Plant-Based Spam? We Mull It Over. And Learn From Dash & Dough'.

29:25Someone walked in and said, did somebody have some weed? And just for context, for those who don't know, durian is considered the stinkiest fruit in the world. It's a very polarizing flavor. You either love it or you hate it. And when you cut one open, you'll clear the room. So this stuff has that quality to the point where I open all the windows in the office. They told me it was going to be dank and they told me it was going to be funky. And I made a shot with it and it definitely pays off. So, yeah, that's some pretty interesting product. If you get your hands on some, if you want something very, very different than most of the coffees that you're having, get your hands on this comeback Colombian coffee.

30:06It's insanely insane. There you go. All right. John ran out and got some products. Oh, good call. Ooh, Like Air. Like Air is fantastic. Yeah. You know, since it's November, figured we should try this. It's Like Air's Thanksgiving dinner flavored popcorn. Yes. Like Air is a maker of popcorn products that they describe as better than popcorn. They're kind of like an in-between corn puff and popcorn. They straddle that line, and it's really, really good. Yeah, this is a Thanksgiving dinner-flavored variety. Wow. Does it taste like turkey or cranberry sauce? Or what's the flavors? A little bit of stuffing.

30:46It tastes like gravy. Kind of like mashed potatoes, salty mashed potatoes. I always wonder how they come up with these flavors. They just put everything in a blender from a Thanksgiving dinner. and yeah you don't see too many of these types of flavors yeah jones soda makes a turkey flavored soda every year but i haven't seen many thanksgiving dinner flavored products talk about innovative this is there you go i like that i have to say this is you know most of the thanksgiving dinner or any of these kind of i guess pr stunts usually i don't love but this one's so good i mean it translates pretty well to like a salty snack and the texture of it is almost like stuffing.

31:26Really? It is. Yeah, you should try it, Ray. I'm going to as soon as I sanitize. Got you your own bag. You don't, yeah. You know me. Did I miss this when it came out? Because Once Upon a Coconut generously sends us product from time to time. And we got chocolate coconut water. Outstanding. I have always been a fan of chocolate-flavored coconut water. And when I first started at BevNet, one of the favorite products in the office was Zico's. Remember that? I think they were the first to do it that I can recall. This is really good. I think it was even before we did brand of the year, we had just had a product of the year category, and that was the product of the year.

32:02It was tasty. It was very, very good. And then people started to think, oh, I don't need this much sugar. I don't need this many calories. But maybe, maybe, just maybe, coconut and chocolate are, you know, making a comeback. This has your least favorite sweetener in it, though. What is that? Sucralose. Oh, darn it. Why they put sucralose in this? I don't know. I guess they did it to round off. There's plenty of sugar in it, though. I don't know why they need the sucralose. I think that's the thing. It's really tasty. If they want it to be sweet enough, you got to dial up the sweetness and you want to keep the sugar count down as much as possible.

32:31So there's 19 grams of total sugar in this 10.8 ounce can, 110 calories. I am going to try this. I'd love to try it without the sucralose just for kicks, but it's really, it's a tasty product. I like it. Yeah. I think I would also probably change this little image of the four chocolate squares melting in the center of the can there. Speaking of chocolate, and London yeah what you talked about before I just wanted to say congrats to the founders of grounded have you had grounded it's uh no it's a protein shake and it's really great comes in like oh yes yes yeah I did see that at the um at one of the events founders are Gabriel Bean and Bryn Ferris and they launched uh they're in the US now they're launching in Whole Foods nice it's a pretty why yeah it's kind of like it looks like a milk carton yeah yeah I I remember the brand logo.

33:21It comes diagonally across the front of the package. It might be a Sig pack. Might be a Sig pack. Okay. But it's a, it's a beautifully done pack. And I was drinking it like before a run and after there's enough that you can have a little before you go for a run and then, and then save some for later. I mean, it's, it's good. There's two flavors, chocolate and chocolate mint, and they're both phenomenal. Nice. I see a bag next to Jack and I'm, okay, there you go. I've been snacking over here, watching you all eat. I have Pipcorn's New Fries. So we have a truffle variety and then we also have fiery cheddar.

33:56And I've been munching on the truffle ones and they're really, really tasty and very simple ingredients. So this is just cornmeal, sunflower oil, and then truffle salt. Yes. And they're baked, not fried. Pipcorn, a maker of heirloom snacks. They're best known for their heirloom popcorn. Love that brand. Love what they're doing. and truffle flavored Andy cap style fries sounds like an amazing how many calories for a serving only 140 so not that bad yeah and there's five servings per bag so I could eat this entire bag how many how many grams how many grams like 28 grams for a serving or 40 28 grams yeah 28 grams not bad not bad I gotta tell you Jackie I have a ton of respect for you because for someone who works as much as you do, I would be snacking all the damn time and how you kind of control your urges.

34:50It's pretty amazing. It's taken me 10 years to get here, Ray. Lots of practice. I wouldn't have as much control. Okay. Well, like I said, kudos to you. And actually kudos to the makers of Pipcorn. If you recall on Nosh recently, Upstack Brands has aligned Pipcorn and Spudsy together under one roof. The story is on nosh.com. You don't want to miss it. It's a really good story written by our colleague, Lucas Southerd. But to read it, you got to be an insider. It's One of the co-hosts of the CPG Week podcast as well. So if you're looking for snackable information on CPG every week, check out CPG Week podcast.

35:39There you go. And to become an insider, very easy, go to nosh.com or bevnut.com slash insider. I want to talk about one product because I'm actually interviewing the founders of this brand. How did you get that? Because. I know how you got it. I'm a very lucky person. Yes. I'm going to be interviewing the founders of this brand in about 40 minutes. The brand I'm holding in my hand or the product I'm holding in my hand is from a brand called Better Sour, a maker of Better For You gummies. Gummies. Unbelievable candy. A fantastic brand that is founded or owned by Bella Hughes and Samira Naku. They have just in about 18 months created one of the most exciting brands in this space.

36:26So exciting. So tasty. They're two of the kindest founders that we know. And I'll never forget the first time I had a Better Sour at the Snackshot event. Yes. And they handed me a bag and I just was talking to them about the product. And the next thing I know, I'd eaten the whole bag. Well, Better Sour has partnered with Disney on a special edition Moana 2 product. So you have the characters of Moana 2 on this package. and they have a, or this product is a passion fruit variety. This is the first time they're doing a single flavor variety. And it all comes together in a really beautiful package.

37:05It feels like you definitely see the Better Sour logo. You see what you're getting in terms of the sour gummies. You see Moana and I believe that's her child. I don't know. I haven't seen the movie, but it's a really cool partnership. We're going to be talking all about it in about 40 minutes. and we're going to be featuring that interview in a future episode of taste radio so if you want to learn more about brands and their interaction with big big brands like disney tune in 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 taste radio dot com slash insider to learn more all right it's time to get to our featured interviews for this episode.

37:50As I mentioned at the top of the show, Jack Scott and Catherine Bricken are founders of two fast-growing brands based in the United Kingdom. Jack is the co-founder of Dash, a brand of fruit-infused sparkling waters that contain no calories nor sweeteners. Catherine is the founder of Doelicious, an innovative frozen dessert brand that markets frozen cookie dough and gelato bites. I sat down with both entrepreneurs during Taste Radio's meetup at the Lucky Saint Bar in London for conversations about their respective growth strategies and international expansion, particularly that of the United States.

38:31My name is Ray Latif. I'm the editor and producer of BevNet's Taste Radio podcast, which is the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I know some of you are loyal listeners. We really appreciate it. For those of you who are not yet regular listeners of the show, head to Tasteradio.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any listening platform of choice. We actually just published an episode today featuring Peter Rahal, who is the founder of RX Bar, a brand that sold for$600 million. So if you want to sell your brand for$600 million, maybe you want to take a tip, piece of wisdom, insights from that guy.

39:10You also might want to take some tips and insights and wisdom from the gentleman right next to me. That's Jack Scott, who is the co-founder of a brand called Dash. Jack, great to see you. Great to see you, Ray. And Taste Radio has definitely been a source of much knowledge of Alex and I over the years. So it's great to be here and thanks for inviting me. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like Dash is a brand that's been on our radar for some time. Mike and John, John Craven, our founder and CEO. came out here in 2019. And I believe that's when they first met you. Pretty enamored with the product and brand as you should be.

39:47I'm sure most folks here are familiar with the brand, but for those who are not, tell us all about it. Yeah. So we started the brand seven and a half years ago now. It's a very simple product. It's water, bubbles, and wonky fruit. It has no sugar, sweetener, or calories. And it comes in a 330 mil sleek aluminum can, and we've got nine different flavors. We've just launched a Big Dash, which is a 500ml product. But yeah, very, very simple. We started it for two reasons. So I come from an arable farm in Shropshire, and Alex is also from farming backgrounds. And we saw that there was an issue with food waste at farm level.

40:28So all of the fruit that we use to infuse our waters, others have said no to. We also met at working at a larger soft drinks company and saw a gap in the market in the UK for a great tasting drink that didn't have any sugar or sweetener. So there's a couple of the reasons why we started it. And just for context, where are you retail distribution wise? And please, project, you should be proud of what you're doing. Yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, we started it in quite a traditional way. We focused heavily on beacon accounts in London, your Whole Foods, your planet organic the trendiest coffee shops around town we really wanted people to be first introduced to dash perhaps in a trendy coffee shop in shoreditch rather than a meal deal in boots and we got people to talk about the product alongside that so instagram stories had just started and we were getting all of the right people to talk about our product online meanwhile building out that sort of premium distribution and fast forward seven and a half years where stocks in approximately 15 ,000 stores in the UK, all of the big supermarkets.

41:37We're very proud. We have a strong direct-to-consumer business, which is still about 30 % of our business, and we'll sell approximately 45 to 50 million cans this year. So starting to get some good scale. Incredible. Now us crazy Americans from across the pond, as it were, we're like, well, can you get any bigger? Or where else are you going to go from here? because you're always going to get bigger. But, you know, one of the themes for our visit here in London is to talk to folks about making their way internationally, whether it's the U.S. or otherwise. And Dash is already sold in other countries.

42:11Talk about how you assess the opportunity to sell in places like France and Australia. Yeah, so I think firstly, we're no experts and we've certainly had to kiss a few frocks along the way in terms of our industry. We'll talk about that momentarily. Yeah. But I think we, Alex and I have always thought that international expansion would be a valuable thing for us to do, to show that the brand can travel and work outside of your core market. The UK is our focus and where we put the majority of our time and is, you know, a large percentage of sales. But we wanted to focus on some other key markets and show that the brand could work because I think that's really valuable for the business going forward.

42:50So how would we look at a new market? So take Australia, where we do have an end-to-end supply chain and we have a team on the ground. That was for a number of reasons. So the climate, Sydney and Melbourne tends to be warmer during the summer, which works for our refreshing beverage. They're big into sustainability in Australia, so hence why we needed to make it locally. And then they're big into health. So, you know, those sort of key things would drive, those macro trends were driving our decision. like all things relationships is really important we we have an investor who's the largest stakeholder in remedy kombucha which is a very big soft drinks business and that meant that we were able to have conversations with manufacturers and wholesalers very easily so for those reasons we thought australia was a good idea it's certainly not plain sailing our category is dominated by large Coke, Pepsi, Schweppes all have seltzer type products in the market.

43:50So it's not straightforward. So that's sort of Australia. And then for us, France is really interesting because it's the size of the market's really exciting. So it's a similar size market to the UK with a similar sort of demographic of people. And there's many fantastic retailers where we started to get into. We're very early days. Again, it's about our chairman has built successful UK brands in France. So again, had a very good distributor who we were able to speak with, which has been fundamental for us getting off to a good start in France. I feel like it's probably an easier, transition is the wrong word, but an easier time getting into European countries, other European countries versus getting into the United States.

44:44But you did make your way into the United States for a cup of coffee, so to speak. In 2020, you were aligned, Dash that is, with a company called Iris Nova, which had a pretty innovative business model and go-to-market strategy. Unfortunately, Iris Nova went underwater or was a defunct company after about a year. and so is your U.S. distribution, defunct that is. And I'm curious as to what you learned from that experience and why the U.S. market hasn't been a priority for you since. Yeah, good question. So yeah, we definitely dipped our toe in the U.S. market and that was our intention from the start.

45:25I think what was attractive to us, it was a very mature Seltzer category. So we might have a place within that mature market being a premium, unique story with the wonky fruit. So that's sort of perhaps why we wanted to dip our toe. And Iris Nova did a great job. We got into heroin, we got into Foxtrot, maybe 250 independents in New York, LA, Chicago. But then it was that sort of classic sort of thing where they took on far too many products as a wholesaler. Iris Nova, that is. Yes, and sort of lost focus. We went in there thinking we would be one of six. but it turned out there was a lot more brands so why has it not been a focus since I think because it's so established our category I think it would be extremely hard for us to make any waves without raising a lot more money or actually moving over to the U.S.

46:23as a sort of founding team so that becomes very risky as a small business because you're raising a load more money going into a market that might it may not work so that's sort of one of the main reasons we have 12 perhaps competitors in the US that are all turning over a hundred million dollar plus within our category and the price point is is very low so from a margin perspective you'd be taking a big big risk and it wouldn't be profitable, that's for sure. So you'd have to be raising lots of capital. So some of the reasons why perhaps we don't feel it's the right time for us yet, but I hope the brand will go there one day.

47:08Well, it is a very mature category and typically you do have to raise a ton of money to be successful in the United States in beverage. But raising money can sometimes lead to more problems than opportunities. What have you learned about raising money and where best to deploy that money? Yeah, great question. We've now raised a significant amount of money. Our strategy with that is always bring on people that would add value. So James from BrewDog, the Sipsmith founders, Beavetown founder, we've always sort of thought if we're going to get people in who are going to invest our money, we would want them to be able to help us go through those levels of growth and have been there themselves.

47:57I think that's an important thing that we got right. We didn't just sort of take any money. We wanted people who are going to be with us for the long run and understood that it's going to take time and money to get there. I think sometimes investors do want to see you tackle other markets. They do want to see that big opportunity to tackle places like the United States. How do you talk to investors who are asking you about that international expansion and encouraging you to do so? And is it just a simple matter of saying, no, that's not what we're going to do right now? Or do you have to explain it to them?

48:33Or do you have to talk about a long-term vision? Definitely. And that is really helpful getting people on who know the industry and understand that the US, for instance, would be a risky move for us at our stage of business but it's all around focus so as a small team we've still got a lot of work to do to make sure that we become you know a household brand that's loved in the UK and that's sort of where our focus is at the moment and that takes a lot of skill and hard work and money in itself so it's just about sort of explaining the situation and perhaps you go into countries where the self-taught category doesn't exist where the white space is for us as brand to grow and be perhaps the category leader rather than coming 15th or 16th down the pecking order.

49:21You never want to be 15th or 16th. You might as well be out of the market at that point. But you don't want to be dead. I'm going to bring this. This is going to sound like a weird transition, but it's something that Jack brought up in our pre-interview. Now, you said this. I'm not sure if this is something that has been said throughout the industry, but you described the US, and I don't want to freak anyone out, as being the graveyard of so many British brands. Don't freak out. I'm sure there's a valid reason why he said such a thing. Why did you say that, Jack? I think for all of the reasons that I've just mentioned.

49:57So the amount of capital that you would need in beverage to make it a success and get on the shelves and then ultimately get the consumers to to pick it off shelf is going to be extremely expensive and you think about all of that private equity and vc money in the beverage space in the us they're all plying into the market to get onto the shelf so you just have to go over to expo west which we were over in march and saw you guys to see that you know if you're going to take on that market you've got to make sure that you've got you know a laser-tight strategy something really unique and in a category perhaps that is growing and you're able to sort of get a foothold in but you know there are some success stories like Fevertree which you know when I spoke with one of the Fevertree founders about their U.S.

50:50expansion he started in 2008 and he went and moved there himself for three months and started seeding properly in the market in all of the right restaurants and bars and basically did what he did in the UK and that's you know a good sort of 15 years ago so they started off small and then sort of grew so there are obviously ways of doing it Fever Tree would be a good example of now having great success and you know Brew Dog would be another drinks company from the UK that having some success. But I would say that there'll be many, many a brand that perhaps focusing on the US has been the death of them.

51:35And maybe it's just a simple matter of category. I mean, the sparkling water category, as you mentioned, is quite competitive and loaded with established brands and new brands that are trying to break into that space that are domestic and that are, they already have a leg up because they're already there. I mean, let's say you're in a different category. I mean, would you think it would be a different story? Yeah, I think so. As you said, Seltzer is made and aided in the US. It's a category that was formed in the US and we, you know, almost took that idea from the US and brought it here. And hopefully we can go and play your own game at some point in the future.

52:17But other categories, I mean, I always think if you've got this sort of British heritage part that goes somewhere in the US. So if you want to dial that up as part of your brand, then I'm sure that there's a space within the speciality channel, which is so big in the US for a great British, you know, crafted soft drink. I'm sure there, you know, would be space. So, you know, I'm interested to maybe hear what you think in in terms of the drink space? Well, it's interesting when you think about the opportunities that international brands have in the United States, and I think it is very category dependent.

52:58It also might be a matter of, you know, beverages are tough, but food's a little bit easier. I think that's Catherine's cue here. But Jack, I want to say thank you so, so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. Round of applause for this fine gentleman. Thank you.

53:20All right. I'm going to invite to the stage Catherine Bricken. Thank you. As I mentioned, she is the founder and CEO of Delicious. Jackie, could you hand me a, let's see if we have a, if you haven't seen this brand, it's all over Whole Foods here in the UK. Where else can you find it? It's in Tesco in the UK, Costco, Morrison's, Ocado, part of Buy Women Built, which is amazing. And we just got a lot of great press from being a woman founder. and Zap and some other other cucumbers. Yeah. So go puff. So what is Delicious? So Delicious is a cookie dough platform. I started it because I'm a cookie dough addict, love cookies, couldn't get enough.

53:59And when I moved to the UK in 2008, I just started playing around with cookie dough snacks for my children's friends at school. And a friend of mine came to me. She's like, can you just make me a really good American style cookie? I'm like, yeah, that's so easy. So started it with making it a better for you product. So only oat flours, no refined sugars. At the time, it was all coconut sugars. And then in 2014, I said, okay, I'm going to take this a little further. So it's incorporated, but just, again, very small. 2017, I was like, all right, I'm putting this in the specialty fine food show. And it took off.

54:38I had incomings from Whole Foods, Planet Organic, and Akato. so decided to start my own baby factory where I did everything myself like whipping the mixer up and dispatching and then grew into another small factory and now we have a factory in Acton that's about 22 ,000 square feet and we've just become the cookie dough experts and Doughlicious is called Doughlicious the London Dough Co which when we launch into other countries they love it and they love British heritage. So it's very important that we keep that British heritage. And they were in dry ice. I see a lot of people like going, so if you let them sit for a moment, they will thaw out and they'll just become really creamy.

55:20I saw Catherine being like, just hold on. Just take a second. Let it thaw for five minutes. Dry ice is like, I hold it in my hands because I'm so used to it, but it does crazy things. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a good question. Why frozen? I mean, if your friends wanted an American style cookie, you know, why is Delicious a frozen brand? Frozen because moderation, shelf life, food waste. I didn't want food waste. So I thought that if I could do this and people could bake it on demand, that would be the best way for them to eat what they needed, not overeat, not throw it away. I think food waste is out of control in this country.

55:56It's out of control everywhere in the world. And it's a particularly bad problem in the United States. Speaking of the United States, You launched Delicious here in the UK about seven years ago. You made your first foray into the United States in, was it June of 2023? December. December of 2023. And it was a few Whole Foods stores. Yes. Well, so we launched, we were really lucky. The incoming CEO of Whole Foods came to the UK and he decided to visit two factories. One was a farm and one was our factory. So he came and saw the factory and said, I absolutely love it. We need it. I got a call two weeks later, and they started to fast track us.

56:39So we went into four regions in Whole Foods. And then in April, we launched Nationwide. So now we're in all the Whole Foods. And it's been really crazy, really hard, a lot of money, a lot of time. The problem is we manufacture everything here. So we container it over. And it gets there. It's beautiful. It's fantastic. but the problem is getting it across all of the U.S. So it lands in Philly, and I don't think we ever realized how difficult it would be working with UNFI and moving product across the U.S. So you could have said no to the Whole Foods CEO. I don't say no very easily. Okay. I'm a yes person.

57:22I'm always like, oh, yeah, and then I figure out how to do it. Like, I don't think I ever say no. Well, as you mentioned, the logistics are tough. You had to raise a ton of money. Just managing a frozen operation on its own is pretty tedious. You know, how did you take everything into account when you were making that decision? well i think being an american i felt like it was in my blood to go across the pond and it was going to happen whether it happened now next year two years from now so i guess the saying is you know you just rip the band-aid off and you go for it and i'd figure out how i was going to pay for it later and we've had a great adventure we launched in target yesterday congratulations Which is huge.

58:07Thank you. And not just Target, Target nationally in the United States. Yes, Target nationally. So we're in 500 stores. And then we launch in just under 3 ,000 in February. So that's really, really cool. And then Independence and Fresh Direct, which is in the New York area. And Harris Teeter, which is North Carolina area. I don't know if anybody knows some of these other stores. So it's been a really, really fantastic adventure. And again, we're focusing with our gelato bites. So in the UK, we have our ready-to-bake cookie dough, and we just launched a line on train lines of baked cookies, but only in the US and in some other countries, we focus on just the cookie dough and gelato bites.

58:49This might sound like a strange question, but didn't Whole Foods have a bit more confidence in you as a founder and being able to deliver because you already knew the American market and could probably get around relatively easily? No, I don't think so. I mean, I knew Whole Foods and I knew, but I'm from Miami, Florida. So I lived on that little part of the U.S. that sticks down there. No, I just think that it helped that there was nothing like it in the U.S. And they saw the snackability of it and they saw the growth in frozen snackable products. So we were just on the trend. We had won an innovation award with Mintel in 2022.

59:29And so they thought, you know, this is unique. This is something that people can grasp and eat and snack on all day. So there was a life to it. When you were thinking about the national rollout at Whole Foods, was that something that was always in the back of your mind as we're going to prepare ourselves to be ready for a national rollout? Was it performance based or how did you have those conversations with the company? That was just the plan. We gave them exclusivity through June 30th, and it was part of the plan that we would go four months or four regions through April and then nationally.

1:00:09I'm going to ask a question that Jack and I talked about a little bit earlier, which is category. Really, it is a category. I mean, obviously, you're selling a food. It's a very different kind of food than what we've seen. As you mentioned, Whole Foods had never seen a product like yours. Do you think that the category mattered as much as your product and the brand? The fact that you're selling a novelty, a frozen novelty product and not something like a sparkling water per se? Probably, probably. I think that it was much more of the category wasn't as huge. Drinks are hard. I've seen a lot of drinks brands and I think it's frozen's hard too.

1:00:47But I think a cookie dough wrapped around gelato is what made us definitely enter the category and create a new part of the category, the frozen snacking category. Whole Foods and Target, a lot of people shop at both stores, but I feel like they're very different beasts in terms of how you're successful in each one. Merchandising is tough because there's just more products at a Target. Sometimes the category management isn't as good as it is at places like Whole Foods. How do you ensure that you get off to a really good start at Target such that you're ready for that very large rollout in February?

1:01:25So I think just creating a great promotional plan. And that's what they want to see because the most important thing that they're looking for in the U.S. is rotation. So we have to create that vibe and that rotation to make sure that we're going to stay on shelf. And what we've seen is, I mean, we can create amazing socials. We can get the word out there by different media. But again, it's the customer. So creating those in-store banners, the discounts, that's what's going to drive the velocity. It's kind of hard when you're operating here in London. Do you have a team already out there in the U.S.?

1:02:01We have one person. I know that sounds kind of scary, but he's a multitasker. and we're looking to a real multitasker. Why is everyone laughing? I'm kind of curious. Do you not believe, Catherine? Hey, it's the American way, right? Do it all. So the mothership is here and we have a lot of support and he couldn't do without the support of the team here. So we have a marketing and small sales team here. I mean, we're quite small, but we're scrappy. We are very scrappy. What would you say is the most important part of getting your operations right in the US? I mean, you talked about the importance of social marketing and promotion, but, you know, someone who's skilled in operations might not be the best marketer.

1:02:41Someone who's great at sales might not be the best back of the house person. So how do you get someone comfortable with being a jack of all trades? Find somebody like our guy that's done it all. He's grown companies. He basically found small companies and helps them find manufacturing facilities to the right marketing people. So just we're very lucky. I think that Delicious has had a lot of luck and it's been a lot of hard work. I'm about 80 years old now, but it's really hard. If there's one or two things that you could talk about as the most challenging aspects of the United States market, such that folks here will understand where not to trip up, what would those things be?

1:03:29That's a good question. I think the hardest part is the logistics. like I said. And depending on who you go with, when you go direct, so I say that, but with Target, we haven't had any problems. Everything ends in store. You have to be involved. You can't expect things to happen. You have to just pay attention to everything, be really micromanaged. You know, none of us want to micromanage, but I think micromanaging is something that it's not going to happen by itself. We're pretty much out of time, but I do want to talk about relationships with distributors, as you mentioned, UNFI, there's KEHI.

1:04:04These are humongous natural product distributors. I think there's a tendency to think that they are a part of your team. That may not necessarily be the case. And you have to manage them as well as you manage anything. How do you manage your distributors well in the United States? Well, we've probably done what we just, the only thing we knew how to do was hiring Whole Brain, which is a company in the US that helps you facilitate all the pickups. They're a broker. Yeah, broker. What would you call them, Russell, in the US? An agent. So they're an agent. So they help watch everything, make sure that everything's picked up.

1:04:37But again, they have to be managed. And as you know, managing people in a team is just a whole nother level and takes a lot of time. But I think just being, again, micromanaging, making sure that everything's happening and following through because nobody's going to treat your business like you do. So the agents are great, but they're not your team. And it's too expensive for us to have a whole team. So we have the one guy. I wish we could talk all night, but there's a lot more networking to happen tonight. And I'm so excited. There's so many people are here. I'm so excited that people brought their own products as well.

1:05:10I strongly suggest you try some delicious. There's also some humanity. There's feisty soda. I can't read because my eyes are going. There's some Tenzing over there, but please come over to the table and try a few things if you're here and definitely get in touch with Catherine and Jack on LinkedIn. You guys will be able to answer a couple of questions here and there in case somebody has a follow-up, yes? Absolutely. Fantastic. Catherine, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for everyone coming out tonight. And I can't believe I forgot to mention, thank you so, so much to Lucky Saint.

1:05:43You know, the team has been so gracious and so wonderful in having us here. Thank you so much, Luke. And thank you again to your incredible team It has been amazing throughout the day. Appreciate it.

1:05:58That 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 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. Check us out on Instagram.

1:06:32Our 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. Thank you.