The Playbook That Turned Nutrabolt Into A Billion-Dollar Disruptor

0:10Hello, friends. I'm Ray Lateef, and you're tuned into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. What does it take to turn a scrappy supplement startup into a billion-dollar beverage powerhouse competing with industry giants. In this episode, NutriBolt founder and CEO, Doss Cunningham, breaks down the inflection points that turn brands like C4 and Bloom into cultural contenders. From capital discipline to distribution-first thinking, Doss shares hard-earned tactical advice, including why he advises founders not to overspend on marketing before your product is widely available, the importance of focusing on high-margin categories to fund growth, investing early in product innovation, and prioritizing talent that believes in the long-term equity of a brand.

1:11Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am supremely honor to be sitting down with Doss Cunningham, who is the founder and CEO of Nutribolt. Doss, it's great to see you again. Great to see you, Ray. Glad to be here. Yeah, it's been seven years since we last sat down for Taste Radio. In 2019, you and I were having a wonderful conversation. It's the chaos of BevNet Live summer 2019 in New York City. And I'm glad I said before we hopped on the mics here, we have a little bit more of a calm, neutral time and place to discuss everything that's been going on with the company because New York City, as fun as it is, and DevNet Live, as amazing as it is, is a scene for sure.

1:56It was a lifetime ago, but I remember it being pretty chaotic. So happy to be back here today and look forward to the conversation. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that conversation or at least revisit that conversation real quick. When we think about where the company was and where you were personally, what's changed? And what do you feel like has changed the most in particular? And what do you think has sort of stayed the same about Nutriboles and C4? So in 2019, we were an aspiring beverage company, but we were really only in our first full year. So we launched the C4 carbonated energy drink in March of 2018.

2:36And summer of 2019, when we met, But we were really still just kind of putting together our patchwork DSD network, starting to make a little more inroads with some of the key national accounts. But we were, for all intents and purposes, in our infancy stage. Fast forward seven years, C4 has become one of the leading brands within kind of the contemporary performance space, amassing more than 3 % share and continuing to grow. We've also added Bloom to the mix. So I'm sure we'll talk more about that later, but Bloom represents a great opportunity for us to reach a completely different consumer segment, add usage occasions, and combined, we're now a five share.

3:23And Bloom is having meteoric growth and really complementary to the portfolio. But everything that happened between 2019 and now to get to this point, I mean, it's been a lot. So, you know, A, we went through the pandemic, right? That was a pretty big, a big challenge for NutriBall. I think we handled it really well, but, you know, it was a little bit of a curveball, if you want to say that. We've scaled up our team. We've really transformed into a beverage company. You know, at that time, we were more of a sports nutrition supplement business that wanted to be in the beverage space. We had a great ambition to, you know, really move our performance supplements, products that we were really proud of into a more convenient, ready-to-drink format and really drive availability through a much broader distribution set of channels.

4:15And to do that, we had to add a lot of really talented people to the team. We evolved our distribution network, partnering with Cure Dr. Pepper in the end of 2022. We've just continued to innovate. Innovation's been a huge part of our success, whether it be expanding on the C4 performance SKU or adding C4 Ultimate or, you know, the innovation with Bloom, you know, brought that to market in July of 2024. First full year of distribution was 2025. And it will undoubtedly be, you know, probably the fastest growing brand, you know, in the category this year. It may be reaching as much as half a billion, you know, in sales and the not too distant future.

4:57So a lot's happened. You know, you asked about the through line, like what's been the same. It kind of goes back to the very, very beginning. This is a company that really never is satisfied with where it's at. We continue to try and evolve. A lot of that happens through innovation. A lot of that happens through continuing to recruit and develop the best talent. Talent's everything to us. And then just the commercial execution, building capabilities that allow us to go out there and compete with brands that are much, much bigger, that are way more resourced and win. And so we've been through a lot, resiliency, unrelenting ambition, and, you know, continuing to do things the right way.

5:44You know, I'm very proud of how we do business. I think we've got a lot of integrity here at NutriPolt. And, you know, that keeps people wanting to be here, you know, keeps people around. When did you realize, Dust, that you weren't just building a nutrition supplement energy drink company, but at the point where C4 had become a cultural brand that was competing with legacy giants like a Red Bull, like a monster? probably around 2022. We were really starting to make our way in just about every major national retailer. Our velocity was great. Merchants that I sat across the desk from loved what we were doing.

6:32We had great repeat rates. We were seeing our brand being picked up, but then customers coming back again and again. And, you know, we really started to dive deeper into sport. You know, we started partnering with some of the most premier athletes. You know, I feel like that added a level of credibility. You know, we also partnered with Kevin Hart. And so we really went from being a little bit more grassroots, kind of underground, you know, which is really the supplement industry as a whole. and with some of these developments and just the expanded availability our practice everywhere being represented by you know some of the most inspirational and aspirational talent out there it really just all started to kind of snowball and that's around the time we did the deal cure dr pepper and you know we were sought after brand there were a lot of strategics that were interested in what we were doing.

7:28And we had real market share. It's hard to get a point of market share in the energy drink category. And at this point in time, that whole portfolio, we have about 5%. So yeah, I think probably in that 2022, 2023 timeframe. I often speak to early stage founders and quite a few who are in the energy space. And most of them know it's going to be a tough road. Most of them know that it requires a ton of money, it requires a ton of grit, it requires a lot of luck to make it in energy. But I think it also takes strategic know-how and it takes an understanding of how to use your money wisely and being efficient with your capital.

8:19We talked about this in 2019 and I want to revisit it. Nutribolt for a long time was a bootstrap company and you didn't take a lot of outside, you didn't take venture capital or strategic capital for a long time. How did you do that? I think for lack of a better question, there are so many folks out there right now that when I speak with them, the first question out of their mouth is, do you know any investors? Do you know anyone that I can raise capital from? And they never ask, what's the best way to bootstrap a company? So how did you do it? It's a great question. And, you know, I, as an investor, I also see a lot of the companies that, you know, it's just constant, raise money, spend money, go back, raise more money.

9:07And unfortunately, I mean, it works out every once in a while, but unfortunately, a lot of times, you know, founders find themselves diluted into just a really kind of immaterial level of ownership in these businesses. And that's really, really sad. For us, and it helps that I come from more of a financial background, educationally, I kind of always looked at the business through the lens of what is economical? What are the categories that we should steer clear of? Because the gross margin story only leads to one outcome, which is losing money and perpetually trying to raise money. But there's categories that we've really focused on that have been high margin categories.

9:53That margin has allowed us to reinvest and support healthy marketing budgets, help support healthy trade and commercial investments. And so I think part of it is you really need to have a business plan and strategy that brings financial reality into the mix. And then I think it comes down to discipline. And it's real easy, I think, to get over your skis and be spending a ton of money on marketing without having maybe yet even any availability, right? One of the biggest mistakes I've seen companies make is they've got product in a region or maybe they've got it sparsely throughout the United States, but not like real densely distributed, but they're going out there raising a lot of capital and trying to spend it on marketing.

10:43And so when the consumer can't find the product, that's money wasted. And so I've had a lot of great mentors along the way that have taught me lessons around how to think about scaling up marketing, when's the right time, when we should focus on driving volume through more commercial activities versus brand building. And so that also went itself to, I think, us being a lot more capital efficient. But our mindset here has always been lean and mean and do more with less, innovate into high margin categories, partner as closely as we can with the right retailers, retailers that will kind of have your back and not take advantage of you.

11:27I think one of the challenges that a lot of upstart companies face today is they get in with the wrong retailer, they get pay on skin or 60-day type payment terms. They're upside down with respect to their operating cash flow or their working capitals, all of a sudden, something that they're unable to fund without raising more capital. And so I do think there's a playbook. I'd say it comes down to being really thoughtful about your strategy and being very sequenced if you want that organic growth story. Now, all that being said, there was a point in time where we did have to raise money. And that was not that long ago, but call it 2020.

12:10I think it was sometime early 2020 that we had recently done a debt recapitalization where we bought out the private equity partners that had invested in our company six years prior. And so they had invested in 2014. and in 2020, we put some leverage on the business, did a debt recap, bought out their equity stake. And we really returned the business to me and my partner and to our employees. And we were excited about the beverage opportunity. We thought this could create the most shareholder value. And we were willing to take the risk because we really believed in the core business. But at the same time, we were trying to build a beverage business, which we were new to.

12:49And it was very, very expensive. And regardless of the fact that I believe the gross margin is everything. When we started the beverage space, we were super inefficient. We had shrink sleeve cans, our gross margin was much, much weaker. And that started to actually put a lot of pressure on the business. And then the pandemic happened. And the pandemic took us from like, okay, we're threading the needle, we're operating very effectively, but like, we're getting a little bit, you know, on edge here. Pandemic happens. And it was very clear I needed to go put a little bit of equity capital, buy down some leverage, get more comfortable.

13:28And we were fortunate to partner with a group here in Austin led by Clayton Christopher and Brian Goldberg. I'd call it a friends and family round, but I think quite a few people made it into this round. We had a really good price. We didn't raise too much. I think one of the bigger

13:44Doss Cunningham:challenges for a lot of founders is knowing that just because you can doesn't mean you should. So we raised a small amount of capital, got the predators feeling good about the business again, and then we went back to growth mode. But yeah, it's been great to look back and just see how efficient we've been from a capital standpoint. It's resulted in the most important stakeholders owning the most amount of the business. It sounds like financial discipline is the foundation for any great business. and it worked out really well for Nutribolts and for C4. In terms of the next most important part of a successful business, is it operations?

14:29Is it marketing? Is it sales? Where have those investments landed? Where have you been able to see the most results from those particular parts of your business? I think the most important investments are in your product innovation. I It may not be the most capital intensive, but it's the most important area to invest. And so we've prioritized building a world-class innovation and product development team. We've got a lot of capability across about every form factor. I think we're really well-known in the industry for delivering just high premium quality products. But over the years, I think we've probably been best commercially.

15:17Our investment in the sales organization, putting feet on the street, really developing the various groups, commercial strategy, sales enablement, the whole commercial operations piece, and understanding how to get out there and really maximize the performance of our distribution partners. That's probably where we've invested the most capital. On the marketing front, for the longest time, we kind of let the product do the talking. And yes, we invested in marketing in many different facets, but we really let the product do the talking and we made the product available and that served us for a long time.

15:57But now competing with the biggest players within the category, that wasn't enough. So I'm really proud of what we built over the last several years with our marketing organization. Our CMO, Robert Sajak, joined us a little over, I guess, three years ago now. And he's just built a great team. You put in a lot of disciplines that you need to have to continue to grow a business and help us really understand the trade-offs between brand marketing and building long-term equity and awareness around a brand. And then really driving the kind of more near-term activities where we get payoff and, you know, we are out there driving customer acquisition in real time.

16:43And, you know, we kind of move back and forth, teeter-totter between, you know, our allocations across those buckets. Right now, I think our push is really a lot more top of funnel, you know, trying to create broader awareness, expanding the relevance and awareness of our brands. Yeah. And I think that's kind of where we're at today. Vibrant Ingredients is the natural ingredient partner powering food and beverage innovation, delivering flavor, function, and protection through a science-backed portfolio. Vibrant delivers purpose-driven solutions that help brands create extraordinary experiences.

17:22Discover what's possible with Vibrant today. Visit VibrantIngredients.com. When you talk about innovation, Doss, what particular part of innovation has been most impactful? Is it flavor development? Is it functional ingredients? Is it packaging? It's hard for me to prioritize any of those areas over another. It really comes down to doing all three of those things well. And I would even add a fourth, which is like, you know, the total value proposition has to be something that the consumer really believes in. And so packaging, I think, is something that set us apart from the beginning. We were the first to use aircraft aluminum canisters in our supplement business.

18:09We were the first to bring tactile feel with carbon fiber and doming and different varnishes that really made our product pop off the shelf. We were the first to bring chrome finishes into the tubs that C4 debuted in almost 15 years ago now. But flavor is also really, really important. And it's tough because I think a lot of companies have caught up around flavor. And so trying to get to just absolute excellence on every flavor that you set out to make. But then probably more importantly, the creativity, like bringing new things to market, like we brought Serial Killer to market this last year.

18:54It's blown my mind. I actually probably was joking with the team the other day. I would have taken the under on how successful Serial Killer would be. I thought it was cool, but that was maybe going to be a little bit more of a flash in the pan. And everybody loves it. Everybody wants it. The team did a really good job with that. or more recently we launched mango fuego which is just killer flavor but yeah coming up with the next ideas we've got some really exciting stuff ahead of us in 2026 which i can't really talk about today but flavor creativity flavor execution and then look i mean at the end of the day the consumer is buying the product because they're looking for a benefit and you know what i think we've done really well is we've understood the consumer's needs you know what need states are they trying to meet, which need states are maybe not being met by the competitive set, you know, and then building product that really kind of finds that white space and hones in on it.

19:49And so C4's heritage has been building performance products that are really designed to help people perform at their very best, maximize their human potential, you know, on and off the field, you know, or in or out of the gym. You know, we can't lose sight of the importance of functionality. And I think we do as good as anyone, if not better. I'm glad you brought that up because that was my next question. It was specific to Gen Z consumers who are as influential as any generation at this point. And have had a big impact on food and beverage trends and health and wellness trends in CPG. What specifically are Gen Z consumers looking for out of energy brands that they may not necessarily find in the legacy ones out there?

20:41They're looking for products that they believe are inherently healthy, that fit their lifestyle. I think Gen Z in particular, fitness isn't some niche hobby or wellness. It's really an important part of the way they live their life. And so first, brands that are going to deliver some sort of health benefit, but also they view as being part of a healthy lifestyle. I think that's a critical component. I think Gen Z also, the way they discover products and the way that they first engage with brands is also very different. For example, right now, TikTok shop is an incredible customer acquisition channel.

21:20We see a lot happening there, something that we're really excited about because we're reaching people who are spending, young people who are spending so much time on TikTok. We're now able to go out there and acquire those consumers pretty seamlessly. So knowing where they're at, knowing where they're shopping, and then their attitudes and just preferences all around, I think are a little bit different from prior generations. brands that you know have tied in have a little more of a social mission you know associated with them i think that's that's important and then brands that just continue to bring newness right like people like to try new and so goes back to innovation you know continuing to bring new flavors you know cool collaborations collaborations have been huge in the industry whether that's a collaboration with a flavor house or it's a collaboration or partnership with a major organization or even something much more niche and small.

22:20Those bring a lot of excitement. Glad to hear that TikTok shop is working out for you. It's certainly top of mind for a lot of brands right now. Content, or at least content that's not necessarily as authentic or compelling is it needs to be on TikTok is often expensive and it's often wasteful brands looking to drive new awareness sales on TikTok. How do you keep your content authentic and compelling to the point where you are attracting new consumers and thriving sales? Well, you know, a couple of years back, we built a content creator program where we've got full-time staff here going out there, scouting, recruiting, bringing in content creators.

23:07It's very much similar to the way we started our business as a sales organization. It's a performance program. People are acquired for one to three pieces of content. If their content performs, we'll sign them up for longer term contracts. If it doesn't, then they're cut. And we have been able to drive of incredible reach at a very low cost. You know, it's our job to go out there and recruit the type of content creators that we think are going to bring the most relevance and authenticity to the brands that they're supporting. But whether you're talking about Bloom or you're talking about C4, you know, this universe of content creators, you know, less so about how big is a following.

23:54I think go back just a few years and it's all about Instagram and who had the biggest following and trying to build, whether it's a micro strategy or macro strategy, you were paying for following. Today, some of the most successful content creators don't even have a following or they're just discovering that they're really good at this. And so we get in at ground zero, find people that are trying to develop their content, creating capability, we partner with them. And then that on the other side produces really good economics for us. as far as what we spend and what we get from that. It sounds so simple, but it's so brilliant.

24:34I don't know why people don't talk enough about, hey, if it works, great, we'll keep you on. If it doesn't, sorry, we'll find someone else. I know that's kind of harsh to say, but I think that's essentially what you're saying. Yeah, you juxtapose that to like signing up, you know, a tier one athlete or something. You know, even like a middle level influencer, you're signing up contract, there's like this relationship, it's exclusive. You know, what we do today, it's very flexible and it gives us a lot of flexibility. It gives the content creator, you know, some flexibility. And I'm not saying that like the old world of big influencers and big talent is not relevant because we still deploy that as a core part of our strategy.

25:15But there is a way to really get a lot for your dollar, you know, building it yourself. Do you feel like the content that's hitting is more fitness oriented, lifestyle or something else? For us, it's probably historically been more fitness and performance oriented. But over the last year, we've really we've reimagined what the word performance means. So when we think about C4, you know, a lot of people think, oh, it's the pre-workout brand. It's, you know, in the gym or it's, you know, sports. And our view, and this is something I'm really, really proud of, our team for developing this campaign, our view is that everyone is an athlete.

26:00And, you know, we should be talking to the people that are the most inspirational in this country. The what we've kind of called the industrial athlete, you know, whether it be the last mile Amazon driver or people hauling, you know, loads across the country and 18 wheelers, construction workers, nurses, you know, public service, fire department, police officers, etc. There are so many people that are out there that are working hard jobs, physically demanding jobs that are shopping the category already. They're shopping energy. They're walking into the C-Store at 7 in the morning buying an energy drink and a Gatorade and going about their day.

26:47And they live on the road. Well, I believe and our team believes that these are athletes too. And they're the athletes that serve our country. And I think it's really just a great opportunity for us to really broaden the reach and the relevance of the C4 brand by thinking about performance and athletes from more of that viewpoint. I love that. It definitely gives you perspective on who out there needs to perform at their highest level and gives the context of, well, what you're doing, whether you know it or not, is exercise. And you are busy and you're running around and you're doing all these different things and in some cases, very important things.

27:32And I think it gives consumers permission to not only embrace your product, but use it on a regular basis as opposed to other beverages or other beverages in different categories. I think people might have overlooked energy as a way to improve their general performance. But I think that strategy and perspective, as you mentioned, broadens the opportunity for more consumers to embrace energy in particular. Absolutely. Yeah.

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28:44Doss Cunningham:Download it now at tasteradio.com slash octopi. You mentioned Bloom a number of times. Let's talk about that. It is a brand that has just really turned a lot of heads and done amazing things in a very small amount of time. When did you start to notice that Bloom was a real player and that Nutribolt should get involved as an investor in the company? I first took notice of Bloom early 2023. And then I sat down with Mari and Greg and Leo in, I believe, March of that year. We met in Austin. We had a great initial conversation. I had a vision for maybe what a partnership could look like. I think they had a vision for maybe what a partnership could look like.

29:37And they were out kind of thinking about what they wanted to do and who they should maybe take capital from. And so we spent a lot of time, I think, you know, late spring through summer, we met a couple times in different locations, really talking about, okay, great, you've got a supplement brand that's on fire, you're selling greens, which is relatively new category, you know, AG1 was doing well at the time as well. but this is really like the leader by far within the retail space, selling superfood and greens. What I really liked is I felt like they checked so many boxes for us that were like net incremental.