Will MAHA Target Plastic? And, How The 'West' Is Won.

0:10Hello friends 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 I'm here with my co-hosts John Craven, Jackie Brugliera, and Mike Schneider. In this episode, we're joined by Tara Lindley, the director of Sensory QA and new product development for revered whiskey brand High West. John Craven, you love the High West, don't you? You're a big fan. Sure, eh? Yeah. You ever been to their distillery in Utah? They invited me to go. You want to come? Sounds nice. Doesn't it? Maybe.

0:45Have you been to Utah? Yeah. Really? Where? Salt Lake City, Park City. Okay. For skiing? For the skiing. For the skiing, yeah. You know, that's what they do up there. I mean, more for the Opry skiing, but... Oh, the Opry ski. Okay. Yeah. I just put my skis on at the car in the parking lot and then kind of walk on over to wherever they sell nachos and beer. Okay. So you walk into the bar, you're like, you take your goggles off, you're like, whoo, what a ski. Give me a beer. He doesn't even know you can go in without your skis on. Okay. Just show up. Have you ever seen Jerry of the Day, Ray? Never.

1:21I'm featured on there. Maybe not as much as Mike, but yeah. Okay. I have never been featured on Jerry of the Day. I'll let you guys Google that because I have no idea what you're talking about. It's safe for work. Don't worry. It's safe for work. It's funny. It's just some guy wiping out on skis really stupidly, you know, every day. Okay, cool. John, you missed the best fancy food show ever. You did. You really did. But you were in the old country in Ireland. How was that? Great. Yeah? Oh, yeah. You see anything cool? Guinness. Obviously. Crap loads of Americans doing dumb things. I don't know.

1:55Normal stuff when you travel to Europe. Oh, you took the Jerry's with you. They're not skiing right now, so they've got plenty of time to go to Ireland. The big question everyone always wants to know, is the Guinness better over there? Sure. It's cheaper. Is it really? Yeah. How much is it a pint? I got a pint for as cheap as five euro. Half pint for$2.90. Five euro is like$7.50 here, right? No, it's like one euro is, sorry,$1, I think, 18 is one euro. Okay. So a little over six bucks. It's cheap. Okay. It's cheap. Less expensive than here. I wouldn't call it cheap. I would challenge you to find a quality beer for that price.

2:35I can find a pint to give it as a chance. That was accepted. for her eight. No, I used a scavenge for the cheapest Guinness in the city and I did find one. That bar that has a skanky keg that they need to get rid of? No, no, no. This was a bar in Dorchester and they used to sell Imperial Pints of Guinness. I think it was for$4.75 or$4.50. This was like five years ago and then times have changed. Now the cheapest I can find is... Yeah, it's probably double the price. Yeah, the cheapest Guinness I can find in Boston is eight bucks. I can't wait to make some relative Guinness searcher AI. Yeah. I mean, you can go to Temple Bar in Dublin.

3:06and I think it's like 12 euros or something. Oh my gosh, forget about that. Forget about that. Forget about it. Well, if you're searching for information about how to scale your business, looking for data information about how to make your brand a lot better than it is today, well, we can help out because guess what? Nombase has just introduced its data hub. Jackie, what is this all about? Yeah. So we've been, you know, teasing, saying that we're going to be launching some new features on Nonbase, which it is a central resource for the CPG industry. And the Data Hub is bringing all of our data and information together.

3:49So across BevNet, NOSH, and BrewBound, we're taking all of the reports that we have in partnership with CGA, powered by NIQ, Aggregate, three-tier beverages, FabEd, Spate, and Brightfield Group, and putting them in one place where you can search, comb through all of our archive of data. and do some benchmarking, see what's been going on in the industry the last couple quarters, whether it's purchasing data, you're looking at trends, you're looking at specific categories, you can go there and take a look. You even got commodities data. We do. Yeah, I love this. All the good stuff. Consumer behavior and demand shifts, social listening and brand health, supply chain, macroeconomic and investment insights.

4:31I love all this stuff. And it's all included if you are an insider, a subscriber of our insider platform. And guess what? If you sign up now, you get 20 % off your first year. So kind of a no-brainer. How do you sign up, Ray? Specifically to get the 20 % off discount, go to tasteradio.com slash datahub, D-A-T-A-H-U-B, and you'll get 20 % off an annual membership to become an insider. Once again, it's really a no-brainer. it's probably the best money you'll spend to get the most amount of data all in the same place. And it's really, I think that's the hardest part sometimes about searching for consumer insights, trends, data reports.

5:16It's all over the place, but with non-based data hub, it's all in one place, which is awesome. You get in one place and we're consistently adding more. Exactly. Exactly. Well, a lot of people are looking for data. A lot of other people, Well, I think most people in this industry are looking for money. But guess what? Good news. There is a new fund that has been announced. Shore Capital Partners announced that they've closed on a$450 million food and beverage fund three. It is fantastic news for companies that are bringing in between$5 and$100 million in annual revenue. And Shore is going to be very active in this space.

5:57In 2022, Shure, which is a Chicago-based private equity firm, closed its second food and beverage fund with about$300 million in funding. So this one, a bit more in that regard. Is that 50 % more? Can we do the math here, 50 % more? Sure. Whatever you say. Okay, there you go. So if you're looking to learn more about the investments they will be making over the next year or so, you can head to nosh.com or bevnet.com and read the story by our very own Shauna Golden. Now, please note that insiders get full access to this story. But once again,$450 million. Get a piece of that and learn how at notyourbevnet.com.

6:38Exciting news also for a brand that we hold near and dear to our hearts. That brand is Sunny, S-U-N-N-I-E, which is a maker of, how would you describe Sunny? Convenient kid snacks. Convenient, but I think they're also for adults as well. Yeah, I mean, they're just convenient snacks. Yeah, yeah. I think they've actually dialed back on their kids' positioning a bit and really focused on just making easy snacking kids. So basically, I don't know how to describe this without describing. Jackie, what were those things where you'd peel back? Yeah, lunchable. But no, you'd peel back the thing and you'd...

7:12Fun dip? Oh, yeah, fun dip or the cheese dip, you know? A cheese dip, yeah, those things where you have like pretzels on one end of the thing and you have peanut butter or cheese on the other end. Fake cheese. Yeah, why would you describe that? They're making a much better version. So they have a jam snack. It's made with sunflower butter and looks like chia smash jam, a cocoa snack, and a zesty hummus snack. So they're doing a lot with airline lounges, which was really great to see. They're in over 50 airports across the country, American Airlines, Delta, and they're really trying to expand where they are in retail stores as well.

7:47They're currently in Whole Foods and Target. I'm really happy for this brand because they're a former Nosh Live Pitch Slam winner. And so they picked up, did I even mention that they picked up? I mean, we don't take it away from them. So they're not really former. Yeah, I don't even think I mentioned the big news. The big news is that they picked up a million dollars in new funding from Santa Terra Capital, which is really great to see. They're going to be using the money toward continued growth, operations, inventory, and working capital, according to a story penned by our very own Adrian DeLuca.

8:17us. So congratulations to Katie Tucker and Lizette Howard, who launched the company in 2020. So really great news on that. This is really great news. I love their sun butter so much. I'd love a jar of that. Maybe they'll make one just for you. I mean, I think they're just going to, you know, with a million dollars, I would go heads down and do more of what they're doing. I'm just happy you didn't bring up your damn pinky to your lip like you usually do when anyone says a million. It's retired. It's retired. I'd rather talk about Sonny than my damn pinky. This is really great news. Yes, indeed.

8:55All right. We haven't done a buy or sell in a while. And I saw something on Nosh that was related to some coverage from the Fancy Food Show about Dubai chocolate. Everyone's seen this Dubai chocolate craze. I mean, it's just too much of It's pretty much everywhere. If you're not familiar with Dubai chocolate, it's a chocolate, milk chocolate bar that's filled with pistachio cream and Kadeyev. Kadeyev is, I believe, a sort of thin pastry or thin dough pastry. It's delicious. Yes. Yes. It's very good. So, yeah, I mean, you've seen Dubai chocolate all over the place at Fancy Food Show. It literally was everywhere.

9:33And Adrian and Monica Watrous wrote this story. There's, you know, just the fun part, you know, those little cones, those snacking cones, They have Dubai cones now. There's Dubai style snacking chocolates. There's just all kinds of stuff out there right now. But at this point, I think we've hit peak Dubai chocolate. In fact, I believe at this point, Dubai chocolate has jumped the shark. So I'm buying that it has. Mike, what do you think? I think it's just a new flavor that people like. It's just a new variety of chocolate people like, and there's a place for it. So why not everybody have it? so you don't think it's jumped the shark i think so selling okay jackie what do you think i'm buying buying that's jumped yeah it's done there's just like a huge flood of it you know and what is it gonna happen now like something's gonna shake up people are gonna eat it that's what's gonna happen yeah john craven uh i don't think we've reached peak of it until there's like dubai chocolate i don't know like dog food kit kats and snickers and you know mainstream uh i don't know oreos or something like that that's a fair point until trader joe's is i think awareness of it is pretty limited to be honest you buy chocolate lattes well yeah i mean i think we've seen dubai chocolates in uh in some coffee chains at this point already i think uh i want to say what's the what's the british chain cafe nero sure i think cafe nero already has some dubai chocolate in there so yeah but i guess you're right i think until we start seeing it in snickers and Kit Kats and things like that, then it really has.

11:06I think it's jumpy shark. It's kind of a weird name for something that you can't really figure out from said name. Like that gives you no real useful point of reference if you're not familiar, but it is a sort of pretty tried and true combo. Yeah. I mean, if you've seen TikTok at all, then you know what Dubai chocolate is. Yeah, true enough. Now we've seen the Maha community rail against artificial flavors, colors, ingredients in food, specifically in snacks and candy. And there's been some success there. I will be very clear. I'm not part of the Maha movement, but I've been very happy to see the fact that corporations have made commitments to remove artificial ingredients from candies and snacks and so on and so forth.

11:57So that's cool. But I'm wondering what the next Maha domino to fall might be. And you know what? I've been hearing nothing more dangerous to human health than microplastics lately. Apparently, microplastics are everywhere. you are consuming quite a bit every single day, unbeknownst to you, just by, I don't know, drinking out of anything that's packaged, or if you have plastic wrapped candy, or who knows. But basically, everyone is eating too much microplastics at this point. I'm wondering if the Maha community is going to come after plastic next. Do you think it's the next domino to fall? John Craven, buy or sell plastic?

12:37How do I even answer this? No. You don't think it's No, it's just not. So you're selling. Impossibility. I think also in a time where, you know, there's still concerns about supply chain stuff, inflation, I don't know, steel tariffs, all that sort of stuff. It's just an impossibility to, you know, have that be the hill that you're going to die on. Okay. I mean, even like you're going to eat in a restaurant. You don't think all that stuff that's on your plates in a deli container somewhere in the kitchen in the back, you know? Like, I mean, there's just plastic everywhere. There is. Yeah. Jackie?

13:11Yeah, I'm selling too. I think like there's other maybe lower hanging fruit that they could go after to make like immediate change rather than like Craven was saying, trying to get rid of all plastic. I think there's also still a disconnect of people not really understanding the impact of microplastics. And like they see food dyes and they're like, oh, yes, I'm eating that and that's bad for me. But plastic, there's maybe another piece of education there. I think also there's sort of with a lot of this stuff, kind of a missing element of even with the artificial colors, flavorings, it's like, you know, these are just truly rhetorical questions.

13:50It's like, do you want less artificial plastic, whatever? But it's also like, are you willing to pay more because of that? And that seems to be a real sort of conflict in society in general here. So I'm not really sure that people who are abandoning these things understand exactly the impact of their own personal wallet from those things. And I think if those were paired together more, they might not be so rah-rah about it. So you're saying that by reducing or eliminating the ingredients that they're railing against, they're actually, in the long run, charging themselves more money? I think potentially in some cases, yes.

14:31Not in all, obviously. I'm not trying to make a blanket statement that every single thing that we change for the better results in that. But, yeah, I think some of this stuff does come at the cost of increased price. And certainly there are people that are in a position to not care about that, but not everyone is. Fair enough. I personally, I mean, I would love to see more glass. I mean, I drink a lot of water out of plastic bottles and I start to wonder if that's something I should stop doing. But is the demand, is the, I guess, is the concern about microplastics enough to get the community riled up, that Maha community, Mike?

15:12You're buying or selling that. I mean, Mike just eats plastic. Yeah, I just like to choose on plastic. I'm chewing on it now. Why do you think I wasn't contributing? I had to have my plastic supplement of the day. Okay. Okay. I mean, first of all, I don't think they've won the war, in quotes, on food dyes yet. So I think that's going to be, that's going to take a while and plastic is a far bigger issue. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's something that they'll start to talk about, but I don't know if it's the next thing. There's things that are adjacent to food dyes that you can take on next that seem to be maybe easier steps for them to get some wins.

15:48And I like that they're going after food dyes. I hope they get some wins here and change the food system. That'd be great. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think, as Jackie mentioned, sort of the lower hanging fruit might be an easier target because plastic is such a humongous part of our society. And unfortunately so, because I think that the lie that we were told by the petroleum companies about the ease of recyclability and the ease of recycling of plastic was perhaps one of the greatest lies ever told. and it's really hard to scale that back, really hard to dial that back because it does touch every part of our society right now.

16:25But who knows? Little by little, I think these kinds of conversations and people becoming more aware of the dangers of microplastics and some of the things that we're hearing about it contributing to strokes and heart attacks and so on and so forth will cause at least some movement in the right direction or a positive change as it relates to the CPG industry. All right, last buy or sell. I mentioned peak Dubai chocolate. Okay, I would agree we probably haven't hit peak Dubai chocolate, but I do think it has jumped the shark. Have we hit peak chili crunch, though? Now, last week at the Fancy Food Show, or I guess it was a week and a half ago at this point, I came across an amazing little brand or upstart brand called Halleluja.

17:06And it's spelled J-A-L-L-U-J-A-H. And they make fantastic. Halleluja? Halleluja. or maybe it is hallelujah I don't know butchered nonetheless I think he pronounced it hallelujah anyway they make an amazing jalapeno chili crisp and I mentioned this last week that when I posted it on on Instagram I got a lot of responses it looks spicy that's a pretty sample it is you can try it it's already spilling out there then I realized how much chili crisp I have at home either in my pantry or in my fridge. Crisp and crunch. So yeah, so crisp and crunch. So, oh man, this is cultural misappropriation here.

17:50Okay. That's salsa matcha. This is, they describe it as chili crisp. They describe it as a Mexican chili crisp. Oh, okay. I mean, that's for marketing, but yeah. That's a different animal. I mean, okay. We've had these conversations with founders. You asked Jing Gao herself about the similarities between Sichuan food and Mexican food. I don't know if that's cultural appropriation. I'm going to explain this in terms of use case, right? So in use case, people are probably using Chili Crisp and Salsa Matcha in similar ways. In similar use cases. I'd say that's okay. Okay. So Somos has one. Okay. So if you recall, the little goat, the little goat, they had a couple of years ago, they launched a Chili Crunch with Hidden Valley Ranch.

18:33Okay. So that's three we got there. Now we, Capitano, which I love this brand. They make a salsa matcha that they describe as a Mexican-style chili crunch. Mombafuku, as we know. Now, they have many chili crunches, but they have a garlic crunch right here. This was in my fridge. As we know, and this caused a lot of controversy a couple of years ago, Heinz, the maker of ketchup, they launched a culinary crunch. What are you just talking about? Fly by Jing, obviously the original. Fly by Jing. The OG chili, Chris. Thank you. So Masala Gossip. If we had Masala Gossip, we featured them on the show a couple of weeks ago, or maybe three weeks ago.

19:09They have a chili crisp. A masala chili crisp. Now, you're going to give me crap about this because this is an Indian-style chili crisp? Okay, there we go. I'm not going to give you any crap about any of these except that masala gossip, Hines, Momofuku, Capitana, Little Goats, and Somos. Please note that if you want us to actually eat your products, send them to the BevNet office, not to Ray. No. Some of this stuff, actually, most of this stuff actually was sent to the BevNet office. I have just looted it. I parted and looted it. Yeah, I got you. Okay, so right now we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

19:41Eight brands just on the table. There's probably two dozen more. Of course there are. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, have you seen the hot sauce aisle? Okay. I mean, this is the thing here. You're treating this like chili crisp is like ketchup, where they kind of all basically are the same thing. I never said that. Largely a staple commodity. And this is more like hot sauce. They're nuanced flavors. Like, would, I don't know, fly by Jing taste good on a taco? Probably. Definitely. The Somos or a salsa matcha that's got like the right chilies to pair with Mexican food probably will taste better. I don't know about that.

20:14I don't know. I like a fusion taco. Yeah, but fish taco with Sichuan chili crust. You make your weird fusion taco. This is my question. Have we reached peak chili crunch? Because you said it's just like hot sauces and ketchup. I mean, at that point. No, I said it's like hot sauce, not like ketchup. Because like no one stocks like I've got five different brands of ketchup in my fridge. You kind of probably got one or you bought one because they were out of the other one. But like, you're not like, am I in the mood for Heinz or like, I don't know, whoever else. It's a commodity is what you're saying.

20:43Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like you got your one that you probably just bought and you go to and you don't have a whole variety of them. Whereas I think people are into like hot sauce, probably have a couple. There's probably some people that are like, fine, I just eat Cholula, Tabasco, whatever. But I think there might be a consumer out there who kind of is into a couple of these. They probably don't have this many like you who's hoarding and clearly has a problem. Fear for your wife. But anyway, you know, I think we'll liberate you from Ray. We'll eat this one. I think this is. I think what we're seeing here is also just the different cultural cuisines have their own form of this type of product, too, which is cool.

21:24I think that's the big question for me. I think we have hit peak chili crunch, which is why I'm buying on my own question here. and why I'm saying to brands that are considering introducing a Chili Crisp or Chili Crunch, then maybe, you know, there's just too much of this stuff already out there. I would say that if somebody were launching this, the challenge with it is that it's probably, at this point, not the highest velocity product type to launch, just in that there are a lot of different ones. So a consumer's ability to consume these and need to get more might be questionable. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

22:01I think I'm buying that it's at its peak. There's a lot of options, but, you know, the fact that, like, Heinz has its own version is showing that it is more mainstream now. But I personally also have a bunch of chili crisps, and I like trying new ones, you know? So you're not alone, Ray. See, I'm not the only one holding. You're not alone. That's who we are, though. But we actually eat them, Ray. That's the difference between you and me and Jackie. Yeah, mine doesn't last long. The half of these aren't even open. I ate these. That's got the seal on the top. You didn't eat that one? The Capitana and the Momofuku I have open.

22:34The other ones, I was waiting for a day like this, to be honest with you, where I could talk about this. I mean, per what John was saying before, it just depends on what you're in the mood for. And I guess I'm on a mission to try Sichuan Chili Crisp, Flat Bajing on everything. So I'll put it on everything. But then there are times when I'd rather have masala gossip or, I mean, now I've got like a jar of Masala Bliss Achar, which is kind of adjacent to that. It's, you know, another condiment that has spice and awesome curry flavor. And, you know, you can use that similarly too. So I think it just depends on, you know, how much flavor you like, what flavors you like.

23:12And then these give you that option to make anything taste that way too. So that's the nice thing about it is that if you want Sichuan flavor, go to Fly by Jing or go to Hot Pot Queen. Or if you want Malaysian or Indonesian, you could go to Homia's Chili Crunch. It's amazing. And now we've got Desi flavors with Masala Gossip and Masala Bliss. And for Mexican, you can go to Somos. I mean, there's so many good directions to go in right now. And I don't think that that has jumped the shark yet. I think we're just getting started, really. Glorious Chateau. You know, you can put that Chateau on everything.

23:54That stuff's amazing. There's no shortage of awesome flavor right now. And I don't think we should be like, oh, it's over. Fair enough. Fair enough. And to be, I just want to be clear to our listeners. Heinz has exited the market of Chili Crunch. This is a very old jar, apparently. That looks old. There was some dust in there. That looks sad. But this is a Mandarin Orange Miso Crunch. This actually looks kind of good. I mean, look, for Heinz, you don't buy Heinz products when you're like, man, I'm feeling adventurous and I want something new, right? That looks like formaldehyde. Embalming fluid?

24:27Is there like an eyeball in there? There is an eyeball in there, yeah. I thought so. They should have consulted you, John. Get that out of here. Oh, gosh, what is this? Oh, dear. Yeah, this expired in September of 2022. Wow, you're really hoarding. What? Get that away from me, man. I need to embalm someone right now. Reason number 500 to not send product directly to Ray's house. I just told you. It doesn't come directly to my house. I'm just saying. Okay. So sad. Well, I enjoyed that spirited debate. It was riveting. I'm sure our listeners did it. Yeah, they're just, oh. And what got lost in the shuffle there is Jalaluuya.

25:07Yeah, I'm going to try this jalapeno chili crisp. This little dash here that they sent us. Well, no, it's a sample that you had at a show. I brought that back from New York City. Great, thank you. In my backpack. Spilled all over my backpack. No, it didn't. No, it didn't. Jaleluia. Yes, I mispronounced that several times. All right. I would love to pour some of this Chili Crisp all over a bowl of Like Air. Like Air is a maker of puff corn. Like Air has been on the podcast a million times because they send us product every single time they have a new flavor, which appears to be like once a month, which is cool.

25:41I mean, you're all pretty tasty, too. Yeah, you're sending us quality stuff with a new flavor like every month. Thank you. And this flavor in particular is pretty damn amazing. This is their new Spicy Ranch. And I had some the other day. It's exactly as advertised. Let's crack it open. I don't try this. It's ranch flavor with a little bit of heat. And it is that very light snack that you've, you know, you can finish this bag and feel totally fine afterwards, which is great. 80 calories per bag, non-GMO corn, gluten-free, nut-free. I'm just talking so they don't have to hand this over to John. I'm just kidding.