Why Discipline Is Everything For Something & Nothing

0:10Hello friends, I'm Ray Lateef and you're tuned into Taste Radio the leading podcast for entrepreneurs makers, and innovators in the food and beverage industry. Every founder dreams of breaking the rules. Few do it with such quiet confidence. In this episode, Oliver Dixon, the co-founder of Something and Nothing, tells the story of how a creative experiment in a London bar became a category-disrupting soda brand, now expanding rapidly across the U.S. Ali explains how design sensibility and refusal to compromise on flavor helps shape a beverage that feels both modern and timeless. Something Nothing's complex balanced drinks are inspired by travel and crafted with natural juices, not sweeteners.

1:04The brand's growth has been driven by thoughtful distribution in cafes, hotels, and cultural spaces. Earlier this year, Something and Nothing entered 260 Whole Foods stores in the U.S. From surviving early missteps, like an ambitious but ill-fated alcohol launch, to building credibility through selective distribution and cultural partnerships, Oli shares how discipline, taste, and integrity can scale just as powerfully as hype.

1:37Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Olly Dixon, who is the founder and CEO of Something and Nothing. Olly, it's great to see you. Thanks, Ray. That's a very sunny introduction. I like it. You brought the sun. We're here in London. There were gray skies this morning, and then all of a sudden, it's a bright, beautiful day here. So I think it was you who has made my disposition so sunny. So thank you. Anytime. Yeah. Ollie with a Y. I think in past correspondence with you, I think I used the IE. I apologize for ever doing that. I take your apology.

2:18That's kind. Yeah, I just like things neat and tidy. Too many letters, so I used the Y. And also graphically, it looks quite interesting. It does. That's your background, right? Yeah. Yeah, culture, design, branding, music, hospitality, all kind of wrapped together. It's no secret that I'm a huge admirer of yours and the brand in particular, I think. This is a brand that is rare. And I say rare in that when I come across someone who is familiar with it, or when I introduce something and nothing to someone for the first time, they are exceptionally happy they love it the big smile comes up on their face i've said have you tried this brand something nothing oh love that brand i give some of your cucumber soda which we have in front of us to someone who's never tried a cucumber soda and they are like i didn't know such a thing could exist and how many calories in it how much sugar is in it and i say it's uh well how many calories are in this soda not very many yeah yeah it's sort of mid calorie soda for all of them.

3:26We've tried to keep the calories low and the taste as high as it can be. And the sugar count is pretty low as well. Yeah. And the sugar is all from natural juices and extracts. We don't add any sugar or sweetness. It's essentially grape juice, which produces the sugar level, but also that balance of flavor. No stevia, no aerosol, no monk fruit. Nah, that tastes kind of weird. I think the aftertaste of all of those is grim. And, you know, it kind of comes from hospitality background of great cocktails are made with something a bit sweet and something a bit acidic. And that's the grape juice and lemon juice that kind of sits in the center of the drink and creates that balance to allow the lead flavors to kind of, you know, take off.

4:14And that's the something part of something and nothing. And the nothing part, I would think, is no artificial colors, flavors, no probiotics, no prebiotics. No, no function in our drinks. Yeah, that wasn't really the nothing when we started. But yeah, you can interpret the name however, however you wish. Well, I should probably ask that as a good interviewer would ask you, Ollie, where did the name come from? well that's a good question the name kind of comes from a few different inspiration points but certainly when we were developing the brand right at the beginning it was quite important for me to do something weird because I think weird and unusual tends to connect with people I didn't want to give it one name or you know a one word name and there was a few points but one is Seinfeld So there's a scene where George and Jerry are sat in their cafe, coffee shop always.

5:13And they're talking about their TV show that they want to sell into NBC. And they go on this riff about actually seltzer and salsa. And then George is like, oh, this should be the show. Like everyone's doing something. Why don't we do nothing? And just those two words together really connected. And I thought, that's actually quite a decent name for a drink. And then there's other deeper things around the matrix and Jean-Baudrillard and reality and non-reality and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the simple thing of, you know, when you create a brand or a product, you think it's the most important thing in the world.

5:52But actually, it's just a soda. So, you know, people shouldn't think about it too hard. That's a fair point. It doesn't need to be precious. Some might call your brand precious because it is a premium soda. It isn't, I hate to even bring up some brand names, so I won't. But we had at lunch prior to hopping on the mics, we had your orange soda. And more specifically, it was a Mandarin orange soda. Orange and Mandarin, yeah. Yeah. And we compared it to some well-known brands and there's no comparison. It's an elevated, delicious soda that doesn't taste saccharine, that doesn't have a cloying aspect to it.

6:35that doesn't feel like you're drinking something unhealthy for you. Isn't that what everyone wants? I hope so. But no, really, I think we should really push back. And, you know, as someone who's supposed to be a bit more objective than I am right now, but we have to push back. We have to push back on the things that don't taste good, that may have tasted good at one point, that have devolved into something else, that are bad for you, that have a lot of calories and a lot of sugar. And we know that both things are not good for you. We have to push back and we have to push back with our wallets.

7:11And I want to get into price point, affordability, accessibility, you know, in a little bit. But that's, I think, one of the reasons I respect your brand so much. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to taste great and be reasonable when it comes to calories and sugar. I think it's also, yeah, I developed this brand with my partner Rupert because I wanted to create a really good drink for me and my friends. It was as simple as that, at that kind of zenith. We didn't have ambitions to, you know, particularly sell beyond our network of friends and restaurants and bars that we were connected to.

7:52Or certainly like the US wasn't on our radar. are. We just wanted to create a really good tasting drink, you know, an adult soft drink. The whole thing comes from me. I started a pub with some friends called The Gun in Hackney and basically got absolutely boozed for eight months and then wanted to stop drinking, but still wanted to be in a fun place with, you know, good music, DJs, cocktails, and didn't want to drink sparkling water. And, you know, I took a look at soft drinks and we're Like, hang on, why is everything full of sugar, full of sweeteners? The flavors haven't evolved for decades.

8:31And like you say, even things that you remember liking and now, you know, the margins have been trimmed and there's no longer juice. It's, you know, four different types of sugar or whatever it is. And yeah, why, why, you know, if you're a grown up, why should you stop drinking soft drinks? And really looked at the food space as well. And, you know, people are pretty adventurous when it comes to ingredients and flavors in that space. But why hasn't that been, why hasn't that happened in soft drinks? You know, it's a brand and a product built from love first and wanting to create something better.

9:08And it is better. And better has been a big part of the current, the modern food and beverage industry. Everything is intended to be better tasting or better for you or better of both. And in the soft drink space, in the soda space, soda is actually, you can say soda nowadays and not be a four-letter word, not be something that has a negative connotation. You think about brands like Olipop or Poppy, particularly in the United States. And, you know, Poppy famously acquired earlier this year for a billion, six, five dollars. And everyone now is jumping into the pool and thinking that they can follow their lead and create something or market something to consumers that they're going to love.

9:53But in a lot of ways, taste has fallen by the wayside. Taste is something that I think a lot of founders and just in big companies assume that people will accept a lesser taste in favor of lower calories and lower sugar. But that wasn't at all something that was part of your purview or something that you do. You have adventurous flavors. You have a cucumber soda, you have a mandarin orange, you have a ginger and lime. I recently tried a lemon iced tea, which I thought was phenomenal. How did you go about choosing these flavors and why is it such a core emphasis of what you do? We talk about our premium sodas being inspired by travel, which is kind of a neat way to describe it.

10:40But it's true in that it's kind of the essence of travel. So those experiences and that sort of mindset of curiosity that you have when you're somewhere new and whether that's been, for example, the mango and Thai basil that we just released is actually based on a salad that I tried. that a friend of mine who's English and Thai had this combination of, you know, really fresh slices of mango and this Thai basil, which has this herbaceous and aniseed flavor. I didn't think, it wasn't like, oh, I must make this into a drink. To be honest, I can't even recall if something or nothing existed then, but it sort of stayed in the back of my head.

11:20And when we were, when I was looking at new ideas for flavors, I tend to, you know, list different ideas. And that was just one that suddenly hit quite big and actually took us quite a few months to be brave enough to, you know, kind of kept on coming back and going, well, this tastes insane. The aniseed is just a very unique flavour. I don't think it particularly exists in the drink space with the sweetness of the mango. So, you know, that travel inspired in a loose sense in that it was from a dish created by a great chef. And then something like the hibiscus and rose was actually from a trip to Sri Lanka, which I took with my wife and my son when he was pretty young.

12:03And there was this hibiscus and rose drink there, which we'd just launched the cucumber at that stage. It was the only drink we had. I wasn't like really looking for other flavors, but sometimes you try something and it just, you know, your brain kind of goes off and it was delicious, but it was very, very sweet. And, you know, you felt your teeth falling out as you were drinking. There was something about that hibiscus flavor that I thought was really interesting. So, you know, that went on the list. And then we tried that. I mean, there's plenty that haven't made it out. Cilantro doesn't taste great in a drink, it turns out.

12:36But there's a few other things that we've tried. The other bit is finding the right quality of natural ingredients. So we tend to combine the juice with the natural flavoring, which all comes from the named fruit or botanical. and just that combination works really well. So there's certain flavors like I can't, I really like to make a watermelon drink, but so far I haven't found a good enough quality watermelon juice out there. It all sort of has that, you know, sweet taste like candy essentially. But once I find it, then we'll do one. Have you ever tried to reach out to the makers of Sour Patch Kids because they make a damn fine watermelon gummy?

13:18I just put my teeth on edge thinking about that. Isn't it awful? I mean, it doesn't taste anything like, watermelon to be fair i'll have a sour patch kid every so often so yeah it's not complete hate but you know what i'm saying yeah we talked about or i mentioned accessibility and most people at least in the u.s are i would speak for uk consumers but i'm not 100 sure most consumers are familiar with cola flavor with lemon and lime with a grape flavor with root beer what have you is there a point of reference beyond just soda that you try to incorporate into your marketing and awareness strategy where you tell people who might want, say, a cola on one day and then come across your cucumber soda.

14:03I mean, how do you align their thirst for refreshment or thirst for flavor when they're not necessarily familiar with or looking for a cucumber soda per se? Yeah, I think the leap probably from wanting a Coke to drinking one of our cucumber drinks is probably quite a big bridge. It's an interesting question. I think mainly we've done that via distribution in the right places, which again comes back to the brand. I mean, right at the beginning, creating the brand, we didn't look at soft drinks to inspire the design. We looked at art and fashion and health and wellness, really, because kind of coming back to that idea of creating something different that stands out.

14:48I think if you're going to create a brand And you don't look for inspiration in that segment. You look elsewhere to create something that's interesting. So that look and then the quality of the liquid and the taste, kind of very early on, you then get picked up by the right cafes, the right restaurants, the right hotels, the right bodegas. And then the right consumer is seeing it in those spaces. They trust that place. So then they pick up the product because it looks interesting. do the classic turn of the can to see the lower calories the natural ingredients take a risk on buying it two dollar three dollar risk not that big a risk and then the quality of the liquid's really strong and that's really we call it our neighborhood strategy where we try and connect get us in to the right places in those neighborhoods where we know our consumer works and lives, connect with events, whether it's run clubs or small events around by interesting people related to culture quite often, be in the right offices, the right studios.

15:57And then you kind of build up that footprint and that kind of builds up your credibility and your brand awareness. And those consumers are then usually the types of consumers who tell their friends about it, take it to an event, take it to a party, buy it online. And then the path we're on at the moment, we've just launched in 260 Whole Foods around the US. So that is like the next step up within the neighborhood. So you might be buying it with your salad at lunch, and then you're going to Whole Foods to buy a few to take home or whatever that might be. So really at this stage distribution is our best form of marketing and it's essentially worked in all the markets that we're in which is a good thing because we don't have money to do a Super Bowl ad.

16:46It is a good thing because typically it doesn't work as well for some brands when you just expect that the product or brand is going to sell itself off the shelf in the case of something and I think it sounds like it's working because you've done the legwork, you've done the research, you already know where this brand has permission to go. You've picked your spots. So I understand when you say distribution is their best form of marketing, because you've already did all the research ahead of time on what consumers should be expecting when they encounter this soda. And maybe they've already seen it somewhere else and now are happy to see it at a Whole Foods.

17:27Typically, at least the rule of thumb that I've heard in the beverage industry is the hard work comes after the brand gets on the shelf. So you've got to give people a reason to buy it or pick it up. And, you know, you're up against every other beverage brand that's in that store or Whole Foods. And there might be, I don't know, a hundred other brands. And of course, you know, you're not competing against a coffee or milk or anything else like that. But refreshment is refreshment. And you've got to give people a reason. But going back to the inspiration behind the brand, you knew you didn't want to fall in the footsteps of some of the new wave sodas or the new better for you sodas.

18:09Was it mostly because the education hurdle was too high or was it just a personal decision? Did you feel like the brand needed to just speak on its own as clearly as possible without that education? I think it was a combination of factors. Right back at the beginning, we looked at adding CBD as an ingredient and we did a roundtable with a load of experts and they were saying, for it to really work, you're going to have to get the consumer to drink five cans at this kind of incremental time between them. And it just, for us, didn't work. You know, really successful products and brands create an emotive connection with their consumer.

18:50There's like a, you know, they have a sort of visceral reaction to it in some way. And I think doing something that we didn't feel 100 % authentic about, or that we could talk about and say, oh, yeah, you know, this does this or does that just didn't feel right. So, yeah, we've toyed with it. But we've decided that taste and flavor is essentially the most important thing. And, you know, I would say even the very successful gut health sodas really it's taste and flavor that people are going for and it's a you know it's a better for you soda option people love soda particularly in the u.s and they want to you know the permission to drink it and it's been very successful for poppy and olipop to use the pre and probiotic as the sort of shortcut for this being a healthier soda option and for us it just doesn't sit with our brand in that way it's you know we're function free it's taste and flavor and using really good quality ingredients and i would say you know at this stage that certainly our consumers probably older than most soda brands we're sort of you know late 20s through to mid 50s or whatever is our kind of sweet spot and that's probably a poor choice to turn because i think it's also people who don't like very sweet drinks, want still that refreshment and that satiation of flavor.

20:18You know, cracking a can always feels good. But, you know, they want something less sweet, probably a bit more elevated, a bit more refined, say, but also like an accessible price point so you can buy on the shelves of a supermarket. Yeah. And these consumers know what they don't want. And yeah, they don't want the high calories, the high sugar. But I think they also don't want a kid's drink. and something or nothing is not a kid's drink. And you give us an age range of sort of mid-20s to late 50s. But nowadays, with so many different options, I think even kids, you know, people that are younger than their mid-20s would be interested in a brand like yours.

20:59And I think you've taken a stand in who you are and what you're not with your most recent marketing campaign, which is called Not Pop. And you have some traditional advertising in Chicago. Chicago, bus billboards, what do they call those? Bus shelter, outdoor home advertising. Yeah. And it's brilliant. It looks really great. But what is the message you really want to get across? I mean, what's the one thing that you want people to know about something and nothing with that tagline, not pop? I mean, it's very heavily borrowed from an old Apple ad that they ran in 98, whenever it was, when they were launching their brightly colored desktop computers.

21:40and it said, sorry, not available in beige or whatever the tagline is, I forget. Yeah, I remember that, for sure. Sorry, not beige, but which was kind of pushing it against the PCs at that stage. Everything was beige, everything looked the same. And to a degree, yeah, we're kind of looking at the modern soda category going, everything's brightly colored, everything's nostalgic, everything's, you know, sweetener based and everything is making a claim of some sort. And, you know, that's not us. We're sitting in a different space. Sounds a bit kind of snobby, but it's true. We're elevated, good quality ingredients.

22:18We're not pop. Yeah. It's the kind of bottom line of that. Well, it just goes to show how far this segment has come that are better for you soda. Whereas the poppies and ollie pops of the world would say, hey, don't drink Coke or Pepsi. Ironically, Pepsi, right? And now, you know, you're giving people a reason to consider another option that's also better for you with differentiated flavors and even somehow probably the same calorie count and sugar count, but just different ingredient lists. I mean, I love the idea of expanding that campaign elsewhere. But why start in Chicago? Why was that the right region or city to start with?

23:00I mean, there's a sort of boring strategic answer in that we'd launched in Whole Foods there and it was a good sort of place to test running a campaign. So there's that element. And then there was this additional part that obviously pop is in the vernacular of the Midwest. That's how people describe soda, which to be perfectly honest, we didn't realize that at first. And it added a kind of additional layer. Perils of operating in the U.S. market as a U.K.-based brand. But it was a good addition. I don't think we're saying, oh, don't drink the other brands. We're just positioning ourselves as different.

23:37The ad is design-wise very clean. The can sits in the middle. It's kind of iconic in its design sense. and we're a product that can be used in a traditional soda occasion. But we're also, as we know from our research, from our subscribers and people we talk to, we're being used a lot as an alcohol replacement, whether that's with dinner instead of wine or in the evening instead of that beer where you would have it to relax and also in bars now quite often. I think we're slightly different in that sense. I think a lot of pop or soda brands are very focused on retail. yes retail is you know massively growing channel for us but we do really well in that kind of food to go on trade space as well because of the elevated nature of the look of the can the kind of experience of the drink that strategy works on lots of different levels as i said it's our marketing strategy and interestingly it's what drives our e-commerce so our amazon in the us is growing like 200 % year on year.

24:45And the majority of those customers are people who've tried it in their local cafe, bar, hotel. You know, we're not filling the funnel through advertising. We're filling the funnel through people trying it in their local neighborhood and then wanting it at home. So it's, you know, it's quite a vital component of the business model. Yeah. You can't necessarily go buy something and nothing at any grocery store. I mean, I hope you get there, but it makes a lot of sense that people are experiencing the brand at a local restaurant or coffee shop and then wanting, you know, a 12 pack at home, or I don't know what your multi-pack size is.

25:25Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 12 pack of each flavor. And then we're actually just launched what we're calling our travel case because we're really leaning into our escape the everyday sort of marketing platform. and the case comes with a little handle so you can walk around like a little suitcase. But yeah, we just launched that on our own e-commerce site and then it'll be on Amazon in the next couple of weeks and there'll be another one coming up. We saw pretty clearly that other brands, their best-selling products were the multipacks. Well, if anyone from Costco is listening, give Ali a call immediately because I think you got a winner there.

26:02You know, Ali, you come across as a very laid back, easygoing guy. It's easy to speak with you, talk with you. But I get the sense that your business strategy is very, very intentional and well-conceived. I might be wrong, but I think everything you do has a reason, as opposed to, you know, taking something, throwing it against the wall and saying, hopefully it'll stick. Am I right in thinking that? Yeah, I would say that's true, probably apart from at the very beginning. Yeah, well, at the very beginning, nobody knows what you're doing. A few years in, I hope you know a little bit about what you're doing.

26:36Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a plan. When things don't go according to plan, when you realize something was a mistake, how quickly do you realize it and how quickly do you try to fix that mistake? It's a good question because, you know, you can have a plan, but obviously things are evolving constantly and you're learning more about your consumer. You're learning more about the market. you know five years ago we weren't in the US now the US is 65 % of our business so we're learning a hell of a lot about that market we're learning a lot about consumers we're learning about our position within the category and you know everything's sort of you know working really well from that initial idea you know when I'm over in the bar essentially it's the same essence but it's got a lot more strategy behind it i guess the one mistake major mistake that we've made in that time lots of small ones but we did launch an alcohol range we did a spritz range did i remember this i don't think so well yeah probably not um i wish i didn't yeah i get the sense you don't even want to bring it up but well the products were really good obviously Yeah, we did a Japanese sake and yuzu, a French sauvage en blanc and cucumber and a Provencal rosé and the hibiscus and rose, which if you want to make those drinks with that, then they're very delicious.

28:00the sort of four percent RTD category there was the explosion of hard seltzer obviously in the US it sort of came over to the UK and we were like right we'll be in a similar way we are with soda we'll be the antidote to this we'll create something more elevated better ingredients tastes really good but also the alcohol is at the measure that you would get in a bar so you're not like doing a gin and tonic that's seven percent because that tastes weird you're doing a spritz we're probably a bit early we probably didn't have the team in place the u.s is incredibly complex with alcohol and you know kind of did okay the drinks were won like awards they tasted very good but it was a mistake in terms of the size of our team the resources we had available the production was really complicated because we were yeah it took a very long time to the sake actually came from a french sake producer who was producing in france but his sake was too expensive but he had a connection with another guy who was like based in malaysia who knew these guys in japan who were very protective over their sake and weren't that keen on us mixing it but because of all the connections they kind of allowed it so yeah this you get the IBCs over from Japan take them to the yeah it was just really complicated yeah sounds like it yeah that plus it didn't sell very well we were like right let's just stick to the soda and really ironically you know going back to the bar the gun the idea and going back to the something and nothing actually the idea was that this would be a great standalone drink you could have in a convivial front space but it would also make a great mixer which is kind of we've got the scales and those kind of stuff but that alcohol occasion for us actually now isn't as a mixer it's as a alcohol alternative and actually that's a much bigger richer area for us to move into people do use it as a mixer makes a great mixer but you know it's not a great size can for a bar and at the moment it's not something that we're particularly focused on but yeah that was a big mistake how quickly did we move on it probably not quickly enough i can still remember like the going into the first production going actually is this a good idea have we really worked out our route to market we kind of have but not really and i think we were taken up in the excitement of hard seltzer and it sort of seemed like oh this you know just jump on this bandwagon because it's gonna fly for everyone in the uk just for u.s listeners there's literally no hard seltzers anymore like white claw is the only one that's still sort of hanging on and i imagine it's a very very very tiny part of their business so it didn't work in the uk and for us yeah launching an alcohol brand in the u.s was incredibly expensive.

31:02I appreciate you sharing that. It's a good story about opportunity versus reality, I think. And when founders get into trouble, I think is when they didn't fully understand the opportunity, the opportunity not only to succeed, but perhaps the opportunity for this to fail. You always see the positive side. You always see the upside, but you could also look at it as, Have we thought this through enough? If it does succeed, if it does, you know, get off the ground the way we thought it would, do we have enough in place to make sure that we're filling demand? On the flip side is, you know, what if this doesn't work at all and it costs us an arm and leg and we should have been, you know, focused on our soda instead?

31:46Certainly, you know, the U.S. market was a huge opportunity for the brand. And finding the right partners to help you launch and succeed there is critical. I come across some UK brands that say, I would love to be in the United States. But, you know, with tariffs and just, you know, the general difficulty of sending product overseas, you know, having a co-packer that you can work with, having boots on the ground, having someone there in the US to manage that market is, I would think, very, very critical for this brand for something and nothing. Yeah, the big change for us really with the US was finding a good co-packer.

32:22So we produce up in Vermont, very good water quality. They're great co-packers. the quality of the product is excellent. And I think, yeah, we kind of trust them to continue with us. There's a lot of scope for increasing production. They're kind of perfect, which now I've said there's probably be some huge explosion or something. But yeah, that is absolutely critical. Yeah. I mean, well, being in 260 Whole Foods stores, you would think, okay, forecasting demand, you can probably manage production and have enough to supply that demand. But I mean, what if Whole Foods says, hey, we want to take you completely national and then Target gives you a call.