When (And Why) New Is Better Than The Original

0:10Hello and thanks for tuning in to taste radio the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I'm Ray Lateef, the editor and producer of Taste Radio, and with my co-host for this episode, John Craven, Jackie Brugliera, and Mike Schneider. The 600, or is it 900? I always forget exactly what the weight of the elephant in the room is. But what is it? Is it 900, right? I think the gorilla's 800 pounds, that's for sure. 800-pound gorilla. Is it like a ton? No, that would be a 2 ,000 pound. I think the elephant's just in the room. No one weighs it. I don't think there's a 600 pound elephant.

0:47No, there definitely is not. But maybe we should be saying a ton elephant nowadays. I think Jackie's on the right track there. Anyway, the elephant in the room in a positive way, in a positive setting is Elk Expo West. You know, Expo West is right around the corner. Can't wait. Yeah, Craven, you were just in Anaheim. So you were having like PTSD there just waiting. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me. You're welcome. Yeah. Love being in Anaheim. You were there for? Disneyland. Disneyland. Come on. You had fun. Yeah, I saw you doing like a cocktail tour. They have a lot of cocktails there now.

1:24I will crap on Disneyland and Disney World all day. And then I go there and it's like I invented it. You had fun. Come on. Yeah, it was fun. I mean, we went with one of our daughters who's 17, senior in high school. A lot better going with a child of that age than, I don't know, a kid in a stroller. Been there, done that. So, yeah, it was also kind of weird to like see places and be like, we know a happy hour here. Might be one here in, you know, a week or two. Did you see Kylo Ren? Did you go on the Rise of the Resistance? No. No? Child does not like Star Wars. Gotcha. But I did get like 25 miles of walking in.

2:02So I felt like it was a good warm up. Nice. I've never been to Disneyland. The Disneyland is the one in Anaheim. Disney World is the one in Orlando. Folks who don't already know that. Just some trivia to share with your family at Thanksgiving. Anyway, just to celebrate your return, Mr. Craven, I got your present. Oh, yay. Because I figure your car needs to be good smelling at all times. I mean, I'm working on that every day. Are you a new car smell kind of guy? No. I didn't think so. What do you like your car to smell like then? Yeah, of course. I really don't drive a lot at the end of the day because I work like, you know, or live a mile from our office here.

2:46So I think I'm like two and a half years in on my car and I just hit 10 ,000 miles. Nice. Yeah. Well, anyway, I got you an air freshener. This is from the decent folks at Joyride. Oh, lovely. Yeah, Joyride is the maker of Better For You candy, low sugar, low carb, low cal. And they sent this air freshener, which I thought would be perfect for your vehicle. It looks perfect. I might put this in my child's car. Does it smell like bacon? It looks a bit like bacon. We should open it up. I believe it smells like candy. I don't know. We might have like a certain someone upstairs on the main level who comes down here and freaks out with the scent of that.

3:21But who's that? Call him John McKenna. Okay. Yeah. At least it's better than, what is it like the one everyone has? Black ice. That's like the car freshener smell. It's like the. Jackie up on the air freshener. She lives in California. That's, you know, got a lot of time on the freeway. As long as it's not smeared off ice. Like that would not be a good car. Crack a cold smeared off ice. Jackie at her Mushroom Con talking about air freshener scents. You got to picture it. I could give a whole talk on that. You create a new club. No one's high there. No one's high. Not a single person. Well, I bring up Joyride because this brand, a maker of Uncommon Candy, recently introduced a new line of sour strips.

4:08I love sour strips. Me too. That might be my favorite candy More than musterine strips? Is it your favorite strip? Boy, oh boy Candy strip I was very clear about that Candy strip Anyway, these are According to Joyride The market's first Low sugar sour strips They come in four flavors Ready for this? Green apple Strawberry Pink lemonade And everyone's favorite Blue raspberry Oh, blue Oh, no. Did you try the blue raspberry? No. Blue damn raspberry. Maybe this is what changes your mind. All right. Hold on now. What's the blue? Okay, hold on. I'm not going to open it. I just want to inspect. Listeners, this always happens.

4:51I just want to inspect the ingredients. John reaches across the table and, like, grabs all my samples and then eats them. It happened before the show. Yes. It happened before the show. He had this big moment where he was going to reveal the new Ted Lasso Milano cookie. You just did. All right. Here. All right, John now has the pack of blue raspberry strips. And while he's... Stealing his thunder. Yes, while he's talking about this. Okay, I don't see any like red and blue dyes. So I'll give this a try. Let's be clear. These are crafted with only four grams of sugar. I say crafted because that's what it says in the press release.

5:26Gut-friendly, prebiotic fiber, and no synthetic dyes. It's a plant-based candy. I thought most candies are plant-based. I guess most are chemical-based, really. I mean, you could have meat snack. uh me hold on hold on do you have any hand sanitizer before you dip i'm not i'm not i'm just gonna dump it on the table don't dump it on the oh my god i'm just gonna take a i'm gonna no no just take a bite off and that's around here you go these actually look more uh they look crepey they look like purple yeah it looks like a tongue it looks like a tongue all right blue raspberry makes sense for candy though people expect that yeah no i mean i think it's a classic candy flavor to get yeah they gotta have it i'm gonna find you something blue that you like i I know Elapi has that blue cashew butter.

6:08We got to get them. Oh, yeah. I mean, we talked. Spirulina or like, what is it? What is the blue that like natural source? Yeah, that stuff's great. The natural blue coloring comes from things like spirulina. Yes. So when you see ready to drink smoothies or protein smoothies, just like Remedy Organics. Remedy Organics has a protein skew that is made with spirulina and blue colors. Super blue. Right. Super tasty. So I'm going to give this a whirl. Now, I will admit, I already dipped into these. I dipped into the sour strawberry strips that Jory put out, and they are amazing. Very addictive. This is the blue raspberry one.

6:46What does it taste like? So damn good. Yeah? Oh, you're converted. Oh, these are awesome. What is this? They're so good because they taste exactly like what you would expect them to taste like. They taste like what they're supposed to taste like. Right. But the chewiness, the sourness, the sweetness, the texture and how they break apart is exactly what you have come to expect growing up and eating this kind of stuff. These are awesome. These are holy grail, in my opinion. These are holy grail sour strips because this is exactly what people want. They want less sugar. They don't want the synthetic dyes.

7:23They want it to be low calorie and they want it to taste amazing. And Joyride knocked it out of the freaking park. Yeah, I wasn't expecting. I was expecting something on that checklist, which was the checklist. Ray Lateef's Sour Strip Checklist. It is now Ray's favorite strip. It is my favorite. I already put this on Instagram. I already said it's my favorite strip. It's true. Joyride also partnered. The Listerine people are crying somewhere right now. Joyride partnered with YouTube sensation Ryan Trahan. I'm not familiar with Ryan, but apparently he is a YouTube sensation. As I mentioned, he has 14.6 million subscribers.

8:01And he is helping to promote this product as Joyride's first chief creative officer. So very cool stuff. Well done, Joyride. It's funny that you have a sour candy because I also have a sour candy called Fruit Riot. And this is sour mango, but it's actually frozen. So I found candy in the frozen aisle, which I was not expecting at all. But super bright packaging really jumped off the shelf for me. And it's super simple. It's just mango, sour coating. And that's pretty much it. Where did you find that? In sprouts. In sprouts. Okay. Sour coating? Yeah. So the sour coating is lemon juice and sugar and cornstarch.

8:50So really simple. And it's just kind of like frozen mango bites. it is a little sour but it's like tastes all natural to me what's it sweetened with just sugar fruit okay and yeah fruit mango yeah the um the first sweetener listed on these joyride strips is allulose which a lot of candy brands are using let's go stevia in there too like the last ingredient there's sugar there is stevia all stevia all uh i don't care i like it Yeah, it's amazing. I think it's really good. It is really good. But, you know, Better For You Candy. I mean, talk about a category or at least a segment of a category on the rise.

9:34People are coming out of the woodwork with Better For You Candy. There's some really great stuff out there. Shoutouts to Better Sours. Shoutouts to Behave. So many good, just gummy, sour gummies right now. Apparently, Smart Sweets is launching a bunch of new products and new innovation. Another good shout. Yeah. They're the OG, right? I got to give props to Tyler Merrick for his pivot from the old days of Project 7, gums, bottled water, over to Joyride and candy. I mean, it just seems like such an evolution and, you know, great tasting products, fun brand. Great to see someone who keeps going until they get it right.

10:16Yeah, well, I think Tyler completely did the right thing because Project 7 felt very mature and old, frankly. And Joyride feels very young, fresh, and fun. Definitely. You know what I think of when I think of young, fresh, and fun? Earl Grey tea. Weird. Do you drink Earl Grey tea? That's Mike's morning beverage every morning, right? The look he just gave me. yeah i make myself an earl gray tea every morning out of the lammer zilka machine okay along with your fiber supplement a brand we don't often talk about on taste radio is often ever ever is pepperidge farm but i saw that pepperidge farm launched a new flavor for its milano cookie line If you recall, the Milano cookies are two sort of butter cookies and in the middle is some chocolate cream.

11:15This is like explaining what an Oreo is. Not everyone knows what a Milano cookie is. No, no, it's iconic. It's an iconic cookie. Is it? Okay. Yeah. But, you know, it was kind of funny to hear you try to explain it, but anyway. So they have a new London fog flavor, which is described as a taste of Earl Grey tea with vanilla. And so they've partnered up with your favorite owner and mine from Ted Lasso, Hannah Waddingham, who plays the role of Rebecca, Rebecca on Ted Lasso. And she is going to be promoting these or has been promoting these since last week. She talks about how my pals at Pepperidge Farm and I are inviting everyone to hold their baked goods to a higher standard and to have a little taste.

11:59She did not write that. She did not write that. Don't figure. She did not say that. I always love when I see quotes from celebrities and even some founders and you see it in a press release and you're like, I know 100 % that they did not write that or say that. So why put that in there? It's not very authentic. I mean, she's fictional. So she's a real person. I know, but the character that's doing the promotion. Sorry. Can we offer some tasting notes here? You already had one. I'm just going to pretend I didn't for a second.

12:32I think this is a good idea. Eat your vegetables. Go to your room. I love the fact that they partnered with Rebecca from Ted Lasso. But there's no mention of Ted Lasso on the package. There's no mention of it from the press release. I feel like they might have had a stronger push for this product. That would cost more dinero. Well, what they should have done, of course, with this is not only partner with the actual Ted Lasso brand. And they should have partnered with our friends at Cognizant because what people want with their morning cookies is brain boosting ingredients. They want cognitive health.

13:10Brain function. To be sharp throughout the day. That's the thing. And Cognizant gives you that. They are the presenting sponsor for this episode of Taste Radio. Cognizant is a clinically tested nootropic ingredient that delivers a patented form of citicoline to supply your brain. and those of your consumers with the energy it needs to stay sharp. Learn more at cognizant.com. That's C-O-G-N-I-Z-I-N.com. Do you think they'd make you a special taste radio Cognizant strip? No, but what I need is a Cognizant hoodie. This is week two of my hoodie wearing during banter. And this is my old school Revive Kombucha hoodie, which I love.

13:52This is my most comfortable one. It fits really well. Can you try to revive it? Oh, goodness gracious. Let's just move on here. Ruby. Ruby, the brand of hibiscus-based beverages or hibiscus-based sparkling waters under one-day rebrand. Let's call it a refresh. I'm sorry, yes. A refresh. Package refresh, that is. It looks much more straightforward in terms of label hierarchy. I think they dispensed with the, I guess, wildness of the label design and went for a much more straightforward, top-down kind of approach, where the can at the top lists the flavor. You have a image of the flavor as the next thing you see, the USC organic seal.

14:34Enhanced hydration is their new tagline, may have been their tagline in the past, but now it's very front and center. And then their brand logo underneath. So I think this is a much cleaner looking package. Yeah, no, I give Noah launched like a lot of uh was the founder of ruby yes a lot of credit for the evolution here rather quick one in just a few years but yeah it looks it's got kind of like a lighter feel to it the old one kind of looked like a heavier juice product and this you know it's sparkling water with hibiscus i like this a lot looks good yeah that makes a lot of sense if they're really trying to hone in on hydration too you know hydration you think of like water something that's light and refreshing.

15:19Definitely. Yeah. I always thought of Ruby as being a sparkling water brand, but I also see or saw the old package and thought that it was more of a soda. This is very clearly, especially, you know, the color scheme that they use where the top of the can is silver. There's no paint on it. And then the bottom of the can is the actual. Something super interesting is happening on this can that no one's pointed out yet. hibiscus is way backed off. Yeah, you're right about that. That's a good point. It's almost not even present on the front of the can. It's this sparkling water with hibiscus, but underneath the logo in very small font.

15:58Right, but it's hibiscus in very small font. The orange is huge. The grape is huge. Those look great, by the way. It's just really backed off on that ingredient that was considered trendy-ish. All right, Mike, so you can put on your marketing hat because you took it off earlier. I did? Yeah, put your marketing hat on here. Your numpty cap. Your numpty cap. given that the brand was so deeply associated with hibiscus. I mean, it feels like it's going to be pretty hard to de-lace, disassociate with hibiscus. Well, if they were Coca-Cola and they were trying to disassociate themselves from cola, it would be impossible, obviously.

16:35But they're called Ruby, which is red. So yes, they're always calling to something being red about the brand. So disassociating themselves, I think they're doing it right here. They're saying the hero here isn't hibiscus, it's grape and it's blood orange on those cans. Yeah. They're going broader, which I think is an easier transition rather than going from hydration and then focusing on their core ingredient of hibiscus. So going from hibiscus then to hydration, it's just easier to communicate to a wider audience and to their consumers. Agreed. Well, in any case, it is a good looking package.

17:13And I feel like Ruby, which was already on a good path, is on an even better one. So well done. It feels a bit like, you know, that successful playbook that, I don't know, maybe Bi tried. They were all in on the coffee fruit. And then they're like, oh, this stuff just tastes great. It's water. It has low calories. We just totally back off on the whole coffee fruit idea. And it's an ingredient, just like hibiscus. There you go. Another brand that has undergone a bit of a transition is Zesty Z. Zesty Z. a maker or past maker of za 'atar and also popcorn, has gone all in on pita chips. Perfect pita chips.

17:54Yeah. We covered this transition in a recent article on Nosh penned by Monica Watros. And I tried these a year and a half ago. I tried these a year and a half ago at the Winter Fancy Food Show in 2023, but I haven't tried them since, so I'm excited to. But what happened to the hand sanitizer? We're all out. I also, I think we already ate the, we just have like the sea salt variety. They have like a Parmesan. When you say we ate them, who's we? People who were in the office yesterday. As in you. No, there were a lot of people here. I don't think I saw you, which is fine. But a singer. Yeah, singer.

18:35Probably prepping for today. The Z is for zing. But anyway, no, we had two bags of these, the Parmesan one and this one. and everyone kind of devoured the parmesan flavor. It's quite tasty. But these are also, for sea salt, like pita chip, super tasty. I would dip those in shakshuka. I mean, those are great. It's the perfect crisp. It's the perfect flavor. It's not too salty, but there's definitely a bit of salt there. What do you think? So we had Alexander Herrick, who's the co-founder and CEO of Zesty Z. One of the chillest dudes. In a recent episode of Elevator Talk. that is actually was published this week.

19:13It was published on Wednesday. And he talked about how this move was something that was elicited by retailers' desire to have a better and more authentic pita chip as part of their stores in their aisles. And while popcorn is a very competitive and heavily saturated category, somehow pita chips, it seemed like there was a lot of white space and a lot of room for a product like this. And it is really delicious. It's also 25%, or the call it on the pack is 25 % less net carbs versus leading brands. But again, going back to this new category for Zestse Z, it goes to show the power of having that conversation with your retailers and listening to them about what they're looking for and just trying to deliver on that.

20:06It is sort of the classic, on top of what you just said, the classic move of, you know, trying to elevate something that's already out there that has a lot of demand that's, you know, maybe stagnant on a new, right? And that's pretty different than trying to mainstream products that are Zatar based, right? Right. So it is one of those things where you look at it and, you know, on the surface, I'm kind of like, all right, a pita chip. But, you know, first of all, they're super tasty. Branding's great. And, you know, when you think about the category, it's like there's Stacy's pita chips owned by a big company.

20:44Lots of random sort of, I don't know, private label store brand stuff. And then fresh. Yeah. And this is sort of a, you know, why not breathe a little excitement into the category? I think the most daring thing about this is to put the word perfect on the front of the bag, because if you put that there, it has to be. Otherwise, you're just like, oh, world's greatest cup of coffee. You go back to Elf, you know? Well done. Mike was about to lose it. Mike really doesn't like perfect as a word as we talked about. I don't. We talked about this last week. I mean, he kind of liked perfect, but I like the word perfect if it's perfect.

21:25That was perfect, Mike. Thanks, Ray. Well done. Thank you, Ray. Yeah. We also talked about... I believed you, so I liked it. We also talked about pasta snacks. In last week's episode, we talked about a new brand called Snoods. I didn't really think pasta snacks were a thing. And then I recently saw a brand of pasta snacks. Another one. Penny Straws is the name of the brand. And I have two of their varieties in my hand. One is their marinara variety. These are the ones that are made with lentils. One is made with lemon garlic, and they are made with lentils and white beans. Yes, please. Three grams of protein per serving.

22:03And they look like penne. They're called penne straws. So do you want to try the marinara, Mike? Yes, please. I want the marinara. All right. John looks so disappointed. Well, I want to try. I mean, it's supposed to be penne. Put marinara on penne. I'm a lemon on it. Of course you do. The thing with snoods, though. Lemon garlic. Snooze was very much a pasta. Snooze is very much a pasta as a snack. I wonder if these are just snacks that come in the shape of a pasta. Yeah. Based on the ingredients, it sounds like it's more of like just the form looks like pasta. It is. Just the form. Yeah. Whereas the other one, Snooze, was more like you're eating raw pasta.

22:45Sort of. Yeah. These are more like a chip crunch for sure. But neither of these is going to hurt the other one. They both taste great. That lemon garlic one's really good. These are definitely quality frenemies. DNS? DNS. I think it's the DNS. DNS, for sure. Can they make one with meatballs in the bag? It's little meat bites. That's what we need. We need a taste radio sticker that says DNS on it. Officially DNS. And that's like the seal of approval. So we just give that out to products and brands that we really like at Expo. No, it's got to be like official. you know like one of those like olive oil certification stickers or uh you know like every state has like their wait a second olive oil that's the ninja we got the sticker ninja sorry bulsamic vinegar you know they have the like i don't know what is it like dop or something like that you know that says it's legit oh yeah from the italian government yeah yeah yeah or like the uh you know the state like uh the dns seal of approval every state has like their weights and measures board that puts little stickers on gas station pumps yes jackie i know we only have a couple weeks we gotta make this happen yeah can we make this happen we gotta do it every year you know we gotta do quality control well you just put dns 20 uh 24 yeah it says dns 2024 and we give everyone so we put this on every bag product beverage that we see this has to happen i mean we cannot go to expo west with i refuse to go to expo west without these just unsolicited you just walk up and they're like waiting to talk to you you're like well how would i know if it's dns i have to try it maybe you've tried it already oh that's possible for the interim while we're ordering stickers you should just sign it bring a sharpie no no no no some of our clever listeners are thinking they're going to make their own dns stickers no or they're thinking what the hell is wrong with these people more likely but i mean that's what they're always thinking yeah no i it has to happen jackie if you can make that happen then i'll work on it thank you very much you're welcome so what what's that i was just gonna get back to penne straws real quick reeling it back in here i do think this is a pretty clever marketing approach for you know i mean it's basically an extruded snack like you know we've had in many other what is an extruded snack john uh i mean i guess there's snacks made in an extruder what's another example picture like a big play-doh machine remember those where you put it through and it's got the, you know, there's a big, I don't know, probably ball of whatever this is, lentil and white bean thing and that's some hopper.

25:16Yes. And you push through a little thing and dried out and chopped and down that order. In any event, I think this is a pretty clever approach to that as opposed to making another puff or tortilla chip looking thing, which is sort of the more common approach to extruded snacks. So well done. Definitely. These are awesome. Pretty tasty. It tastes awesome, yeah. The one thing I'm not clear on is the brand called Vintage Italia, or is it called Penestros? Because Vintage Italia is at the very top of the bag. That is a little confusing. The brand is Vintage Italia. These are their Penestros. They need to work on the brand hierarchy.

25:52It is called Vintage. The name of the company, I guess, is called Vintage Italia. On the back, it says a company of snacksational brands. This is fine branding, though. The hierarchy is that the product's the hero. You can see the product picture everywhere. where it's easy to see this is marinara, that one's lemon garlic. This is fine. Vintage Italia can come out later. Just going back to Expo West for a second, because I've mentioned this the last couple of weeks, we are going to be doing some fun content and meetups with Expo West attendees who are Taste Radio VIPs. VIPs get access to our secret schedule at Expo West.

26:34They will get access to gear and swag that may not be available to others. So if you want to be part of this elite group of listeners, head to TASTERadio.com slash V-I-P and sign up. Very easy to sign up. Jackie takes up, what, 30 seconds? Less than that. I'd say five seconds. Five seconds. Okay. I like your Christopher walking cadence there. Right. Anywho, we love our listeners. We want to have a closer relationship with everyone who listens to Taste Radio and becoming part of the VIP community just allows you to do so. So once again, head to tasteradio.com slash VIP, sign up, and we'll see you at Expo.

27:20And we'll be sharing our details about our Expo schedule by email. Yes, top secret, top secret email. In the coming days. Oh boy. I'll give you a hint. It includes content that will be shared on Taste Radio and our affiliate platforms. I'll give you a hint. It's pretty easy to become a VIP. It's pretty easy to get the schedule. Well, what about the merch? We're giving out a thousand pound gold bars with Taste Radio logo on the top. Our legal team told me to tell you that that's not true. That's a lie. That's simply a complete and utter lie. Are we giving out socks? No, we're not giving out socks.

27:59super soft t-shirts john looked at me as if like are we really not giving out socks like that's like a tradition is that what you want we can make it no no actually no taste ready to sneakers that just got a weird turn for the show can we talk about your liquid death death dust oh yeah oh yeah hey good job right yeah you're gonna we're gonna all need death dust if this drags on longer but um yeah i mean this was announced geez what a week or two ago and liquid death is uh they make canned water with cool branding is that good is that what you would say right yes yes they recently have launched a powder product which is this uh death dust what they call electrolyte mix i think it's exclusively available on amazon for a little bit but uh yeah it's got mango chainsaw convicted melon and severed lime i'm a big fan of the convicted melon makes me take a mic so uh what it's good but no i mean i think this is like another category where i've never been convicted you've got a lot of like technical sort of branding right this is some kind of different looking stuff so what is the packaging made of is it just paper plastic metal is it made of plastic oh i don't know what do they make these out of probably some sort of plastic yeah there is some plastic in it so you can't actually recycle chocolate which is death to plastic is their tagline i know there's been controversy i mean it's a small small mountain i don't know this controversy as they say in the uk is uh no they don't yes they do they don't say controversy they say controversy they do but i'm a little worried about this i think i mean or maybe maybe this is good for them because like any pr is good pr and they liquid death is like the pr company i mean yeah everything they do is talked about we're talking about it right now.

29:54They have such brand loyalty and people that I think would overlook that because they just want to, you know, continue to buy their products. Now that they're already in the fold, I feel like they're in for the long haul. So, you know, maybe death the plastic is what got them into, you know, following the brand, but now they're just going all in. The one thing I would say about this that's different is, you know, you're drinking a liquid death, you're holding that can in your hand this year, like dumping it in a water bottle or maybe I guess a liquid death can best case for liquid death, but you're throwing this away.