Ghost's $1 Billion Deal. What Are 'Tomorrow's Investors Looking For?

26:52Are we all? I'm not so much of cashews. Pickles, yes. What is wrong with you? Anyway. Cashews are delicious. I know. Cashews are the best. Yeah, I don't know. Cashews are also great. Like, I make a lot of plant-based meals and you can eat cream sauces out of cashews. Yeah. Ray's probably more of a walnuts and Brazil nuts fan. Hey, what's your tip of not? We'll get to it. Well, I probably say what do they call them? Sprouted nuts. Sprouted peanuts in particular. I think I love. Very specific. So you like daily crunch? I do like daily crunch. So they make spreaded almonds. Yeah, those are phenomenal.

27:26Now, if they just sprinkled a little THC into the cashews. Well, then you wouldn't eat them. I wouldn't eat them, no. Yeah, that's true. But some flyby jing. I'm excited to try that. Yeah, me too. That's a great club. I actually came across an interesting brand that I saw upstairs called Wonderlands. And they are a maker of quote, a transportive. is that really transportive transportive pecan mix what does that mean? I don't know why don't we try it I guess you get transported once you eat these I'm ready to watch it I'm breaking my own rules here they have three varieties that I saw the flavor name isn't the name of the I guess variety they have a mineral creek wilds a mesa after rain and an into snowy woods now the flavor names are next to the names of the products.

28:14So for example, into the snowy woods, it's a lapsang tea, black cardamom and beets flavor. They also include tasting notes on the front. So you have for the into snowy woods, you have some umami, there's no spice, a little bit of herbaceousness and some smoke. This is a really cool, actually. I like this. The tasting notes, there's like a one out of five rating or scale for umami, spicy, herbaceousness and smoke. So yeah, again, And in this case, there's no spice, but plenty of umami. Is that one spicy, John, the one you have? I want to try the spicy one. Transportive. I'm still trying to get over this.

28:51Interesting. Beautiful packaging. It's like a pouch. Ooh, look at this. It's beautiful. It's a wide pouch. It's like an art project inside. That's cool. I mean, this is really good. I don't like that label copy, though. Which one? Transportive. Transportive pecan mix. Tell me what it is. Tell me what it tastes like. I mean, this stuff's awesome. Just call it a pecan mix? Well, I mean, I feel like figuring out how to work, you know, get the words in here Don't crunch in the microphone to say that it's a spicy umami Smoky snack. Just cut to the chase. There you go. This is what I mean. This is great.

29:23This is NLS Cracker Jack It's a maze boss. This is great. All right. Well, I'm glad it's really good. Well done, right? Wonderlands Transported wonderland wonderland. Yes, wonderland's not wonderland's excuse me. All right Since I teased you guys about Knack Snacks, the snack that's founded by former Buffbake CEO, Brittany Buckle, and I ate them all, I thought I should bring you some. Here's the milk chocolate. Aerie bites. Next level. Knack Snacks. Knack Snacks, excuse me. Crunchy protein balls. These are from the UK? They are. Okay. This is their milk chocolate variety. They contain 14 grams of protein per bag.

30:07That's good. Yeah. Those are like, they sneak up on you. Are they really crunchy? They feel crunchy. They're not, they're not really crunchy. They're like bites of air and you, and the flavor hits you and they're just amazing. They're really good. They're really, really good. Okay. So John's had them. I haven't eaten many bags. Yeah. John's eaten many bags. Did they send us them? They did. Oh, that's nice. But the office went nuts. Like they sent us dark chocolate, birthday cake, a milk chocolate. but I held back the milk chocolate, the dark chocolate and birthday cake went so fast. I mean, I couldn't even control it.

30:40I'm trying not to crunch in the microphone. Crunch in the microphone. People like to hear the crunch. Yeah, these are good. And they actually taste like real chocolate, which is nice. Oh, they have to, because they're UK snacks. So they have higher standards for chocolate than we do. Much higher. Oh boy. Oh, I'll eat those. Don't worry. Okay. At least you didn't get it on the laptop. There's still time. Remember the Snackshot event that we went to before Expo West, and it was great, and we met some great brands like People and Paro. And one of the brands we met there was called Babo's Kitchen.

31:14Oh, yeah, Babo's, yeah. And she's been working on this Panjiri granola for quite some time. On the back, it says, Panjiri is a traditional Pakistani superfood similar to granola. It's a popular snack known for providing energy, fiber, and essential fats. I don't need to read anything else there. I mean, that sounds awesome. And so she finally sent us some to try. Who wants to try some? Well, can I see the package for a second? I want to try it. I love this. I feel like the granola should be on the bottom. Because right now, in terms of the label hierarchy, you have Panjiri granola, and then you have the Baba's Kitchen logo and brand name underneath it.

31:51I think there's a bit of confusion there, but I think it overall draws you in. And I don't know what Panjiri is, but I know what Granola is. Exactly. And I also, I think she's doing a great job with that piece. But there's also plenty of people, I'm sure, who will be buying this because it is ghee roasted. Yeah. But it definitely doesn't. I think it might limit itself to a certain audience. You got plenty of people. You want to know another one that we love? I'm just going to eat Granola first. Do you guys know? Yeah, do some granola there, bro. I mean, we didn't even try it. I know. I want to try it, too.

32:26Let's wait and try it. Let me have some of that. Oh, no. Don't spill it. Is it going to make it? Ray, you're going to have to pass it. Hmm. Is it awesome? Buttery. Yeah. Are you going to try it? It smells good. No? I'll try it. I'll try it with some coconut milk. All right. Sorry, Jackie. It's okay. I mean, you're over there with garbage-mouthing Daily Crunch fly-by-jing. Very unique texture for granola, not your typical. Yeah, it looks like a much smaller. Oh my God, not like oaty. Yeah, it's not oaty. It's very, processed is the wrong word, but it's very finely, it's a much finer granola than you would expect.

33:06Okay, I see why she's calling this granola, but this is like, you know how I always talk about, you're supposed to, when you eat something, you're supposed to know kind of what you're getting and it's supposed to never surprise you in a bad way, only in a good way. This is good. Good surprise. Yeah. Okay. Okay. There you go. Oh my God. You got a whole bunch on your lips. Good. It's a dusty part. We're recording video here too. Let's open some snooze. It's all over me. So Mike, while he's crunching on his granola here, I'm going to steal my thunder. The product that he brought, he brought this.

33:40It's snooze. It's the new product from snooze. Snooze once again is a maker of chef crafted globally inspired pasta snacks. This is their sweet kugel variety it says on the back this isn't this isn't your boobies kugel but it's certainly boobie approved boobie is your grandmother yeah we'll see inspired by a favorite dish in jewish cuisine our kugel is a modern twist on holiday nostalgia all right let's just open this up i feel like that's the highest possible praise if you're talking about you know something that's a traditional food and your grandmother approves so this we're just going for right you gotta try this you gotta try the panjiri that is really delicious what does it taste like kugel it's very it's very cinnamon okay no i've never had oh you have to try it jackie i'm gonna taste like what one would call like a churro flavor yeah it's a little chewy it's a little cinnamon bunny good okay yeah i would eat that yeah i mean i just did so i think it tastes like a imagine if you took a cinnamon bun uh-huh and you sliced layers of that cinnamon into sort of thin layers and then you baked it that's what it tastes like sounds delicious and what i really love about this is that snooze the team of snooze i think is still tweaking with the recipe and and it's less crunchy than some of their other varieties which i love you guys that's really good yeah this is delicious yeah that's good i love the texture i love snooze first and foremost is a texture thing for me and then the flavor just is like icing on the cake.

35:12It's great. It really is. Jackie, to answer your question about Kugel, it's kind of, it's between like cake and apple crisp. It's hard to describe. You just have to try it. Get your hands on some Kugel. It's about that time. I'll keep an eye out. Okay. Yeah. I think we have time for one more brand here. What are we going to talk about? You got one brand, Mike. I got one brand. Okay. Our good friend Adnan, who was just on an episode of. Elevator Talk. Elevator Talk. is making these amazing fruit squares out of pulp. And this one is mango. Okay, so - And this one is strawberry. And there's one called falsa, which is, he's sourcing the fruit from Pakistan.

35:52So there's fruits that, you know, we don't have readily here in US like falsa, which I guess is a blueberry. It's almost like a blueberry. I don't think we're doing this brand justice. We're definitely not. In that the packaging is spectacular. these are dried fruit snacks that come in a cardboard package and inside that cardboard package is a pouch of squares that are made from fruit pulp yep but the branding is just spectacular so on the front of pack you have the flavor name which includes the fruit name so for example this one which is a red package is described as sassy strawberry and then there's a little cute figure that represents each one.

36:39So there's a strawberry with a cap and blowing a bubble, and he has a skateboard. So it feels... And I just ate him. It feels mature, but also very young. In a lot of ways, I feel like this is a package that appeals to a large number of people, a pretty wide audience. I mean, it's definitely sassy. That's good. I thought this was Mango Stoner guy riding a bike. It does look like mango. That's the masala. Is that the masala? No, it's the mango. Mango. Very tasty. A masala mango. Very tasty. mango has like really sweet mango flavor and the masala mango has a little bit of spice but it's almost a caramel flavor it's really good the guava is insanely good the peach is really good i mean they're all yeah good stuff limited ingredients so the strawberry one is uh strawberry puree puree cane sugar citric acid absorber acid and pectin they contain no gelatin no artificial flavors and no added colors.

37:31I feel like for someone like me who loves gummy snacks with all the stuff that they put in them, this is a really nice alternative. Agreed. These are one of my favorite new snacks. And one of the things that's brilliant about it is that when you make a snack and you have different flavors, you want a little bit of a familiarity between the skews. So like there should be the same consistency or something familiar about like the sweetness or whatever it is. And somehow Pulpito has figured out how to do that. So, you know, you're getting, there's some level of familiarity in what you taste in the next one.

38:11I like that. Pulpito. We got to get you some of this, Jackie. See what I can do about daily crunch. And the P8 gorillos that you have. Yes. Stashed in the corner. The palate. 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. All right, it's time to get to our featured interview for this episode. As I mentioned at the top of the show, Lexi Prosser is an investment principal with Be Tomorrow Ventures, a UK-based venture capital firm born out of global conglomerate British American tobacco.

38:57I sat down with Lexi during the Taste Radio meetup at the Trip office in London, where she and I discussed the firm's investment strategy, how she assesses a brand's potential for international distribution and success, and whether global trends influence how she evaluates brands.

39:19and now on the stool is my dear friend Lexi Prosser who is an investment principal with Be Tomorrow Ventures. Lexi great to see you. Good to see you in London. I know you've been saying like over and over when are you coming to London when are you coming and I'm here and then I was badgering Lexi I'm like you got to join me for an interview people want to hear from me you got to join me and she's like oh okay fine so I'm really lucky and I'm really happy and I'm really honored that you're here with me. So thank you so much. I'm honored to be here. Yes. So Be Tomorrow Ventures, tell us all about what you guys do.

39:51So Be Tomorrow Ventures is the corporate venture fund of British American tobacco. I know what is Be Tomorrow Ventures doing here, but with a mission of investing in well-being and stimulation and building the second core for what could be the alternative to nicotine, cigarettes, healthier, better for you, functionality, basically in the same way that nicotine stimulates you and the senses, that's what we're looking for in terms of product. A functional benefit, as it were. Functional. Yeah. Big word. Talk about your investment focus in terms of stage, region, size of the company. So Fund One that we had and deployed money out of was focused on really early stage.

40:31We've done pre-seed investments, moment. But Fund Two, as of last year, we're looking at much more established brands that really we're looking to partner with and scale and help them scale in retail. So it's more of a synergy, but marrying the startup with the corporate powers that we can leverage to just help them build to the next level of like their journey and then acquire them. Maybe, maybe not. So not everything is really like an acquisition target and not all of our companies. Like we don't look to necessarily acquire everything that we invest in. But we do want to sort of partner up with the next innovative brand company that we can then somehow integrate and not really integrate into BAT, because I think this is something that people might not know.

41:20BAT has launched their own kind of functional drink, and it's part of that second core, and it's really integrating it together with the business that we're building. What's the typical check size for your investments? We're pretty flexible. I think Now we'd be looking at like 10 to 30 million. Yeah. Who couldn't use 10 to 30 million here? I mean, so don't worry. People need that. Yeah, speak her after. Okay. With Moment, it was a smaller. You mentioned Moment, which is a brand of calming beverages that actually won Bevanet's new beverage showdown competition in 2020. It was a virtual competition.

41:57They did quite well. What were the brand attributes? What made you really excited about that brand as having a long runway for success? So I think it's not just moment, but my general rule is look to invest in people because they're the ones that are making the decisions. They're the ones that have to turn a business around if, like, times are hard. And I always look to see who am I investing in and what are they about? Like, their personality, their grit, their tenacity, the sort of don't take no for an answer from anybody. And like, that's really my core kind of, I don't know, I guess, sheet that I look at.

42:36It's the personality, the character, the sort of purpose, what they're trying to build. Why are they building this business? Where do they want to go? What's their vision? And for a moment, actually, like they're still a very small team. So I don't think they've grown very much in the past, like three and a half years that we've been invested, but they've literally turned every single dollar in the most efficient more dollars that I've ever seen. And they've done it predominantly like online, so direct to consumer, and they just nailed that model. That's kind of like, I know I keep banging on about people, but it really is the sort of the people that I look to sort of back.

43:12And then, of course, the brand, is it really like speaking to the consumers? Is it on trend? Is it something that like, I don't know, I'm not that type of investor that looks at things like I know it all because I don't, nobody knows it all. I think it's more following instinct than gut. And that's also something that I look in founders, like how much are they driven by their inner genius versus like the race to kind of get to the next thing, right? But going back to sort of the more practical stuff, of course, like you look at the numbers, traction, does it work for the market? Is it scalable?

43:47I know that we're looking to sort of touch upon that. And that's actually like a really, it's hard to tell whether a brand is scalable or not, really. But going back to sort of the character and the tenacity of the founder, what I've seen works really well is like, do you have the foresight to understand the market that you're looking to scale in? Do you understand the consumer in the markets that you're looking to scale in? Does it fit? What's your competition like? The legal stuff is really big. I mean, I'm sure Trip can talk all about the legal because it's I think marketing and speaking to the consumer and your brand positioning in one market will be very different to a different market.

44:23and I've seen moments of one of our brands do sort of licensing deals in Japan and like they've had to do certain changes but that grit that the founders have in terms of really being obsessed with the consumer and speaking to the consumer and they read everything that comes through like all the feedback every single piece of like information that they can get and then turn into to sort of bettering the business again, I think that is magic, right? Because we are all figuring it out, so we don't know everything, but it's that being obsessed with the details and the consumer, and then being on top of like, what are the big things that could stop you from being successful, which I really do think it's the regulatory environment and the challenges.

45:09You're based here in London. You invest in US-based brands. For folks here that are based in the UK, just from an experience perspective and you know what you've seen how would you assess the two different markets I mean how do you think about a brand's potential to be able to scale here in the UK versus one in the United States and how much crossover do you think there could be between the two countries? I think it's tough I mean like Ray said I probably spend my life on the plane and I a lot of time in the States. The two markets are very different and not. At the same time, I think the UK is sort of a little bit behind on kind of the US in terms of where the consumer is, but catching up very fast.

45:59I don't know. I know I'm maybe repeating myself. Being obsessed with understanding what the consumer wants and understanding the market is easy to say. I think my biggest advice is partner with someone who can help you make that transition at the right time. Like, you can't do it alone. Like, no one can do it alone. There's no way. The UK is such a small market versus the US. But it's probably not a bad time to sort of look at who is a good partner. Be careful who you take money from. It's like a marriage. So who do you want to get in bed with and spend the rest of your life with? That's kind of how you should treat your investors too.

46:35and then just see what they can bring to the table. I think, I really think that to answer your question in the most honest way, if you have an investor on your cap table, make them accountable for why they're sitting in your board meetings. And like, what are you bringing to the table? Don't just like present to them, but like ask them to sort of bring value to you and what your ambitions are and timing, right? Like don't just take any money at any point in time because you need it. yes you will need money but be careful where where you kind of commit yourself where could it trip you over at what point in time in your journey but yeah i would totally just advise partner up with someone who's got the power to just help you make that transition because even with our brands even with moment like we're very invested in their success and we want them to do well but there's so much that not even i know that i had to learn from you know teams in big corporate that that's their job.

47:33That's what they do day in, day out. And you can't do it alone. Ask for help. Don't be ashamed to ask for help. The worst thing that can happen is you get a no, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think speaking to entrepreneurs on Taste Radio, the ones that have built the best teams are usually the ones that have the highest return on their own personal investments and some of the biggest exits that we've seen in the industry. Just going back to international expansion for a second. Do you see any parallels? Do you see any common threads between brands that can successfully scale internationally, whether it's the United States or otherwise?

48:10And, you know, specific brand attributes. I mean, so for example, a trip, you know, what is it about a trip that would interest you as an investor at a brand and product level? Again, fantastic founders, amazing team, but there's still that component of the physical product? In all transparency, we wanted to invest in Trip and we were very keen and have been kind of courting Trip for a long time. I was joking that Daniel keeps playing hard to get, but no, on a serious note, even with Trip, right, from before, I don't think we ever even got to the stage of looking at a deck. So going back to my initial point of, I think they nailed their branding nailed.

48:54Like, it speaks to everyone. It's simple. It's easy. You can understand it. And you can make, I think, the right kind of adjustments to speak to sort of wherever you're looking to scale if you need to, right? And secondly, like, when I spoke to Daniel about the brand, it was like their obsession around making it taste good. So again, having it available so that everyone really can relate to the product. The sense that I got from the team was an absolute passion and dedication with the detail. It's like nothing would go past it. I could sense it from the conversation. In fact, he was talking about you and how absolutely adamant you were about everything being perfect.

49:38And that is something that founders need to do because that's what makes you guys special. You've got that inner genius. Let it come out. Let it be driving you when you're creating your product and you're looking to make decisions, big decisions, risky decisions. And I think, like I said, regulatory, if you're mindful about the kind of ingredients that you have in your product, you've got to be, again, obsessive about what you put in there because the regulators would look for any kind of opportunity to just say no or to come after you and just kind of destroy anything you've built at the point where you're scaling.

50:17Is that helpful? It is very helpful. I'm sure we're going to get a very loud applause at the end, but I do have one more question. Oh, dear. That's related to global trends. And, you know, we were doing some store visits earlier this week. We were at Whole Foods. We were at Sainsbury's. We were at a few other places. And, you know, I saw some things that I see in the United States. I saw some things I don't see too much of in the United States. Like what? Well, I brought this up. Magnesium waters, for example. Magnesium is a hot trend in the United States, but I don't think we've seen too, too many RTDs come to market in the US.

50:46And maybe that's just a bit behind on that. Or maybe I'm just not in the right places or shopping in the right places. I'm ready to drink super bottled soups, for example. Less of that in the US, more of that here. But aside from that, you know, how do you perceive or what's your perception of global trends that we're seeing that have legs that have long term value versus ones that are sort of fly by night? I'm going to give you a very me answer. And that's why I'm sorry, if this is not what you guys want to hear. I fundamentally believe from what I've observed is that our generation today is like looking for is in the race of like longevity and just health and it's like we're so we're so obsessed with like being healthy feeling good because like before it was more like adding the sugar and the caffeine and like you know staying on top of it and I think our generation and the generations below, definitely, they're looking at how do we go back to basics and what products can we use to essentially enhance or rebalance what's going on in life and in our bodies and dealing with everyday life, right?

52:00So trends. Trends are driven by consumers. And consumers drive those trends from experiences. I mean, every founder that have spoken, almost every founder that have spoken, there's that drive from a passion of wanting to do something better, right? So that's, I think, like, the two are interconnected. And I know I'm not answering your question, and I'm deliberately not answering your question, because I think, who am I to say, like, what trends work, what trends don't work? The trends that work are the ones that the consumers want to kind of get on board with. So be obsessed with your consumers and what you're seeing, because everything changes so fast.

52:39You've got to innovate all the time in the sense of what you're doing, but your product has to have a stickiness to the core of like something authentic that your mission is kind of looking to change, to drive, to sort of serve yourself because you're a consumer, but also like the people around. And like I said, I think it differs in every country. It's different because it's culturally also driven. And what I have seen is that there's a lot of, there's that drive for founders to look to sort of more Eastern ways of like remedies, taking that, my point going back to basics, but how do we innovate those things so they're in a format where it serves a society that's very fast pace, that makes decisions, consumers that are fickle, that, you know, consumers switch very quickly.

53:29Like, you make one mistake and that's it, you're out. Does that answer your question? It does. It does. You said you didn't answer my question intentionally, but I feel like you did answer my question. Lexi, thank you so, so much for joining us today. I really, really appreciate it. I highly recommend if you're going to stick around, don't take up all Lexi's time, because I have a feeling everyone's going to want to talk to her, but just give her your business card, maybe follow up with the conversation down the line. Thank you so much again, Lexi. Round of applause. Thanks, everyone.

54:02That 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 Galang. our social marketing manager is amanda smerlinski and our designer is amanda huang just 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 podcast app or your listening platform of choice check us out on instagram our handle is bevnet taste radio as always for questions comments ideas for future podcasts please send us an email to ask at taste radio.com on behalf of the entire taste radio team thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time