Time To Rethink THC… And DTC?

0:10Mike Schneider:Hello and thanks for tuning into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I'm Ray Latif, the editor and producer of Taste Radio, and with my co-hosts, Melissa Travers and Mike Schneider. In this episode, we compare two contrasting growth stories. Breeze, the cannabis-centric beverage brand navigating regulatory uncertainty and growth beyond THC, and Stars and Honey, the protein bar brand that earned a nationwide target launch after years of refining its D2C business. We also discuss GT Kombucha's playful take on a Shirley Temple flavor, the rise of Better For You Rice Krispie Treats, and an ice cream brand pickleball-inspired care package.

0:58Mike Schneider:So most of us, actually all of us in this room, are off to the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York City this weekend, which begins on Sunday, June 28th, and goes till Tuesday, June 30th. If you're attending the show, if you're exhibiting at the show, please let us know. Send us a note on LinkedIn, IG, or you can email us at askatasteradio.com. We would love to see you. We're going to be recruiting for Elevator Talk. Lots of early stage brands exhibiting at the Summer Fancy Food Show. And we would love to have you join us for an episode of Taste Radio via our Elevator Talk series. If you're not familiar, it's a series that profiles early stage and disruptive brands from across the food and beverage industry.

1:40Mike Schneider:It's an hour-long show. We feature five brands per episode, 10 minutes for each brand, and we feature a co-host who is an expert in finance, retailing, distribution, what have you, who can offer some feedback, advice, and insights about your brand and business strategy. So once again, if you're attending the Summer Fancy Food Show, please let us know. We want to see you. We want to recruit you. Of course, we want to also see you at our upcoming events, BevNet Live, Nosh Live, and our Taste Radio Meetups, which are happening across the country. We should make the elevator talk army like the tartan army.

2:13Mike Schneider:Oh, I like that. Oh, yeah. Make some kits. We need kilts. Can we have kilts? We have to do something different, though. No, Ray Latif, no party. Is that what they say? No. Well, they will. They're going to sing about you. Yeah, you know, seeing the Scottish folks and their reaction to Boston made me love Boston a little more. I feel like I was a little down on Boston. Well, they definitely seemed to praise the city in a way that was a little unexpected. Typically, you don't hear that Boston is the most welcoming city. No. It's the most friendly city. And that's all the Scots seem to talk about.

2:48Mike Schneider:At least that's what we saw in the news. Now, maybe there's some tweet out there that's like, this is the worst experience I could have ever imagined. Boston is S-H-I-T. But, you know, that's one out of 10 ,000 probably. Yeah. And I never think of Boston as being a place where people go to party. But I'm glad that. Wait, wait, wait. What? No, I don't know. What? Everything closes early. I mean, that doesn't stop people. No, I know. But I just, I feel like we were infused with the spirit of partying. You're missing something, though. There's a kindred spirit between Boston and Scotland because they both beat England.

3:23Right. That helps. The Scotland-England banter is fantastic.

3:29Mike Schneider:Coming from a guy who loves a London-based team. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I'm still with England, man. Okay. Fair enough. I want England to win the World Cup. Do you? Yeah. Okay. But you know who Scotland wants to win? They want Abe to win. Anybody but England. Oh, I never heard that before. Yeah. Just talk to a few of them. So I'm sipping on this drink at the beginning of our episode here. It's called Newtonic. N-E-U-T-O-N-I-C. It's described as a productivity drink. And the tagline is fuel your focus. It's got a bunch of ingredients that are designed to, I assume, enhance brain health. Is that a thing?

4:05Mike Schneider:Brain health? Cognitive ability. Cognitive ability. So it's got Cognizant, it's got Rhodiola rosea, Panax ginseng, L-theanine, and 120 milligrams of natural caffeine. This is their strawberry lemonade variety. It's got zero grams of sugar, comes in a 12-ounce slim can. I mentioned this drink because, A, I wanted to test it out, and listeners can let me know if I sound somewhat more coherent and smarter by the end of the show, or if it didn't work at all. But you know what? Please send your responses to ask at Tastereo. Yes, I can only imagine the emails we're going to get. But I also want to mention this because this brand was recently reviewed as part of BevNet's weekly product reviews.

4:49Mike Schneider:These are the official product reviews that are featured on BevNet.com on a weekly basis. And I encourage folks in the beverage industry to send products to our office. And you can find our address on our website, BevNet.com. and you can find out exactly how to address the package so that it reaches our product review team. Same with Nosh. We do product reviews on nosh.com as well. So if you want to find the address, if you want to find all the information about how to submit your brand for an official review, an official review, head to bevnet.com or nosh.com for more details. I mean, you know, we offer some semblance of a review on tasteradio.com, excuse me, on taste radio on a weekly basis, but these are starred reviews.

5:37Mike Schneider:These are officially starred reviews. This is a finite review. Yes. I just say DNS or something like that. DNS meaning? Does not suck. Which is the highest rating you can have on taste radio. For a person, it's a CFD, right? Yes. The CFD is the highest... Chill dude. It's the highest word or name you can offer someone in the industry. It means chill effing dude. Right. Yes. Now, what's the gender equivalent for a chill fucking dude? I would say in that respect that that's an all gender. Okay. It's gender neutral. Yeah, I think so. Fair enough. I like that. My daughter calls her friends bro, so I think you can go down that way now.

6:19Mike Schneider:Bro? Yeah. What happened to bra? I thought bra was the new term. Bro, bra, whatever. Yeah. They use them both. When you were toking back in the day, Mike, did you call your toke buddies bra or bro?

6:34Mike Schneider:Mike never touched cannabis until 2019, and then he had a real serious reaction to it. Everyone knows this. Everyone does. The meltdown. It's been mentioned 115 times on Taste Radio. Tripped balls at the Rose Cafe. Well, you know, look, it's pretty ubiquitous. You can get THC anywhere these days. You can get THC via the traditional rolled up smoke version of THC, a.k.a. a joint, where you can get topical THC lotions and whatnot. You can even get THC in olive oil. Get it in Target right now until November. You can get THC in beverages at Target, certain Targets, that is. Go Minnesota. And Florida and Texas.

7:19Mike Schneider:You touched on something there, Mike. You can get THC at Target until November. Yeah, right. Until November when the ban goes into effect or presumably goes into effect. Presumably goes into effect. There's a looming regulatory change. Hopefully, we won't see that completely turn over. I'm hoping that it won't. And I'm sure so many other people in our industry are hoping that it won't. Yeah. As we've mentioned on the podcast in the past, there is a federal ban on THC beverages and consumable products looming. and it is slated to hit in November of this year. It is a very controversial topic amongst folks in the industry, especially those who market cannabis products.

8:02Mike Schneider:And that includes a brand called Breeze, B-R-E-Z. It really is a serious change. Right now under the Farm Bill, hemp is regulated by weight. But starting in November, if the change goes through, the regulation will be that 0.4 milligrams of THC total per any unit or container will be what's allowed. And that's absolutely nothing. That's like the head of a pin compared to what you experienced at the Rose Cafe, Mike. Well, that was dispensary grade stuff. I mean, the ridiculous thing about this is you don't hear anything but stories of people finding joy after discovering five milligrams of cannabis or two and a half milligrams of cannabis in a beverage.

8:50And this is 0.4 milligrams, which I can't imagine anyone would feel anything from that. Also, when you talk to our editor-in-chief, Jeff Kleinman, who I would consider my cannabis sherpa, along with John Landis, he says basically, you know, this cannabis, the hemp-derived cannabis, is made from cannabis that was grown to make rope, not to get you high. So it's like basically the bud light of cannabis anyway. Right. It has very little impact. And it's pretty great in general for people who need an alternative to alcohol, who, you know, people use cannabis for a lot of different reasons. Medical grade cannabis helps a lot of people.

9:29It's just good to take the edge off a little bit. You know, have two or three of them, you might end up in the couch. But still, I don't know. I just think it's pretty ridiculous when you've got alcohol running free, which again, I'm also for alcohol running free with regulation, you know, 18 and over sort of thing. But I don't know. This is going to hurt farmers. It's going to hurt the beverage industry. It's going to hurt so many people. And obviously THC beverages allow you to feel something almost immediately, just like alcohol. There are so many non-alcohol alternatives. but the trick is, do you actually feel anything immediately from the L-thenine or ashwagandha or, you know, magnesium, whatever it is?

10:08Yeah. Not like those mints you gave me and then I felt them later. Wow, those are strong. Right. But with beverage though, you do feel it immediately. I think it's pretty immediate onset, like 10, 15 minutes. Right. So it is a good trade-in for an alcoholic beverage.

10:23Mike Schneider:Just circling back to Breeze for a sec, you know, Breeze was one of the fastest growing brands in the industry a couple of years ago, we gave it an award, BevNet that is, for a, what's the term that we use? Rising star? The award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. Exactly. No, a rising star award. And it seemed to be a rocket ship. And according to an article written by our colleague, Lucas Southard about Breeze, they had a challenging year in 2025. They described themselves as growing a little too fast, too far. Despite that, they still pulled in$90 million in revenue and they're in 10 ,000 retail stores.

10:57Mike Schneider:But of course, they're facing a potential reckoning as well in November. And they're trying to determine the right course forward because they not only market THC drinks. Right, they've diversified. They have non-infused THC drinks, which are infused with adaptogens and nootropics. And Breeze has described these drinks as a quote-unquote Trojan horse into mainstream retail, introducing consumers to the brand without the baggage and regulatory uncertainty of intoxicating hemp. Now, note that Breeze is not the first THC brand to attempt this strategy. Can? CAN, which is one of the pioneers of this space, introduced a line extension or brand extension called Unspiked.

11:41Mike Schneider:These products did not contain any THC, but they were able to get the can brand out there and on shelves in major retailers because like Breeze is attempting to do, they wanted to get that name out there. They wanted to get the word out there about can itself. Unspiked, however, hasn't been on the market since according to, well, our little research here, 2023. So - I tried to buy some just now. The website's still up, but when you get to the checkout, it ends. Yeah, and they haven't posted anything on Instagram about this unspiked line since 2023. So I suspect it's not something they are pursuing anymore.

12:18Mike Schneider:And it'll be interesting to see if Breeze, now look, Breeze launched their unspiked or uninfused line a couple of years ago as well. And I don't know how well it's doing in comparison to their THC line. But if come November, they can't sell THC anymore, how many people are actually going to buy their uninfused products? I don't know. I don't know. It's a good strategy though. I mean, you saw Trip, who was struggling with CBD regulations in the U.S., and they pivoted into adaptogens and calm. And well, you could certainly see Breeze's adaptogen products sitting next to Trip and making a pretty strong category.

12:53They're both, you know, fantastic beverages. I think, as always, it depends on how good the product is. So the non-THC line, if it tastes good, if the functionality actually resonates with consumers and, you know. All the checkboxes get checked. I think the trick is, though, is that consumers who are familiar with Breeze's THC line, if they're expecting to feel something while they're drinking the product, I think that's tricky. But at the same time, if it tastes great and it offers something that other modern sodas, other functional beverages don't, then they have a great chance. They did go similar route to Trip, too.

13:31The packaging isn't that much different than the original packaging. It's just differentiated in whether it has THC or whether it has adaptogens. I think it's a good path for Breeze because they've built up some brand equity. They are a brand that's supposed to give you that chill out impact. And so the uninfused versions are supposed to do the same thing. I think they do. I mean, in my experience, it's a good product. So I think they have a chance. They have a good team. Speaking of the team, right now, as they're pursuing this non-THC line, they're also doing a lot of restructuring within the company.

14:09So Aaron Nospich, their CEO, has stepped down from that role. I think they're slimming the team down a little bit. Right now, they have 10 products. So, you know, I don't know if they're going to slim those down as well, but it'll be really interesting to see how all of this reorganization will coincide with them promoting the non-THC line.

14:28Mike Schneider:I think it really will come down to positioning. How do people see and perceive Breeze as a brand? And it was interesting, toward the end of the article, there are new CEO talked about how he would like to see the brand move out of the non-alcohol alternative set and closer to modern soda and functional beverages. This kind of threw me for a loop. He said, quote, putting us between Celsius and Olipop is really framing us in the correct placement, which you're talking about a fitness centric energy drink and prebiotic sodas. And I'm not sure how Breeze fits right into the middle of those two. What just happened there?

15:06Mike Schneider:I don't know. I just got some lumen in my, on the wrong pipe. So you weren't laughing at the idea of putting Breeze in between those two brands. No, no. I think it's a great idea. There you go. All right. So, well, anyway, for the full story on Breeze, head to BevNet.com. Much more information about the brand and where it's headed in this story by Lucas Southard. Also, big news. I was thrown for a loop on this one because I had never heard of this brand before. It is a brand called Stars and Honey that is launching a target nationwide. But as part of this announcement that they're launching nationwide in Target, they also picked up a$24 million investment.

15:52From VMG.

15:54Mike Schneider:From VMG, which is a very well-known and very successful private equity fund. I mean, they've had many funds, but it's a firm that has had a lot of success over the years. And$24 million is nothing to sniff at. I mean, that is a big number, especially for, once again, a brand that I'm not familiar with. And look, I'm not the be all end all of CPG, but it's kind of strange. It's only because Stars and Honey are not on Wayne Wu's pants yet. Oh, that's perhaps correct. Wayne Wu being one of the founders of EMG, yes. I was introduced to Stars and Honey by a friend of mine who said that he had found the best tasting protein.

16:31And this isn't someone that necessarily gives me food recommendations, but he was talking about how much he loved this protein bar and how it tasted really good. And so I looked them up and went to order, but you had to order a full case. And I don't really eat protein bars that often. But I think it's the way that they are going about this business. They've grown the business on D2C for three years. They know who their consumer is. They've iterated through D2C and through those channels. And now they're launching nationwide with Target, having all of that research and information underneath their belt.

17:04Mike Schneider:I mean, it is really interesting. if you are able to identify your customer, why they buy your product, why they're loyal, who that person is, and the fact that they are buying, not only on a regular basis, but being a loyal ambassador for your brand, talking to other people about stars and honey, the impact that can have on a retail rollout, on raising money. I mean, I can't claim that it's a case study for how to build a brand online and eventually go into retail. But this is a pretty powerful look at one brand that has done it seemingly very well. And you know, their value proposition is that it's a product that tastes great.

17:45Their flavors are dessert forward. Like there's one that's cherry chocolate waffle cone. They have 15 grams of protein. So it's not like a David bar. It's not a wild amount of protein. They're clean label, but what they lead with is the flavor. And I think that there's so much competition in this category. if you can get a bar that tastes really good and has the nutritionals that you're looking for, then that's a really great start. The letter blocking in the logo is horrifying. And I love it. It looks, it's so confusing. It looks like something I doodled in high school and I hate it, but I love it so much.

18:19And the ads are really cool too. It's a really clean package. The geometry is beautiful in it, but the ads like have the flavors kind of exploding out of the bar. So you have to see the mint cookies and cream one in particular. It looks really cool. But I think they're just going with a little bit of confusion here. Like the first look at this, if you can read that it says stars and honey, you're doing a great job.

18:41Mike Schneider:Which will be interesting. As they introduce the brand new consumers at Target, they've identified that retailer as what's going on right now? That's the cookies exploding out of the in the ad. It's cool, right? It looks good. But yeah, they've identified the Target shopper as aligned with their current shoppers, their current consumers, and feel like there's a lot of synergy between the two. And in addition to this rollout at Target, they are in the process of expanding into a new 60 ,000 square foot manufacturing facility. So I assume that's where a lot of that$24 million is going to go to as well, is building this manufacturing plant.

19:21I also read that they are doing a lot of out-of-home advertising to support the Target launch, which I think is interesting as they're expanding into their first retail locations. I always hear about out of home as being a really tricky thing because it's really hard to track ROI. But I'm wondering if that approach was informed by their D2C consumers. And of course, with all of the target locations, they're trying to draw traffic to those retail stores.

19:50Mike Schneider:Yeah, very interesting. We'll continue to follow this story. You can read about Stars and Honey's expansion and investment on nosh.com in a story pen by our very own Monica Watrous. In the meantime, I want to talk about another protein bar brand that I recently saw upstairs. It's called Samsara, S-A-M-S-A-R-A. It appears to be a protein bar brand that is influenced by Indian flavors and cuisine. They have two varieties that I'm holding in my hand. They have a masala peanut and a spiced chai. Beautiful packaging. They're kind of on the smaller side for protein bars, which I like because, you know, I don't eat a huge.

20:32Mike Schneider:But they're dense. But they are dense. They each contain 15 grams of protein and 2 grams of sugar. But it got me thinking, got me wondering, why do you guys eat protein bars? Why would you? Is it because... Protein bars, why would I eat them? No, is it because, why would you be interested in buying a new - What makes me choose a protein bar? What would make you interested in picking up a new protein bar if you saw one, say, at Target? Would it be the fact that a brand like this, Ansara, has pretty unique flavors? I've never seen a masala peanut or a spice, maybe a spice chai, but I've never seen a masala peanut protein bar.

21:08Mike Schneider:Is it the actual protein count? This is 15 grams. Is it the low sugar count? Is it the packaging? You can't say everything, but if there was one thing to - I can, and I will, no. No, but if there's one thing that you as, you know, a focus group of one or two or three here, what would motivate you to be interested in pick this up? So for me, I eat protein bars when I want a candy bar, but I don't want to eat a candy bar. Really, the only ones that I buy are the mezcla bars. And I specifically buy the green tea. Those are good. They're so good. They taste delicious. They're low sugar. I don't really even care that much about how much protein.

21:42And I also really care about whether it's going to ruin my stomach because sometimes you get a gut bomb and who wants that?

21:49Mike Schneider:I just want to point out the mezcla bars. That's a really good call, Melissa, because I think there's a lot of people who want a candy bar, but want a protein bar, want something in between. And mezcla is a really good sort of in between there. It's not very heavy at all. You could crunch on that thing and be done with it without much effort. A protein bar, sometimes you got to chew on that thing for a while before you finish it. Mosh bars also come to mind for that. You like those too? I do, but I think the mezcla bars are closer to a candy bar. For me, if the packaging is interesting, I want to at least check it out.

22:24Certainly I'm looking for 15 to 20 grams of protein in a protein bar because you asked about protein bars. I don't really use them as a candy replacement. Like if I want candy, I just go for it, which is a problem for me. but if I pick it up and it has interesting flavor, interesting packaging, the right amount of protein, and as you said, Ray, it can't have too much sugar, but I just don't want a lot of crazy alternative sweeteners either. So I'm looking for clean ingredients.