Do Gen Z Consumers Shop The Way We Think They Do?

25:44But there's so many things and information out there in documentaries. It's like, where do I focus? And because you can't focus on one thing, there's a million things that need to be fixed. I think the consumer is just overwhelmed. And unless they really resonate with one specific, you know, cause, it's hard to then spend a bunch of money and invest in all of those different problems. I think it's also difficult when you, you know, you're trying your best to focus on the one or two things that you can change. And then you see, well, global boiling's happening anyway. It's the hottest summer ever.

26:27And it's, you know, going to be the coldest of the hot summers going forward. That can be difficult and cause a lot of anxiety as well. And I think the answer is you just have to change what you can change and keep going because that's how change happens. Like the world will heal if we've proven it during the pandemic. When nobody was out there, we saw the world start to heal. And it can again if we focus on it, but it's difficult when everyone's not focused on it. And just to follow up on that, in this study, Ketchum notes that 63 % of respondents feel too much pressure to change the world through their behaviors.

27:04They feel scrutinized to eat a certain way to show that they are healthy. 60 % of the respondents said that. 51 % they feel scrutinized to eat a certain way that shows they care about the environment. 48 % said that they eat a certain way to support a political cause or issue. So, I mean, it's interesting how much pressure Gen Z feels to do things to, as you pointed out, Jackie and Mike, save the world. But all this pressure, I think, is going to backfire if you're not staying healthy. Well, your mental health is just as important as your physical health is what you're saying. Right. Yeah. And social media plays a huge part in all of this.

27:41You know, everything is under a microscope as far as what you're posting and what brands you're engaging with. And that adds to the pressure. And I think a lot of people, younger people are just eating simpler and trying to eat quick, convenient meals because it's too much effort to think beyond that. Like I know the whole like girl dinner trend, which is hilarious. And I, I feel like I originated girl dinner. I've been doing girl dinner. Thank you, Jackie. You are a trendsetter, Jackie. They're literally just putting snacks on a plate, like anything they have in their cupboard. They're just making like a little charcuterie board and it's something simple and funny and engaging, but it's not like anything too serious.

28:26Wait, that's branded now? I thought that was just get what's in the fridge. Jackie, did you have the results of this study like well before it came out? Because you're so on point. Like everything I'm reading here is exactly what you just pointed out. From social media being inspiring, yet also anxiety inducing to the rise of girl dinner. It's all here. Check the author. Maybe I am a Gen Zer. I don't know. Maybe you're a Gen Zer. Author Jackie Bruglier. Yeah. All right. We're going to put a link or I'm going to include a link in the show notes to this really interesting research post. Wait, it turns out Jackie's the world's oldest Gen Zer.

28:57There you go. Jackie. She's called Jackie. You're old. Well, for Gen Z, she is. She's definitely not. If she's old, I'm ancient. One more note on this. I mentioned that I think this study included people or was about Gen Z consumers who buy their own food. But just to give you a quick update on the methodology, Ketchum did a 15 minute survey among 2000 nationally representative U.S. children and adults ages 13 plus. So it was folks who are 13 years and older. Now, two things that I assume everyone loves and doesn't cause any kind of anxiety, but people do want to post on social media, chocolate covered bananas.

29:40Oh, yeah. Yes. How about that transition? Oh, yeah. I just received from the wonderful folks behind Diana's a bunch of their banana bites and banana halves. So Diana's is a maker of frozen banana treats. I have their dark chocolate banana bites and I have their milk chocolate banana halves here on the table. Diana's Bananas is located in Chicago, Illinois. This branding is just stunning. Stunning. I love this. Very simple. We'll include this in the show notes and probably in the video as well. Just a simple green color for the banana bites, dark chocolate, and a simple blue color for the milk chocolate banana halves.

30:25Just easy on the eyes. Not too much information on the front. No, it's always been a brand that's been able to generate excitement. You just don't need that much information because you know what chocolate is, you know what bananas are. So don't overcomplicate it. And they just rebranded right around Expo West, I believe. Is that what they did? Okay. Yes, they did. I was not familiar with this. And then I saw the branding. I was like, I got to get some. You can't go wrong with a chocolate covered banana. I don't mind if I do. It reminds me of childhood. We had like chocolate bananas as our healthy treat.

30:54So instead of, you know, ice cream or sugary popsicles, that would be our option. It reminds me of Arrested Development. You know, the TV show when the Bluths had a frozen banana stand? Yes, frozen banana stand. Yeah. Anywho, I love this stuff and well done, Dianas. I also got shipped some new... Shoot me that over there. I'll open that one. avocado oil sweet potato chips or sweet potato chips fried in avocado oil from the fine folks at jackson's now jackson's has a couple new flavors they have a habanero nacho variety and they have a farmhouse ranch variety and i feel like if you combine the two you are getting the cool hot kind of aspect that people love when it comes to chips like think about cool ranch doritos right?

31:42A little spicy, a little cool. Mix them up. I'm going to mix these together and get that effect. I'm not going to do it right now because I don't have enough hand sanitizer in my hands. I need at least another two, three gallons to dip them in before I'm going to touch anything on this table. So just to let you know. Also want to note a new brand extension from the folks at Luna Bay. Luna Bay is a maker of kombucha based in Chicago. They just introduced these new sparkling hard teas. There are three varieties, at least three here on the table. There's a transfusion, one described as transfusion, which is made with yuramate tea, grape and ginger and lime.

32:22There are cranberries, yuramate tea, cranberry and lime. And there's sunrise smash, also yuramate, orange and pomegranate. So Luna Bay is evolving into more of a platform beverage alcohol brand. I should have noted that they make hard kombucha. And the branding is a little different from what you see on their hard kombucha cans, but I think they're going to introduce this branding across the board. Love what they're doing. We spoke with Bridget Connolly, the co-founder and CEO of the company a few episodes, well, I want to say maybe a year or so ago. A really interesting story of how she and her co-founders built this amazing company in what has become a crowded and somewhat chaotic category of hard kombucha.

33:05Very attractive packaging. Absolutely. Now the table is absolutely covered here. Jackie, is your small table in front of you covered with anything? Since I am always the one to talk about THC, why stop now? I have a THC infused product. It is called TBD. And this one is a green tea lemonade with the strength of mellow. And what I really appreciate for this brand is I know for a lot of newbies to THC, there is a lot of, you know, I guess it's a common theme. anxiety around it. Um, not knowing what your high is going to be like, how long it's going to last with edibles. And this has, I know talking to Mike right now, um, but on the back of this can, they have a nice little graph and it shows you the timeline.

33:51So at 10 minutes is when there's the onset of the high at 50 minutes is when you hit your like mellow high. And then it lasts for about 120 minutes. So two hours, they also have another skew that has, um, so this one has five milligrams of THC. The other one has 10 milligrams. So that one gets you to like a higher high, but it's really nice to know what you're getting into. And you can see that on the packaging just to give the consumer a little bit more confidence when they're trying something new. And it also includes the calories, the ingredients, and very simple, easy to read. So I appreciate all of that about this brand.

34:28I'm so scared. No, I mean, I think that transparency is so important when it comes to THC beverages because of the fact that it is still kind of the Wild West as it relates to THC and food and beverage. And the more information you can give the consumer, the better. And it doesn't look like it's a busy package. I mean, it looks like the copy is pretty clean and easily understood. And I guess the other piece of this is, especially as a new brand, even though they're putting all of this on the package, like, is the consumer going to trust you that you know what you're doing because like you said it is the wild wild west right so there's nothing that's verifying this information so i guess that's the the second kind of challenge is getting that trust from the consumer it does sound like a challenge because i'm sitting over here going i don't believe them but i kind of want to try it yeah how do i get my hands you can get your hand we have one in the cooler all right i'm gonna have to go for it this weekend let's see what happens All right, our next reel, Mike on TBH.

35:31What's the name of the brand, TBD? TBD? From the makers of TBH. No, not from the makers of TBH. That's the Nutella. Better for your Nutella product. Hazel nut spread, so yummy. Right. How is Mike feeling after drinking some THC beverage? TBD. TBD. Yeah. And I need TBH. And then it's probably more like TNT. we also got another fine offering from our friends at o 'leara who make indulgent breakfast foods would you say better for you indulgent breakfast foods this one is strawberry filled breakfast biscuits i tried those i have to say i wasn't a huge fan of the original biscuits but these i I thought really, I think they were crunchy.

36:19I think, um, I don't, to me, they didn't have enough flavor for what I was looking for. I think. I think it's because they don't pollute them. Exactly. Exactly. But these, I think they really hit the nail on the head. Yeah. I'm with you. The optimization is great on these and it's, you know, it's mostly pretty clean ingredient panel here. And, uh, yeah, these are tasty, nice little breakfast treat. and they're not that big. So the serving size two for 140 calories. So, you know, have one, have one later. Just in time for back to school. These are breakfast bites, but Melissa, are you still doing your intermittent fasting?

36:57Yes. I would never eat those for breakfast. Wait, you're doing intermittent fasting during the day? Yeah. So usually I eat around one. Ah, gotcha. So I'm, I'm doing it from 8 PM on until 8 AM. Uh-huh. So I usually start eating around 1 and then finish around 8. Okay. Gotcha. What you do, Mike, is called sleeping. Yeah, I know. It's not really intermittent fasting. I don't know. I'm like, all right, you want to do intermittent fasting? You can do it from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. And I'm like, okay, that sounds like just sleeping. When I'm sleeping, I'm not eating.

37:35All right, it's time to get to our featured interview for this episode. As I mentioned at the top of the show, Tony Salles is the master distiller for iconic tequila brand El Ticoleno. Described as, quote, Mexico's best kept secret, El Ticoleno distills 10 expressions of tequila, along with a soon-to-be-released Extra Eñejo variety. In the following interview, I spoke with Tony about how the company incorporates its heritage and emphasis on quality and craft into its communication strategy, how modern consumers fit into its innovation strategy, and the impact of a limited edition product on brand awareness.

38:16Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I'm honored to be sitting down with Tony Salles, who is the third generation master distiller for El Ticaleno. Tony, how are you? Pretty good. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's an honor to be here with you. It is an honor. And it feels like we're doing this for the second time for some reason. Full disclosure, I accidentally forgot to hit record on the first try. But we were only recording for six minutes. But I thought it was a great six minutes to start. Yeah, it was great. It was great. And I enjoy talking about the distillery, our company, and our product.

38:45Yeah. Well, let's just do it again. Perfect. Perfect. El Tecaleno, the name is beautiful. It means something. What does it mean? It means that you're from the town of Tequila. Okay. Tequila is actually a town in Mexico where everything began. And when this magical elixir, we call it magic water, was first born. And we're honored to keep on the legacy of doing great product and great tequila. See, I had no idea that it was a town of tequila. I always thought it was a region. And you said that it's one of the most visited towns in all of Mexico, though. Yes, it's one of the most visited towns. Every weekend it's full.

39:18It goes probably like there's a population of 50 ,000 people. And on weekends, it could go up to a million. So there's lots of visitors that start coming on Thursday all the way to Sunday. I guess it kind of makes sense, though, if you're looking to drink tequila and you're like, where's tequila? Oh, it's right there. Exactly. It's become a place for lots of visitors, lots of weddings take place over there. And it's becoming the nicest and newest place in Mexico to come and visit. Was your great-grandfather that launched the company? My grandfather when they launched it, my grandfather was Jorge Salles Cuervo.

39:48As I told you, I think we got more Cuervo blood in our family than the actual Cuervo owners. So yeah, we're a legacy in the tequila making. And he was the one that taught us how to make tequila. He began making tequila back in 1941. And it was in 1959 that he decided to launch his own brand, El Tequileño. Today, the brand has 10 expressions, including an extra Añejo that I am excited to sample while we're recording here. So yeah, we have, for example, we got two basic blancos, and then we got about six or seven reposados, and we got an añejo and an extra añejo. And that's why, because we like to play around with making reposados, and it's something that we enjoy giving new expressions and surprises to our customers.

40:39So far, we got like five or six core products that we keep on doing daily. Those ones will never run out of stock. But every now and then we do a special edition, like the extrañejo or our reposado rare, that we do just to, well, first we like doing it and we think it's a quality product. And it's different to most tequilas, so that's the main reason why we do so many different expressions. But they're only special editions. We do them, we finish them, and they don't come back. And we look for another new thing we could do for surprising our customers. Is your primary customer one that shops across your portfolio?

41:16For example, is someone who is a consumer and a buyer of your core reposado, is he the same or she's the same person who's buying your Añejo? No, I assume no, because we go from one of our biggest sales in Mexico is our Blanco Mixto. And it's more of all the type of people because they're used to that product. That product has been in the market since day one. and now as we've been evolving, we've got 100 % agaves and there's younger people that were introduced to the brand by most of them probably by their grandfather because the original customers that we have were consumers, were these kids' grandparents that the parents of those, the next generation that came after those guys weren't convinced of what they wanted to do.

42:03They wanted to do something different than their parents and now in the third generation, it comes that the grandkids say, well, the old guy knew how to drink. He knew good stuff. So maybe I try something that he liked and that's when they come back to Tequileño. And he say, well, I think my grandfather liked it. And once they try it, they keep on going and being one of our top consumers. Well, nostalgia is definitely in. And I think a lot of the younger generation is hearkening back to days of old and appreciating the history and the artisanal quality. Yeah, we've been blessed. And first of all, when we came back in the United States, we reached into the Latino market.

42:44And obviously they said, oh, this is the tequila I used to get drunk when I lived in Mexico. This is what my father or grandfather used to drink. And when they tasted it, they said, oh, it tastes the same as it did last time. And it's been several years since they did that. And we've also been very fortunate that we've been into the American market and they enjoy their product. They've been open enough to try something new and they like what they try. So we got, for most Latinos, they like blanco spirits, white spirits, and American market tends to go more for darker spirits. So that's why we have more reposados and now añejo and extra añejo.

43:20Your extra añejo, notwithstanding, your bottle and your label doesn't seem too flashy. And what I've noticed as the tequila category has evolved, you're starting to see a lot of really off-the-wall bottle shapes, some labels that are just very, very flashy. And El Ticoleno feels like the label that is harkens back to something of old, like we talked a little bit about. Talk about what went into the label because you underwent a rebrand not too long ago. No, yeah. First of all, we know that we could do a very flashy, nice bottle, but if you're on quality inside your product, they'll buy it once.

43:56And if they don't like it, they won't buy it again. That's number one. Number two, we recently did a new bottle presentation. It's called our 1959 line. And it was funny because when we were changing the old bottles into the new ones, we just poured out the content of the old bottles into the new ones. And people really thought it was a major change. Even though there was the same liquid, exactly the same liquid, people were calling us and sending us mails saying that the improvement that we did to the product was even better. And we didn't actually do anything. When you're talking about El Ticolino, I feel like there's a lot of authenticity in what you're saying because of the history, because you are the master distiller, because there's so much passion and effort that goes into every bottle.

44:40Explaining that to a consumer, trying to sell that on-shelf, sell that story is challenging. What is the best way to attract a consumer, a new consumer to the brand? Well, we got to do some tasting, showing them that you can see the face, how the face changes when they try the product. They got to see that the star of El Tecleno, it's inside the bottle, not outside. That's one. And two, we try to invite as many people into our distillery so they can see what we do, learn the whole experience, see that there's nothing we hide and everything's open for them to see. And we do that, first of all, with our tours that we got in town.

45:17And we just recently, two or three years ago, we opened a hotel that we take people, trade people into our premises to stay there and live the whole experience. So once if we convince them that we are and they like the experience of being in Tecleño, they become our biggest salesperson. So that's very important. Well, you know what? If I was the bartender or bar manager and I probably visited your hotel, I might be pretty happy with the brand as well, I would say. Believe me, we've experienced that and I can tell you it works because people leave the place happy and convinced that they're tasting a great product with a great quality and they become our number one sales rep.

46:01Now, I feel like I'm going a little backwards when we do this tasting because I haven't tasted the Blanco yet. And so I'm going to be starting from essentially the quote-unquote best expression, which actually might sour be. So I might be addicted to your extra añejo and not want to drink any other expression, but I don't get paid enough for multiple bottles of this. Talk about what went into the Extra Nieho, because it is a beautiful, this is a beautiful decanter that I'm looking at right now. The liquid just looks, it has this beautiful golden hue to it. The box that it comes in looks like it was hand-designed in so many ways.

46:37But yeah, talk about the development of this product. Well, we started, as I told you before, Tequileño was known for doing reposado and blanco products. So we began to experiment with new types of barrels. We used to use only ex-burban barrels. Now we have French and American oak barrels that were ex-Chardonnay. And getting new flavors from those types of different casks that we were using. And we start first with our Añejo. We made a stock that would probably last us for two years. And when we launched it into the market, it only lasts like eight or nine months. So that was the first note that we were on the right track.

47:15So we had to do a lot of tasting, which is the fun part, because you've got to drink a lot of tequila, searching for the right type of barrel, the right type of flavor you're looking for. And we narrowed it down to three barrels. Two that were four-year-olds and one was three-year-old. Why do we chose not to use older barrels? Because we know that it was maybe five years ago, but three and four is the perfect age where the wood is not going to be overwhelming to your product. where you can taste the product and you still know it's tequila. Because we already did some testings and some tryouts with leaving the tequila for a longer period of time.

47:55And it comes to a point that you don't know if it's tequila, if it's brandy, or it smells delicious, it smells great. But it's mainly a wooden flavor that it's impossible for you to recognize what type of spirit you're drinking. So we went and had the decision that those three barrels were looking for. two ex-bourbon American oak and one ex-chardonnay French oak were the right expression. Believe me, getting those barrels and forbid people to take any more samples because everybody had a long lineup for people that wanted to buy that single barrel of one of our French oak. We call it the Mythical 400 because it was a great flavor and people were all the way after that barrel.

48:38but we decided to keep it to ourselves and make extrañejo with that. What does a product like this, what does an expression like this do for the brand? What is its primary purpose? Well, we were entering a new category because we don't have extrañejo. So that's very important. Two is going to put us in a new level, a new ultra premium level that we've been going because we got products that go from the well product over to premium. and now this is going to be like ultra premium product, getting us into another world that we're going to more expensive tequilas, but way more quality, all over tequilas quality because everything starts from our Blanco and it's the process that we give it through wood.

49:21But we're entering now the ultra premium market and this is a great way to enter that spot. Yeah, and price point is? It's about$600 to$700. $600 to$700. Okay, so the sip I'm going to have is probably like$40. bucks. Well, actually that might be kind of a heavy pour. Shall we? Sure. Okay. Fantastic. We're opening up the decanter here and getting some help from Val, who has just been tremendous throughout this TAILS conference. And thank you so much. And if you see, like you said, this is a nice golden hue, amber color. If you swirl a bit, though we're doing this in plastic glasses, but you can see the body that it has.

50:03It has lots of body. And then if you go to the aromas, you can see I was doing tasting yesterday. I like to do interactive tastings, asking people what they thought. And if you start like closing your eyes and smelling it and think about words, like I said, what do you think about cherry? And people say, oh yeah, there it is. What do you think about banana? And people were finding, because we know all those aromas are in our head, but somebody had to tell us what to look for in order to connect the aromas with the word. Lots of vanilla, caramel. Where were the barrels again used for this? Two were bourbon, American oak, ex-bourbon, and one was French oak, ex-Garonne.

50:44So you can get a little bit of whisky and a little bit of wine aromas there. Yeah, that is beautiful. It's a very, very smooth tequila to drink. And like you said, I think any more would influence and you would lose the tequila flavor. Yes. This is very much a tequila with that barrel influence. It's significant, but it's not overwhelming. Exactly. Yeah, that's outstanding. Yeah. And how many years was this in the making? There was two four-year-old barrels and one three-year-old. Wow. Wow. How many do you produce? How many bottles? We're going to be 500 bottles. 500 bottles. Yeah. And distributed across the United States and Mexico?

51:24Basically, I think 450 are going to come from the United States or 400 and probably 20 to Mexico, a few from Canada and the rest of the world. But the majority will be distributed here in the United States. Do you spend much time here in the States doing tastings and education events? Well, sometimes like right now for the last four months, I've been one week of a month in several places, kind of like Texas, California, Florida, and I'm here in Louisiana. And next month I'm going to be in Illinois. So I try to take away three or four days a month to come and visit and open new markets or do some tastings because I also have to run the distillery.

52:03So somebody got to work, but it's a nice experience. Well, I ask because you're a great representation of the brand. You are in so many ways, it's steward and it's best ambassador probably. but I'm sure you would want to be in your distillery more often. Or maybe I'm wrong. I mean, do you... No, no, I enjoy both. I enjoy both things. You learn from both places every day, even though we don't have a very, very big distillery. We're medium or small size. But every day you find something new, you learn something new, and coming out and telling people you've learned what you've got, it's very, very nice and rewarding.

52:40But also, every time you go out, you learn something new that you can apply into my day-to-day work. Yeah. Yeah, you called yourself or you called El Ticoleno a small distillery. Do you want it to remain small or do you want it to have the feeling that it is a small distillery as you grow? Because there tends to be something lost when small brands get to significant scale. So in so many ways, I'm asking how cautious do you have to be about the brand and how it's positioned and how it's perceived by consumers as you continue to scale? Well, number one, quality cannot be dealt with. We cannot change quality.

53:21So that means the process cannot be changed. And since the beginning, when we started growing, we decided to do small batches. So the distillery can only grow so much. We got to, I think we started with 200 ,000 liters a year. I think we could go all the way to 2 million. Just with one distillery? Yeah. Oh, wow. Because we had a project that we knew if someday we wanted to grow, we could reach. So I think what we got now, we could probably reach 2 million liters, no problem. But I don't think we'll be able to grow anymore without changing several ways of doing tequila. And that's not even thought about because we cannot tamper with our quality.

54:01So there's so much we could do. Yes, there's still a little bit of room for improvement. But that's it. Like in 2017, we did 200 million liters. This year, we'll probably reach 1.2 million liters. And there's a little bit more space, all the way to 2 million liters a year. And that's it. It might be a lot because you're thinking, how could I drink by myself 2 million liters? But if you compare us to the big ones, they produce 60 million liters a year. So that's quite a difference, yeah. Well, once you get to 2 million, I think then you'll have to answer some of those questions. but for now, what you're making is phenomenal.

54:38And I'm so glad that I had this opportunity to sit down with you, Tony. Congratulations on everything you're doing with the brand. Thank you so much for sharing your extra enejo with me. And for folks listening, you should definitely look into El Tecalino. It is a tremendous brand with a tremendous history. Thank you very much and hope to have you and your listeners come visit us in the town of Tequila. You can stay at our hotel and live the whole Tecalino experience, which I think it's very rewarding and very exciting. I'm literally going to book my flight as soon as this interview is done. That's great.

55:08It'll be an honor to host you over there. Thank you so much. Thank you. That 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 Kratchy. 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.

55:47Check us out on Instagram. Our 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.