New Or Exciting? It Helps To Be Both, But If We Had To Pick One…

27:05And they do a lot of fun things on their social media with these different characters. They also have some added vitamins in these too. So it's calling out that it's immune boosting. And they're really focusing on using cans and not plastic to try and help just reduce plastic use. I love the way you describe that, Jackie. I think they should change the flavor name from turtle juice to the monkey one. And just like describe it based on a specific animal. Yeah, the monkey one. I love that. That feels so Gen Z. Oh, yeah, I love the monkey one. The monkey one. Yeah. People would know. And then they have, yeah, people on their social media just wearing, like, these monkey faces and holding the beverage.

27:45There you go. That's more of a reason to change the name to the monkey one.

27:53Mike just held his head there. You don't like this idea? So much advice that we've given to not do that. And then there's Ray going, you should call your beverage the monkey one. Why not? Why not? All right, fine. I guess it's just a surprise when you drink it, I guess, because you don't know what flavor it is. Exactly. Yeah. Ray's like, exactly. I'm like, exactly.

28:17All right. It's time to get to our featured interview for this episode, as we once again welcome Right Coast Brands founder Andrew Gard back to the show. This conversation is the third installment of our regular series with Andrew, who reflects on brands featured in BevNet's New Beverage Showdown 25 competition held in June, why mushrooms have become the it ingredient and how they're incorporated into new foods and beverages, and innovative concepts that he and his team are bringing to life, including a kava-based drink and a refreshing hard tea. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Happy to be back on the mics with Andrew Gard for another installment of Special Ops with Andrew Gard.

29:01Is that kind of a weird thing to say? It's my name a lot of times, but I'm okay with that. Yeah, good to see you. You too. I'm happy to be here. It's nice to be in a cool, dark room. Yeah, well, you mentioned earlier that at your manufacturing facility at Right Coast Brands, there isn't air conditioning within the operations space. No, our facility is now four flex spaces. So they're pretty benign in terms of what they have, their capabilities. And each of the spaces has an office. The offices has a mini split, and that's nice and comfortable in there. But none of us spend any time in there. We're always kind of bouncing between the four main areas.

29:40And we have bay doors open and big port-a-cool fans and stuff to do what we can to stay cool. But when you have a big pasteurizer running at 160 plus degrees and a shrink bundler, you know, shrinking film, it's just hot. Even if you're pumping in the air conditioning, it's not going to do a lot. Then you're just, you stay in there. You know, you can't, you know, you have to get back out. And then I also feel bad. You know, I can like sneak away into it, but not everyone can. So I don't want to be the guy in the cool room, you know, when everyone else is there sweating and making miracles happen for people.

30:13Yeah. How many folks are working for the company now? Eight. Eight. eight full-time three part-time you have been at it shall we speak for sure just ask my wife and kids i mean there's a lot going on in terms of beverage innovation and you're i mean i've seen some of the things that you brought you know last time and then this time it's some really interesting stuff i like bringing you gifts i appreciate that there's some really really cool gifts that we unfortunately can't talk about just yet, but I'm excited to crack them open. I think the last time we saw each other, was it in June for the New Beverly Showdown for BevNet Live?

30:52Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. No, no, not too, too long ago. I was only there for the day though, so I didn't make much of a trip of it. But it was a big day. I mean, quite a bit happened on day one of BevNet Live and that semi-final round for the showdown was excellent. As I mentioned before on the podcast, I think that group of 12 entrepreneurs and their brands was probably the best group of semifinalists we've ever had. It's great to watch. You know, obviously, I've been around a lot of the New Beverage Showdowns. I was working with BevNet for the first one. So to see the evolution of entrepreneurs coming into this space, really have an understanding of how they want to penetrate the market, how they're thinking about product market fit, how they're thinking about pricing.

31:44There's just so much more information available to people now that they can really hit the ground running. And you could see it in their presentations and the way that they're able to talk about, you know, their points of differentiation, their ingredient decks, the whys of what they're choosing to do. It makes for a much more compelling, much more, you know, deeper conversation with a lot of these people. Let's talk about the good and some of the things that needed work in these presentations. The good first. I saw some really tight and compelling presentations in under two minutes, which was pretty amazing.

32:19I agree with you. I think also it's just the output of the way the world is now, too, in terms of consuming information and sharing information. Right. Like they have to be in like very fast clips. Right. So if you think about it in the world of Instagram or TikTok, two minutes is an eternity. Yeah, that's true. So if you have the ability to tell your story across two minutes, that's like unheard of this day and age. You know, that's a big platform. And I think you see that in the way you learn how to communicate what matters. Like there can't be a second of boring. You know, everything has to be tight and edited.

32:55And you saw that. And I think that comes from a next era of entrepreneurs who are probably maybe slightly younger than you and I. and are more comfortable having themselves be out there and presenting just because it's this part of their daily life. So I think that aids in, you know, a better presentation. And I think in terms of the good, there's so much thought going into the ingredient decks in terms of quality ingredients, you know, not having any stuff that's in there that is going to be a deterrent to consumers or retailers. This shows a high level of education. So my favorite products there were the ones that were really thoughtful in terms of like what the functional components were, how they go about adding sweetness to drinks and things like that.

33:39I think one of the other things that really stood out to me was the amount of market ready packaging. I mean, so slick, so thoughtful in the way they are informing the consumer, attracting the consumer in the very limited amount of time that a consumer has to decide whether or not they're going to buy that product. Some needed work, but for the most part, I thought packaging was stellar. I agree, almost to a fault though. Just knowing the flip side of it from a procurement and manufacturing standpoint, I wish everything and anything just worked, but there's a lot of setup, a lot of change that has to happen to make a product like Deo work at some level of scale.

34:27I mean, it's just going to be very expensive, heavy glass, screen printed glass. Like all these things are beautiful, but very, very challenging. And Deo, a brand of functional wellness waters, upscale functional wellness waters. I mean, akin to like, I guess, a smart water, but with added functional benefit. Yeah, it's like the evolution of what smart water, I don't know if they're still trying to do this, but they went into that space where they had, you know, tranquility and different types of versions to be very direct on certain areas of better for you-ness. Yeah. The winner of the competition, Parch, a brand of non-alcoholic cocktails intended to replicate the flavor and experience of drinking a tequila or mezcal cocktail.

35:12I think the judge from the Coca-Cola company had mentioned that the packaging was the best he had seen at the entire show, not just in the showdown. Interesting. And I thought that was obviously a very impressive comment to make about the brand, but it wasn't too far off. I don't think, I think Parch is, no, it's, it's worthy of the discussion, right? You know, for sure. I think there's something that feels authentic. It ties well with the name, with the product. I like those products. I think there's really something to elevating non-alcoholic spirits-based RTDs, you know, not just making it a combo of juices and spices.

35:59And you're like, it's kind of like a cocktail, but like really going after, how do you, how do you harness the flavor of like a really botanical gin or how do you capture the smokiness and heat of like a mezcal? Like, I think that's kind of going to be what's on this next wave of that. And I think that is what's truly going to make the non-alcoholic cocktail segment really explode and then really become ubiquitous with alcohol cocktails. You know, I think the perfect storm scenario will be they can live side by side in a liquor store, at a bar, and there's no like, oh, this is the, you know, the black sheep section of the NA world.

36:42To me, that would be like a massive win for people looking for those products because it's not about alienation or like wanting to be different. You just kind of want to find things that you can enjoy and just manage your life the way that you feel you need to. The question that came up a lot within the judges' discussion is, when would I drink this product? What is the day part use? What is the use education? How many of these is the customer going to drink per week? And that's what I brought up, you know, when we were on stage is that beautiful packaging is fantastic. It gets everyone excited.

37:16Great tasting liquid is fantastic because it's craveable, it's crushable, you want to have it. But at the end of the day, like this is a business. So are you building something that really whets the appetite of the beverage business industry? And how can you utilize your brand and your product in a way to capitalize on that? And I think just because of the strength of the presentations, the strength of the entrepreneurs presenting their brands and products, we're able to get to that conversation quicker. And, you know, I mentioned it then, like, I really think the theme of the day was like really managing for bottom line success, not just, you know, run at all costs.

38:01And if you can get ahead of that right away by understanding how you can run a proper business, you're going to be light years ahead of so many people who have no idea. And this goes back to the discussion of, well, okay, yes, it costs a lot of money to start a beverage company, costs a lot of money to scale a beverage company. But when you're starting out, those angel investors that you want to help fund your brand are going to want to hear how big could this be, not how small this can be. And I've heard that over and over from angel investors. They're investing in potential. So if they don't really see the potential for this to scale, if they don't really see the potential for velocity, they're probably going to pass.

38:39Right. And I think if you're out looking to raise money early on, you have to have the answers to those questions locked and loaded and not just have the answers, but like the belief and the plan to make them a reality. It'll help so much. you have to have that ability to answer those questions and then have the game plan to back it up. And, you know, if I were to invest in an early stage brand, like that's, I'd be asking all those questions, you know, outside of like me knowing so much about it. So like maybe my point of view might be slightly different than typical one-off angel investors, but there's a lot of savvy people now and there's a lot of information and just look how much that Bebnet has grown in 10 years, right?

39:24In terms of being able to deliver information to people about this industry in unique and dynamic ways makes more and more people become, quote unquote, experts, at least know enough to fake it. And that helps and hurts. And at least in my experience now, dealing with entrepreneurial brands looking to launch or grow, I'm seeing kind of the results of their education. You can tell people are reading. Whenever we do our Elevator Talk series and new episodes, And I hear these pitches from early stage entrepreneurs. I'm like, wow, you're a lot more sophisticated than some of the folks that I spoke with six years ago.

40:01Before we hopped on the mics, I was asking you, you know, the first six months of 2023 and having worked with a ton of brands in that time, it seems like you would have a good understanding or a feel for what functional ingredients are most in demand. And you said something that I still question about, you know, talking about scalability and velocity, whether or not this ingredient can drive dramatic interest, can drive velocity. And that ingredient is mushrooms. Mushrooms. Okay. Yeah. So much so we were just doing some housekeeping and we organize all the materials by customers and by type, you know, if it's cold or warm or whatever.

40:44the amount of different brands that have reishi mushroom extract in our facility alone is astronomical. And from different suppliers and stuff too, like that's where like stuff that's new. I'm like, you usually can kind of figure out who's kind of leading the charge on making these functional materials, but it's kind of coming from all over the place. It's pretty interesting. Isn't it expensive though? Isn't it an expensive ingredient? Yeah. And so I can't go going back to this point of, if you wanna sell a lot of product, the price that the end consumer is paying has gotta be affordable enough so that you do have scaling potential.

41:25It can't be$4. I agree. I think also a piece of it too is functional dose per serving size as well. To use mushrooms, like you have to have a certain amount of milligrams per can or bottle to truly kind of access the benefits of it. And anything less than that, it's not really much. So that's part of it too. And then that's the double-edged sword, right? So the more you have to include, the more expensive your products are just from like a liquid cost standpoint. And there's only a certain number of people that actually understand what the ingredient is, number one, and what it does for you, number two.

42:09And I guess number three, what, you know, how much of a premium they're willing to pay to have that in their food or beverage. Yep. Yep. I see it a lot as not just the functional ingredient, but part of a, you know, functional stack of things that are attacking energy focus, cognitive functioning, mood. They kind of run the gamut. Like there's stuff that I brought that has mushrooms in it. as well as kind of like a secondary functional piece. It's not this black tea, is it? No, no, no, that's just really delicious. This is a beautiful bottle. Brewed tea. I'll just call this brand out. What, is it K?

42:54Yep, Kolo. Kolo, okay. This is a glass-bottled iced tea that comes in a 12.8 fluid ounce bottle. I've never heard of a 12.8. It's a custom bottle. Everything's fresh brewed. That's a refrigerated product too, so. So tasting notes, cocoa, dark fruit and nuts. Okay, I'm going to open this while we're continuing our discussion about functional mushrooms. And, you know, one of my co-hosts or one of the co-hosts for Taste Radio, Jackie Regliera, is our mushroom expert. She's our mushroom guru. She's always consuming mushrooms. But I feel like she is the outlier to mainstream consumers. Yeah. I don't know if there's part of like the intrigue of the psychedelic-ness of mushrooms.

43:35And I think a lot of marketing around mushrooms from a brand perspective blurs that line, even though like that's a very specific spore and all this stuff that like, which I do think will become more and more legal in certain ways. And I think there's some interesting entrepreneurs doing really good stuff in that space in terms of like microdosed functional mushrooms, how that translates and or if that rises the tide of, I would say, cognitive enhanced mushrooms. I don't know. Or syncs it because it's like, well, this is the one that works. Is it akin to the interest that people had for CBD and CAC?

44:16Very much so. Very much so. I mean, that was the same. It's almost kind of like a carbon copy scenario a little bit. I think the understood benefits of mushrooms in terms of just overall health and wellness is a bit more established just because people consume mushrooms raw or cooked. I mean, like, it's a more understood thing than, you know, a THC-less version of cannabis, which is still kind of this weird gray area. It's like when we're growing up in, like, hemp. You're like, oh, it's hemp. Like, oh, it's made from marijuana. Like, well, I mean, that was all the allure, right? Right. Like, I think not much more than that.

45:00Maybe because it was sustainable or whatever, but so was a lot. Bamboo is. Yeah. Bamboo water. That wasn't really a thing. It was the most bleeding of edges things for a time. Yeah, you never know. You never know what's going to stick though. So it was MCT oil. Remember MCT oil was a big thing for Bulletproof Coffee. The super coffee guys were highlighting that as the key ingredient or one of the key ingredients. And what they were doing is they were very much focused on keto. And they dropped all that and said, hey, we're better for you. Yeah, I think the hard part is if you're doing something like that in market as a brand, how much energy are you spending doing the education that has nothing to do at the end of the day with your brand building?

45:43You're just helping build awareness, which makes sense, you know, to a certain extent. But if you're spending all this time talking about this one thing and not talking about like your whole finished product or package and how it all comes together, it's not going to stick around. No. And again, do you want to have fun doing this or do you want to actually build a business doing this? Well, you can't have fun while building a business. There's a lot of not fun-ness to it. Well, yeah, I guess you can have fun, but I guess, are you doing this as a hobby or are you doing this as a business? And your co-founder, CultureProp co-founder, famously said at a BevNet Live event, entrepreneurship is not a hobby.

46:23And so take it seriously and take it as something where, yes, you'll have fun, but don't ever forget that you're building something that requires a lot of focus and a lot of dotting the I's and crossing the T's? Because if you miss one here or there, it could cost you a lot of money that costs your business. Yeah, that's 100 % correct. And if you're looking to raise money, do all these things, and you yourself aren't 200 % in on everything that it's going to take to have that business be successful, it's going to be challenging. It's going to be costly. It's going to be frustrating. It's going to be challenging.

47:02There's just no other way around it. I don't want to discourage people from enjoying themselves. I did an interview with Dylan Seglio, who is the co-founder of Chubby Snacks. You know, you can't not say Uncrustables when you're talking about Chubby Snacks. It is what it is. And that's a better for you, Uncrustables. And toward the end of our interview, he's like, look, I just want to make it clear to entrepreneurs, most of the time that you're an entrepreneur, it's not fun. And you're dealing with stuff that's going to be hard and difficult for you to deal with on a daily basis. But hopefully, you know, there will be that, I don't want to call it a payoff, but not even a financial payoff, but a payoff in the end that makes you happy that you're doing what you do.

47:46Yeah. I mean, as someone who, I guess, I'm an entrepreneur as well, too, and taking risks and dealing with all the challenges of managing people and building something. And there's, you know, to start what I did is would 100 % be categorized as crazy. So here I am doing it. And that's probably correct and a correct assumption. And like the payoff doesn't have to be monetary. At least for me, it's not because I'm not actively building something to sell it. But more of like our whole goal with Right Coast, at least, is to be a solution center for the beverage industry. And if we're always doing things to be able to help emerging brands solve problems, create new opportunities, and we can do that in a streamlined, efficient way that doesn't, you know, bury ourselves in a whole bunch of trouble and challenges, then that's the payoff for me.

48:43And if I can continue to do that for the next 20 years or until I can't do it anymore, that's fantastic. And I can stay on the cusp of what's happening and what's working and be an early adopter of new packaging technologies and new ways of dispensing things and liquids. Like I love all that stuff. I mean, that's where I get like my inner geek comes out is like with that stuff. And then how do I take that piece of it and then flip it back to challenge the entire industry in a way that let's make this scalable? You know, like let's figure out what's, you know, getting in the way of doing that. That's like my ultimate goal.

49:27I mean, it is fun. Oh, I have a blast. It is fun to see all the beverages that come out every year. The 300 plus new beverage brands. Oh, yeah, it's more than that. Well, Don Oak? Oh, for sure. In terms of like, you got to like dig deeper than just somebody with an idea and like throwing something at the board. I mean, there's really great entrepreneurs. There's influencers who are driving a huge new channel of quick launch, quick to market beverages and food. I would say just alone, there's been 300 products just in that little channel and you You can like dig through it. It's nuts. And then you have very large brands launching, you know, like very international businesses launching new and unique things in a certain way.

50:19And you have retailers, grocery chains, all kind of looking to vie for their own shelf space almost and bringing a lot of things back in-house, which is interesting and compelling. And, you know, they are kind of fraught with their own challenges. So collectively, it's way more than 300. There's been more than 300 unique people who have reached out to us in the last six months. Wow. Easily. I think I was referencing historical data where we typically see 300 new beverage brands, but maybe, you know, over the past few years since entrepreneurship has become this viable or at least in-demand prospect for a lot of younger folks, maybe there are, you know, significant, maybe that number has doubled in recent years.

51:04I, it's, you know, it's fundamental to the success of my business, but the sheer number of people looking to enter this space in some ways is awesome. I think I want to frame this next section as a regular section and call it projects, special projects, special projects within or underneath the umbrella of special operations. Okay. And it's because you brought all these amazing new beverages with you. I hope I don't break anything. In my Pringles box. Your Pringles box. This is how we keep everyone happy. As long as we have that box of individual cupped Pringles, people show up every day. Oh, yeah.

51:44It is in a box of Pringles. We are pretty obsessive about snacks. Can I talk about this brand that you are working on called Bashi? Yes. B-A-S-H-I. Described as a kava experience. I asked the founder this morning if it was okay if we talked about it. Okay. Yes. Well, Kava has been in the news, you know, not necessarily in a great way, but this is a beautiful looking package. This is the peach variety, and it tells you, or Bashi tells you, to perk the F asterisk CK up. It's in a 7.5 ounce can, which is a unique can size. But when I think about, going back to this, getting perked, when I think about Kava, isn't Kava supposed to relax you?

52:28Well, there's another flavor too, which I think is more what you'd expect. This is the blueberry one says mellow the F up. Well, let me play devil's advocate, or maybe I'll just be the devil. Okay. And ask. You were too excited. Yeah, I did get a little excited. I was getting all Al Pacino on us. Whoever got that reference, email me. It's a fantastic reference. Someone, someone might say, hey, this is an Erewhon brand. I expect to see this in Erewhon and not many other places, or locally, it's a Cambridge Naturals brand. I think that's too cool for Cambridge Naturals. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. But the Erewhon thing is correct.

53:07And that is also the second or third sentence that usually comes out of most people I talk with's expectations. It shouldn't be part of their expectations. So, I mean, it should be an Erewhon, but it shouldn't just be an Erewhon, right? So I guess, how are you advising folks about the potential that you're going to get from being an Erewhon? Yes, you know, you'll go to a lot of people to see your product at first, but you've got to get out of there at some point, or at least you've got to go beyond Erewhon at some point. I think in working with Erewhon at an early stage, really understand what you're looking to get out of it.

53:44So is it just to drive trial? I mean, it's kind of an expensive way to drive trial, but you are in a market where people are looking for new things. So your target customer is going to be an Erewhon shopper, especially if you're making a$399,$425 price point thing. But I would check on a weekly basis how the product moves. What's the velocity when it's not on a giant end cap or like a whole shelf buyout? Both of which you have to pay significantly for. Right. So I think that skews the data in my mind, whereas I'd like to see how it sells on a, you know, how does the product move every Wednesday at 11 a.m.?

54:27And are people coming to look for this product over and over again? and find a way to do a lot of demos to talk to people who are actively buying the products and understand what they want. So Airwond's a retailer. I think you could do that with any retailer and just understand how you can get success by partnering with retailers. And then how is that transferable to regional chains, to national chains and all these things. And that's what you need to have to unlock to ultimately be truly successful. The amount of people that are probably looking for Cape Tide hard tea, maybe not on a Wednesday at 11, say on a Saturday at 11 a.m.

55:07Sure. There's probably quite a few. This is another project that you're working on. And zero carbonation. Yeah. Hard tea with zero car. I like that. 12 ounces, 5 % alcohol by volume, brewed with premium tea, vodka, and real juice. This is very on trend, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the guys behind this brand are fantastic. They're all still college students. They came to us with a really great idea. We helped them in terms of getting the formulation right and bringing this product to life. And they've just been doing all the right things in terms of blocking and tackling to open on-premise and off-premise accounts.

55:53And I mean, they're cranking through much more than we plan to do this summer, which has been fantastic. And the product, it just tastes good. That's what it comes down to, too. We use a really good tea. We use real juice, real flavor, a really good spirit. And we just take care of each can that we make. And the packaging looks really great out of the gate. They're in four packs. They have a variety pack. They check all the boxes if you're stopping by a liquor store before you go to the beach, even though they're not supposed to drink alcohol on the beach. But, you know, it's a win. It's relatively easy to sell, you would think.

56:28but what a competitive space, you know? Very competitive. I see a lot of brands in the beverage alcohol business getting into either canned cocktails or adjacent categories like a hard tea. And a lot of them that started out in say, hard kombucha or a hard seltzer breaking out or branching out into these types of segments that seem to be more in line with what consumers are looking for. In my opinion, If you're going to make a boozed up version of something people have a really familiar understanding of, a sweet lemon tea, iced tea, I would say a majority of people have had a Snapple or an Honest Tea or, you know, a Joe's Tea.

57:14I'm just trying to think of cool tea brands. But so if you're going to like add alcohol to it, it can't just be half-assed. Right. Like you have to find the right balance and do it the right way and use the right type and have the ABV be spot on. Because when that's cold, it's just crushable. And of all the stuff that I share with friends and family, that's been the highlight so far. Everyone likes when you give them booze, but more so that's been like the highlight so far this summer. I don't know specifically why some customers are buying this, but the reason I would buy it, and I'll read the label hierarchy here.

57:50you have zero carbonation at the top, which is, I like that, but not necessarily a reason I thought. My suggestion is it should say no added sugar. For sure. That would be huge. We were just talking about that in a recent episode, actually. Gluten-free doesn't really matter to me. Okay, hard tea. Actually, I don't really particularly love the description of hard tea, but again, not this. How else do you do? You have to call it. You got a millisecond to get your point across. Exactly, exactly. I agree with you though. But if I was picking this up and I'd probably spend more than two seconds picking it up and looking at it.

58:20Premium brewed tea, huge. Vodka. That sealed the deal for me because I know what the alcohol is. This is not some, you know, fermented cane sugar. It's not a hard seltzer. And that in so many ways is the reason I believe that High Noon is doing what they're doing. 100%. Yeah. 100%. All right. A very personal project is obviously Culture Pop. and I'm holding a variety in my hand. You can talk about this one. Yeah, so we, I'm not going to say the flavor because I don't know. That's why I didn't say the flavor. If and when it'll ever come out, but we have the ability to do super small runs at scale basically.

59:03And so we had an idea to launch a eighth skew, I think. Off the track. Yes. And, you know, It's kind of sticking to our roots of a blend of juices and a cool spice. And this product's fantastic. Tastes great. One of the challenges is how it's going to look on the shelf. How's it going to work in retail? How's it going to compare with our other products? How do we build a shelf set? All these things. Because packaging and taste, we're going to nail because we know what works for our products. The color of the can is very close to what our orange mango can color used to be. And looking at the lineup, you could immediately almost tell that there was going to be not confusion, but either it's going to be an oversight because it's just going to be similar enough.

59:57So, you know, we ran 25 cases of it and got feedback and we're like, let's just tap the brakes and we have other stuff in our pipeline. And, you know, we're going to be launching another flavor to fill that eighth skew void soon. We're going to make it at our place in two weeks. That has, you know, again, very cool flavors. I'd say it's our closest foray to a traditional soda flavor. but very culture popped in the sense that, you know, the way we think about flavor is a stack of things to create the ultimate experience of the named flavor and all juices. And then what are we using for a, I'll say spice as a overall encompassing thing?

1:00:47You know, what's going to be like the, the unique factor of it as well to, to make it, you know, a true culture pop thing. So that's another project that we have. And I think I'm saying as much as I can without just blurting it out. But as soon as we make it, I'll bring it here first. Thank you. Before we wrap up, I could ask, you said you made 25 cases. Yep. Who is trying this product? Who are you? It was just internal. So just with our team and people close to us in terms of advisors that know what our game plan is and what we're doing, it's super helpful. Otherwise, if we kind of we would have spent way more money to launch something that would kind of would have been fell flat.

1:01:27And like, we're not at a place because Soda is so competitive because there's a lot of activity in the space. Like we can't throw duds out there. Right. So it was an easy way to create a project, figure it out and just navigate around what's a hurdle. But you know, that's not a big deal now. I like it. Show the product to people you can trust, your team and make sure that everyone's on the same wavelength. Yeah, because as we're growing, we're asking for buy-in, everyone in our own organization, but then all of our retail partners and things like that too. You know, it's no easy feat to just whip something up and try to sell it to really big retail partners.

1:02:09Like you have to have the conviction to stand behind it, like you do everything else. So this happens. Well, geez, you know, I feel like we could, continue this conversation for just another two, three hours. I'm just happy just opening up beverages and chatting. And I know you're extremely busy putting in 12, 14, 15 hours a day. Yep. You need some downtime. So this is lovely for me. Well, let's plan for three to four weeks from now, we'll get back in the studio. But love when you're coming out here. And I'm sure our audience gets a ton out of everything we talk about, or at least everything you talk about.

1:02:47Maybe they're like, just cut Ray's audio out. No, you're fine. You're fine. You're just, you're feeding me all the good stuff. I try. It's just easy. It's the job of a good host. And I don't know if everyone will agree with what I say. And by no means do you have to. It just comes from a place of honesty and doing it. One person's opinion, but comes from a lot of experience. Yeah. I'm happy to talk with anyone too. I love this stuff. There you go. Andrew Gard, once again, thanks for being here. Thank you very much. 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 cratchy 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

1:04:13Thank you.