore enthusiasts might say, well, does it taste like what it's supposed to taste like? you know they're probably skeptical about what kind of a texture what kind of a flavor you're going to get versus the wild caught tuna when you talk about them being identical from a biological standpoint or at least from a yeah genetics genetic standpoint does that also relate to the flavor and the texture of the product it does it's a great question it's the first you know my career in the food industry it's all about delivering deliciousness culinary is number one the number one reason people repeat purchases for tastes great without any compromise.

26:40So we are driven by culinary excellence. So here's our challenge was that conventional blue fortuna is highly variable, as I mentioned, in quality. We've seen heavily marbled and fatty product, pinkish in color or brown in color. So it varies dramatically. So we had to literally work with chefs, like what is the optimal color, texture, mouthfeel, how your incisors versus your molars, you know, kind of have resistance to that. We've done so much work on Century. We recognize that there's such variability from chef to chef, what they're looking for. They're literally out there coring tuna in the markets in Japan because they've come up with some arbitrary rationale for quality of bluefin tuna.

27:20But we're actually saying you don't need to do that any longer. It's always the same. But to answer your question, we work with chefs to actually help design the optimal color, texture, and mouthfeel from the get-go. They are part of our PD team. It's working with our first chefs as we launch in the market. Okay, well my last question Lou is how can I be one of the first people to taste this product once it gets into a San Diego restaurant or restaurant here in the area? Do you have a sense of where you're going to be? Is it going to be a pretty small rollout or are you going big and going wide from the get-go?