David, Decaf & Daiquiris. They're All Trending.

0:10Hello 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 with my co-host for this episode, John Craven, Jackie Brugliera, and Mike Schneider. You okay over there? Yeah. John Craven, recovering from a bit of a cold. I hope you're feeling better. Man cold. Man, what? What does that even mean? What does that mean? What is that different than a woman cold? Just being a big baby laying on the couch. That's what your wife tells you when you're sick. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, it's like kind of like rub some dirt on it, get back to work.

0:45You're overreacting. Yeah. That's what we do when we get sick. Fix the garbage disposal, you man. You know? Wow. Well, hopefully it'll pass by the time you get on the plane to London, because being ill on a plane is not fun. I hope so. Yeah, I hope so as well. Going on a plane tomorrow. Wait, what? Yeah, going to LA tomorrow. What? Are you a glutton for punishment over here? What's going on? Why are you doing that? Just going to pick up a fresh loaf of bread at Juiceta and then just going to come back home. I honestly can't tell if you're... Our colleague Adam Stern told me it was a good idea.

1:24Now I'm going to the Founderland event. Oh, the Founderland event. Very cool. Very cool. So you're there for a couple of days and then back in Boston? One night. Jesus, man. Your jet lag is going to be wild. No, that's how you avoid jet lag. Well... So he thinks. JetBlue, I guess they love you over at the JetBlue. So they tell me. Yeah. We've been saying this for weeks now. We are headed to London, to the United Kingdom. We're headed there next week. I'm flying out on the 13th. Jackie and Mike slightly before. Versus London, Ontario. Yeah, versus London, Ontario. Oh wait, that's not where we're going?

2:03No. We're at Ontario Airport? Yeah, you better fix your flight then. And John is also flying out on the 13th. We're going to be there for the entire week. As we've mentioned, we're going to be attending an event called Cheers the Drink Summit by Bread and Jam on Tuesday, October 15th. We're going to be roaming the event from morning until the afternoon. Later that evening, from 6 to 8 p.m., we'll be inviting folks to join us for a happy hour. That's hosted by the wonderful team at Lucky Saint and featuring live interviews with Dashwater co-founder Jack Scott. Jack. And delicious founder and CEO Catherine Brickin.

2:39We'll be talking about their respective paths to international markets, specifically the United States. I have some lucky saint here with me. They make a fantastic non-alcoholic beer. I haven't had this yet. Have you guys tried this? You haven't? I've had many of them. Delicious. I need to, I'm going to break the table here. Are you really going to do that? I don't think I should do that. Oh my gosh. You shouldn't do that. No, I'm definitely going to do that. I'll have one later. I'll have one later. Have one later. But anyway, I love this brand. That is a phenomenal product. in your head. They are doing quite well in the United Kingdom.

3:12I really hope they're going to be making their way to the United States soon. I'll be sitting down with the founders while I'm in the UK as well. Now on Wednesday, October 16th, we'll be back at it with an industry networking meetup held at the offices of Trip in Nutting Hill from 5 to 7 p.m. We'll be sitting down with Trip founders Daniel Curry and Olivia Ferti and another one with Be Tomorrow Ventures investment principal, Lexi Prosser. You don't want to miss that because the trip founders know how to scale a brand in the UK and are doing so quite well in the United States as well. And how about this?

3:50Beat Tomorrow Ventures invests in early stage brands and functional concepts. So if you want to talk to Lexi, if you want to learn from Daniel and Olivia, that is the place to be. Once again, the trip offices on Wednesday, October 16th from 5 to 7 p.m. We would love to see you at our events. Just head to tasteradio.com slash London to let us know that you'll be coming. We have to plan the certain amount of food and drink that we'll be having there. So it's always helpful. It's totally free. So you know, it's totally free. When we go to London, people are surprised when we tell them this, but it's free.

4:27Yes, there is no cost. Sign pay to leave. Totally free. Is there such a place where it's free to enter, but you have to pay to leave? It's like holding them hostage. Jail? I think it's jail, right? Or blackmailing? Jail might be a good call there. Blackmail, yes. We're not blackmailing anyone. No one's going to jail. And no one's going to jail. Just show up. But as I mentioned, it would be great if you show up and having registered beforehand. Yes. That got weird. It did get a little weird. Yeah. What's not weird, but what's really exciting and what's been one of the most talked about brands of the past few weeks is one called David.

5:08David is a new line or new brand of high protein bars launched by the co-founder of a little known brand called RX Bar. Yes, Peter Rahal is behind this new brand called David. As I mentioned, a ton of hype behind this one. They have made no bones about the fact that they are trying to be the number one protein bar in the market. At this moment, they're completely direct to consumer. And it seems like, I don't know, everyone's got one of these in their hands lately. Anytime you go on LinkedIn, it seems like people are talking about David and munching on these bars. Each bar contains 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar.

5:55They come in four flavor varieties, a chocolate chip cookie dough, a double fudge brownie, a blueberry pie, blueberry pie, and a cake batter. This is the one you love, right? The cake batter? No, can we try that one last? Try that one last. John does not like... Cake batter flavor. This is not my cup of tea. He doesn't like the batter. He doesn't like the cake. How about some cookie dough, right? I would like it. Yes. Has anyone tried these yet? I have. You have? Yeah. Where'd you get them from? You bought them? Right, I haven't got my sources. You stole them from your desk. That's right. You know what?

6:29They did send us some samples, and I wonder. They sent us some samples, and they were in the sampling area, so I sampled them. Okay. Which one did you try? I tried the chocolate fudge. The chocolate fudge. No, sorry. The double fudge brownie? Double fudge brownie is the one I tried, yes. Do you remember how it was? I remember it being excellent. Can we get a piece? Well, this is the thing. Okay, which one do you want to try? Let's try that one, sure. This one, okay. This is the thing. I think 28 grams of protein makes it seem like it's not going to taste great. Yeah, I'm curious. Yeah, they said they spent a ton of time working on this, and specifically the flavor of this bar.

7:03I feel like people think of protein bars that are high protein and think like chalky protein powder. This is supposedly, or supposed to be, the peak of protein content at the highest flavor profile that you could ask for in a protein bar. You know, one of the things they talk quite a bit about is the dollar to protein ratio. They compare the price of protein per gram macros and calories from protein to other brands. And they also compare it to boiled cod. They do this on the website. And so the price per gram of protein in a David bar, I think it's like seven cents. This is pretty weird. Yeah, yeah.

7:44Boiled cod, you said? Boiled cod, yeah. So I guess they're trying to get consumers who maybe didn't think about protein bars in the past. To think about boiled cod? Yeah, swapping out their boiled cod for a protein bar. You would think like chicken or steak? Seriously, well, they've ruined my dinner plan, so thanks. Well, yeah, you just ate probably, what was that, seven grams of protein? Are you full? Yeah. I mean, these are tasty. Very tasty. But you can still taste that as a protein bar. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, the bar for, no pun intended, protein bars sometimes is a little weird when it comes to flavor.

8:16It is. So this is one of the best there is in terms of just taste for a protein bar, but it's still a protein bar. Yeah, it is. There has been. In a Twix package. Yeah. There has been a little bit of pushback on David because it is quite processed. It's a very heavily processed food that includes a ton of ingredients, which is a pretty significant departure from what Peter did with RxFAR. With RxFAR. When you saw the front of pack and it had five ingredients, it had like, you know, three egg whites, two almonds, you know, five dates, what have you. What they seem to be after is a complete protein bar with nothing that can be looked at as unnecessary.

9:06Congratulations to Peter and his team on the launch of David. Also, congratulations to Jeff Popkin. Jeff Popkin is now the new CEO of Lemon Perfect. You might recall Jeff's name because he was the president, I believe, of Vitacoco for some time. He is also a former Red Bull executive and was the CEO of Mast Jägermeister, or at least the U.S. chief executive of Mast Jägermeister. And he is now leading one of the fastest growing beverage brands on the market, Lemon Perfect. Excited to see what he's going to do with the leadership of that company. but we know he's an experienced operator and it'll be interesting to see if he can, you know, take what he's learned and experienced at places like Vitacoke and Red Bull and apply them to Lemon Perfect.

9:57But it seems like it's a pretty different market than it was when he was leading those companies. We'll see. So at the San Diego meetup, you know, the industry is full of characters, right? So one of them for sure is the founder of Golden Tiger, our dear friend, Ajay Dewan. So he's a guy who has this Golden Tiger beverage and the liquid is really good. It tastes really great. And he's a guy who's been a member of the BevNet community for years. And let's say he's just been incredibly persistent trying to pitch a science first beverage with this product. Like if you talk to him, the first thing he'll say is Golden Tiger is the only beverage in the world with bioactive curcumin.

10:37Now that is pretty hard for anybody to digest, You know, if you were to put that on the front of a bottle. Not literally. No, no, it's super easy. That's because bioavailable. That's funny. Good work. And he would walk around talking about this paper that he discovered at the University of Oklahoma that stated that, you know, turmeric doesn't have any functional effect unless it's heated, which is what, you know, curcumin, turmeric, people don't even know those are the same thing. And he would insist that if we publish that on BevNet, it was going to, you know, just revolutionize the industry.

11:09Did we ever do that? and that Golden Tiger would become the next body armor. And one of the things we've learned over the years is that a lot of science on front of pack just doesn't sell. I mean, Celsius used to do it, as you know, and then they went away from it and now their beverage is blown up. And it was really cool to have Ajay come up to me at the event and say, Mike, we're taking your advice. And he introduced us to his daughter, Jonovi, who's taking over as the designer for Golden Tiger. and they showed us the design for these cans that are focused on, you know, the fact that it's this great turmeric lemonade.

11:45Yeah, I can attest that the new packaging is a significant upgrade over what they previously had. I mean, he was so into the science that he, at one point he was telling us that he went to India and visited a guru on a mountain, whispered in his ear. And that guy told him the same, had him whisper in his ear when, when, you know, curcumin was effective and he wanted to take Jeff and me and John there to meet him. And he was really, really passionate that this idea was going to sell his product. But I think the fact that it tastes good, we've had a considerable amount of it. We know it tastes good just looking at this packaging.

12:20It's been like he's tried to put the whole University of Oklahoma document on the front of his packaging for a while there. And now he's moving into, okay, this is delicious turmeric lemonade and couldn't be happier for him. He's a good guy. He is. And excited to see his daughter take the Reigns. We met up with her at the San Diego meetup and recorded an on-the-spot interview with her that will be featured on the Instagrams and the TikToks in the near future. So look out for that. He used to message me stuff like, Mike, what's this crypto shit you're talking about? That stuff's all, that's nothing.

12:55Talk about curcumin. Talk about curcumin. Yeah, remember those days when You guys were all obsessed with NFTs and crypto. Fun little hobby. Or you used to have the end of your handle for social media is.eth. Yeah. Just messing around. I think the lesson here is that... Did you own any of those gorilla things? Oh, the ape? You weren't apes? Some other garbage. Okay. Some other people got rich quick on that. But I think the lesson here is that, yes, you can sell with science, but it generally doesn't work front of pack as the first thing that you're trying to sell unless you're like maybe a supplement in a GNC.

13:32If you're trying to sell to the masses, start with the fact that you have a good tasting product and then sell the science later. I think Golden Tiger is going to try that now and wish them a lot of success. That stuff tastes good. Well, I would recommend that everyone listen to the advice that Mike just gave about too much information on the front of can. And I'd also recommend that folks listen to similar advice offered by Ben Goodwin and David Lester, who are the co-founders of Olipop. As I have said on previous episodes, that was one of my favorite interviews, and they just dropped so much gold in terms of lessons and experience and ways to scale your business.

14:18But one of the most pointed moments is when they said, if the foundation of your ability to sell your product is tied to educating the consumer, you're pushing a rock uphill. So if you got to educate the consumer to sell your product, and that is the foundation of your brand, it is going to be difficult. So really difficult, really difficult. I think that's what you're saying. I think that's what Ben Goodwin and David Lester are saying as well. Unfortunately, turmeric tastes good, and there were a lot of good turmeric products out there and people have sort of blazed the trail. So you know what you're going to get in a turmeric lemonade now.

14:55So go golden tiger. Turmeric. Turmeric. Not turmeric. Say it your way. I'll say it my way. It's not T-U-M. It's T-U-R. I know, but nobody says the R except for you. Remember this? What was it? Temple turmeric. Didn't they miss? Turmeric, turmeric, turmeric. There's so many different ways to say it. No, Jackie, do you remember this? Temple turmeric. Yeah, I do remember that. Let's just start saying curcumin. They misspelled it? No, they misspelled it. The original... They didn't use the R? Yes. The original spelling of the brand was wrong. T-U-M. And then they did a rebrand and they spelled it correctly.

15:27And then the rebrand didn't actually work in the market. I love that brand. That was tasty stuff. Talk about brands that I wish were back on the market. That is number one. Yeah. Yeah. Their shots were fire. They were so good. I think there was one that was actually called fire. Yeah, it was. Yeah. There you go. If we only had some temporal turmeric right now, I'd be giving you three, four shots, John. I think you could use one or two. I'll cure you. Yes, exactly. Nope, nope. It's got to be heated. Got to be heated. Golden Tiger. We got to get you some Golden Tiger. Oh, yeah. There we go. Ajay's going to be writing into the podcast.

16:01Ask at tastegrader.com. He's like, I got everything I wanted. The mailbox is going to be flooded. Flooded. Big love to Ajay, Janovi, whole family. Hopefully everything goes well. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. Jackie, we've barely heard from you because we're taking up all the time. I feel bad. I'm curious as to what you're packing food and beverage snack wise for the big trip. Oh, yes. I haven't gotten that far yet, which I need to do like right away.

16:40I have limited space in my bag. but yeah you're checking a bag or you you go on the uh i'm going sticking over your head light mode i'm going just carry on only with a backpack i like it i like it we've got laundry oh perfect yeah i hooked us up there don't worry we need some context here jackie and mike are rooming together at an airbnb that's it yeah rooming together we got our yeah we got separate rooms you don't have bunk beds they're getting cringy yes they're gonna they're gonna slap on the front of the door of the flat. BevNet marketing team only. Nobody else can come in.

17:18Making forts and strategizing. That's what we're going to London for. Oh, dear God. Okay. So you got to get ahead of your planning here. But what have you guys been receiving in the WCP? Because I never see anything anymore. Yeah, I have some coffee, which these coffees specifically are great because I've been monitoring my caffeine levels and trying to drink more tea and i have the explorer cold brews oh nice and they have the caffeine free variety half calf and then they have their single origin cold brew and i've been drinking a lot of their half calf because you get the same experience you kind of get this like placebo effect if you think you're drinking like a fully caffeinated cold brew but But you only have half the caffeine, so you don't get as jittery or the crash that I usually would get from caffeine, especially a cold brew.

18:11So this is really, really tasty. It's called the Seeker, their half-calf. And I feel like I'm starting to see more either decaf or half-caffeinated options pop up, which is cool. Yeah, I think we talked about this because Explorer was in the New Beverage Showdown at BevNet Live summer 2024. And I think there was a lot of excitement among the judges for this idea of a half-calf or a decaf. How is it going to be marketed? How big is the audience for this? And, you know, is it sort of ahead of its time at this point? John Craven, I don't know if you want to weigh in on, like, do you remember in the room when, when I think there was a lot of excitement about the decaf, but then everyone was like, but that's only one product in their portfolio.

18:55You want input on the half-calf? I want to input on the idea of can you lead with decaf coffee as the seller, the primary driver of your platform? Sure, you could lead with anything. Theoretically, it just might not be the best of strategies. I mean, the decaf market is well-established for sure, but it's way smaller than the overall size of the coffee market for sure. and people who are looking to moderate. I don't know, that seems sort of logical given things like the low and no alka kind of thing that people might do that with other stimulants, caffeine being one, of course, that's kind of obvious.

19:36So the question I think in the room was also, well, why not just drink a half a cup of coffee when it comes to the half-calf variety? Why drink the whole thing if you only want 60 grams of caffeine? Yeah, but you still want the full experience. It's just like drinking like a non-al cocktail. You don't want to drink half or I don't know, a tiny bit of a cocktail. You want the full glass. The reason is it tastes great. That's the reason you'd want to drink the whole thing. And Explorer, their decaf is phenomenal. Like if you want the coffee experience without any of the impact, drink that. There you go.

20:11I also think like there's all these other, like I have this other brand, Kappa, and it's mushroom coffee and it has like ashwagandha and other adaptogens. So their main thing is it's healthy coffee and it's all day energy and no crash or no jitters. So I feel like people are just more sensitive to the effects of caffeine. So this is like fully caffeinated, but they're trying to like work around it by adding some other adaptogens or you could just drink less caffeine to avoid some of those like negative attributes. Cupa spelled C-U-P-P-A is a powder, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it's like an instant coffee.

20:46There's some others like that. They've got some frenemies in the space like Mud is a similar one and Rise, the one that they won't leave me alone on Instagram. Well, the Explorer cold brew, to be clear, comes in 12 ounce slump cans. Yes. Rise was spending so much money on Instagram. I kept blocking accounts and a new one would come up with like some influencer who kept talking about Rise. You could not get away from it. It was really, really weird. Well, you know what else is weird? when people claim that now I get the placebo effect when it comes to coffee, but the placebo effect when it comes to non-alcoholic beer always blows my mind.

21:25I have, because I have friends who are just like, Oh, you know, it's time to get blasted. I'm going to have like four athletics. And they think that's like brewing company, which is a non-alcoholic beer. Yeah, but it's not 0.0. Right. But look, I've had this conversation a number of times with Bill Schufeld, who's one of the co-founders. And he's like, there is less alcohol in some of our beers. I shouldn't quote him, but basically saying there's some alcohol and like a lot of soft drinks that you drink. So Mountain Dew will have a little bit of alcohol and get blasted off kombucha. Are you going to get, well, yeah, you'd probably be more likely to get blasted off kombucha than you would off, you know, athletic.

22:01Okay. If you really want to feel it, I suggest you get one of these. This is, and John has one too. Yeah, I have one too. Yes. Straight Away Cocktails, which is a maker of ready-to-drink cocktails. They make it in small can formats and also in 750 milliliter bottles. Straight Away Cocktails has released a new product called 12 Nights of Cocktails. It is an advent calendar type of product. And you've got, as you can see, if you're watching the video, 12 different options for your holiday pleasures. You get a Thai Gimlet, Oregon Old Fashioned, a Nitro Asbestos Martini, the list goes on and on. Bees Knees, number three Daiquiri.

22:41They also have a bunch of products that they haven't released before that are just specific to this Advent Calendar type product. And Nitro Espresso Martini? Yeah. Sounds like Pacific Paloma. Yes. So I am really excited about this. Cy Kane, who is the co-founder of Straight Away Cocktails. All around chill dude. Very, very chill dude. Very, very nice guy. Yeah, was telling us about how well this is doing in Costco. Costco posted that this was available in their stores. And that post became, according to Cy, the top branded product other than Kirkland, top branded product performer in the past two years on their Instagram page in the first 10 hours that the post was live.

23:23So very, very exciting stuff. Clearly, people are excited about this product. I'm not sharing. I'm sorry. Yeah, it would make a great gift. That's why I'm holding on to it. Super excited. It looks like a giant cereal box. I think you know what to get. Jackie for Christmas. I know. She said it would make a great gift. Jackie, I will buy you one of these. Stop at the Costco next to the office. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, let's try to buy myself one. Does Costco deliver? You can Venmo Jackie. Yeah, they deliver their own Instacart. I can like walk to Costco. That's pretty good. Jackie will get one you can Venmo her.

23:56All right, fine. Yeah, I'll send you a request. Just don't stop by the Harley Davidson outlet along the way. I'll buy myself a Harley and an Advent calendar. Just ride on in the distance. You hear that, Mike? Oh, shoot. I guess I'm getting her gift, too. No, I... Yeah, you pay for the motorcycle. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, boy. Since we're talking about booze here, I got one more. And this one, I feel like it's going to be great for Ray, because I know he loves green juice. I do like green juice. Oh, boy. He also really loves booze, as we just heard. We know that. I like premium alcoholic beverages, not booze.

24:32It's not exactly... Well, I mean, I guess technically it has juice in it, but this is a Gardenista. tequila cocktail it's got tequila green herbs lime juice ginger and jalapeno okay so we're gonna oh wow let me just give you a little scotch very green oh yeah i'm just gonna smell this because i gotta i gotta interview a little bit yeah that's a yeah good excuse let's see it smells delicious it smells there's uh the tequila and the jalapeno are definitely coming forward on those That's pretty darn good. Yeah, it's really spicy. It almost tastes like there's like cilantro or something in there. Yeah, there's a lot of...

25:12I can smell it. Yeah. I'm starting to get a whiff from here. Yeah, there's a healthy amount of vegetables. Send that down so I can smell it. All right. On the nose. Yeah, there's a couple different flavors, but I know Ray loves tequila in particular, so I brought the tequila flavor for him. Sounds like everything that goes on a taco and then a side of tequila. Ooh, that's a good call. It probably would pair pretty nice with tacos. But anyway, that's Gardenista if anyone wants to check it out. Well done. Should we talk about Nuri, Ray? Sure. We got this Nuri milkshake, ultra-filtered milkshake, which we were just talking about protein.